Tag: young adult

What’s on my (mostly virtual) nightstand? 1-15-12

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Virtual Nightstand

Martin Luther King Day is tomorrow. No mail. No school. It’s a day off for a lot of people. But I’ll be working, Galen will be working. There’s no rest for the wicked, as my mom usually says to me. (And I fully recognize the implication!)

Mid-January in this library household means one other thing–the impending doom of the American Library Association Midwinter Conference. January 20-24, this year in Dallas, Texas. At least it might be warm? (2010 was in Denver, 2013 will be in Philadelphia, this point is very much NOT moot.)

ALA Midwinter is a major household disruption. We bring out suitcases. The cats hate suitcases. The suitcases take their people away! They might have to train new staff. This is very bad.

But the conference represents major headaches all the way around. In June in New Orleans, our hotel did not have connectivity in the rooms, so I only posted once, using Galen’s iPhone as my net connection. Not fun. This conference, I admit I’m going to queue up as much as I can, just in case connectivity is a tad “iffy”.

On the one hand, plane rides are still a terrific opportunity for reading. Not to mention that lovely extra two-hour wait ahead of the flight for “security”. On the other hand, ALA conferences are a sea of Advance Reading Copies, unfortunately all print. What’s a girl to do?

I have four books to read on the airplane on my way to and from Dallas, because these are scheduled for release January 24. Except I really only have three.

Heiress Without a Cause by Sara Ramsey popped up on NetGalley as a historical romance debut that just sounded interesting. According to the blurb copy, it was selected by Barnes & Noble for an exclusive release on the NOOK beginning Jan. 23rd.

The Stubborn Dead by Natasha Hoar was featured in January 2012 print issue of RT Book Reviews as one of the five debut authors not to miss in 2012. So I couldn’t resist picking up first book, about a “rescue medium” when it appeared on NetGalley. Whether this is urban fantasy or paranormal romance or a combination, it looks like a terrific start for this new author.

Daughter of the Centaurs by Kate Klimo is the first book of the Centauriad. It’s YA and it’s something I pulled from NetGalley when I was researching YA genre lit for a table talk I did for the South Carolina Collection Development mini-conference. Since this is definitely fantasy, I’m going to give it a try.

Banshee Charmer by Tiffany Allee is the last book on my calendar for January 24. I had downloaded it from NetGalley because I liked the premise, an urban fantasy about a half-banshee detective solving a serial killer murder. Sounded cool. Then Book Lovers Inc asked me to review it for them. Cool beans, I already had it.  I’ve read it, loved it, and written both reviews already, one for my blog and one for BLI. Done and dusted. I just can’t queue anything up here until the BLI review is posted.

And now for putting the cap back on the old recap.

My review of Nick Marsh’s Soul Purpose is already scheduled to post on Tuesday. I’ll get to Past Tense after I come back from Dallas. BLI says I can have two months. I promise I won’t take anywhere near that long! Besides, Soul Purpose was too much fun for me to wait that long to read the sequel. I want to see what happens next.

And I received an unstained copy of Todd Grimson’s Stainless this week. Woo-hoo! I take one “dead-tree” book with me on the plane, so I have something to read for those horrible minutes when they make me turn off my iPad. Stainless might be it.

I also finished A Lady Awakened and Don’t Bite the Messenger from last week, so reviews for both those books will be part of this week’s postings.

Reaching back, to the Christmas Nightstand, I’m in the middle of J.L. Hilton’s Stellarnet Rebel. As a blogger, and a science fiction fan, I’m caught up in the story on multiple levels. I mean wow, living on a space habitat, kind of like Babylon 5 or Deep Space 9. And, earning your living by being a blogger, live, full-time pretty much, total life immersion blogging. 3,000 posts or 3 years until she can go back to Earth. And will she want to?

Going even further back, I took a look at the 12/17/11 Nightstand and read Forever Mine, the prequel novella to Delilah Marvelle’s Forever and a Day. Yes, I’m a completist. I have to read the whole series.

That’s all we have time for in this pre-conference madness issue of the Nightstand. We’ll see you next week, live from Dallas, hopefully not blogging from the hotel lobby. The bar, on the other hand…

Tomorrow will be the Carina Press December 2011 edition of Ebook Review Central. And it will seem like Christmas all over again.

Cinder

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews

Cinder by Marissa Meyer is a retelling of the Cinderella story with a YA/cyberpunk twist. And it’s a pretty good retelling at that. I just think it would have been a better story if it didn’t try so hard to be sure it stepped on each and every base on its way around the story.

Cinderella is always a second-class citizen. In Meyer’s variation, Cinder is second-class because she is a cyborg. Cyborgs are considered less-than-human by those who have been fortunate enough not to have lived through catastrophic accidents such as the one that cost Cinder her hand and her foot at age 11.

But Cinder does not remember the traumatic accident, or anything about her early life. And the man who might have told her is dead. Linh Garan adopted her and left her in the care of his wife Adra just before his death. Garan was an inventor; he liked to tinker with things. He may have adopted Cinder to tinker with. He might have done something to her internal processes. But no one knows, least of all Cinder.

Adra hates and resents Cinder, while at the same time greedily taking every credit that Cinder earns as a gifted mechanic. Adra is entitled to retain all of Cinder’s earnings, forever. Adra is Cinder’s guardian, and Cinder’s earnings are the only thing keeping the household out of the poorhouse. The household, of course, contains not only the nasty stepmother Adra, but Cinder’s stepsisters, Peony and Pearl.

This Cinderella tale has been transplanted in time and place. We are still on Earth, but it is a future, post-apocalyptic Earth, after a dreadful Fourth World War first devastated, then finally united humanity under an Imperial Commonwealth. Cinder lives in the Eastern Commonwealth capital of New Beijing. The moon was not just settled, but broke away from the Earth pre-WWIV and created its own government. The Lunars have become not just a separate government, but in some ways, a separate race, because they have the capacity to manipulate bio-electric energy to a point that seems like magic. It’s a LOT like the Force in Star Wars, and too many of the Lunars mostly act like the Sith. The Lunar Queen and Emperor Palpatine would probably have a lot in common, if they didn’t try to kill each other on sight.

Prince Kai brings his personal android to Cinder at her stall in the market to repair. He says it’s because it was his teaching android when he was growing up, and he’s emotionally attached to it.

Cinder, who shouldn’t have the neural circuitry to swoon, practically swoons over Prince Kai. She is able to suppress her reaction. What she isn’t able to suppress is her knowledge that he is lying. There is something important about the little android, and it isn’t merely an emotional attachment.

Kai lets something slip, he is doing research on leutmosis, the deadly plague that is sweeping the world. It is 100% fatal. Cinder wonders if his android contains some of his research.

The research that Kai might or might not be conducting becomes even more important to Cinder when her stepsister Peony contracts the deadly plague. Peony was the only person who truly cared for Cinder, and now she is gone. And in her rage, Adra signs Cinder over the government as a test subject. Cinder, as a cyborg, has no rights at all.

Once Cinder is tested, the truth of her origins begins to be revealed, not to Cinder, but to others who have been searching for her desperately. Nothing in her life has been as it has seemed.

But Cinder is going to the ball.

Escape Rating B-: The cover of this book is awesome. The book has its moments but I figured out the big reveal very, very early on. It’s better if the surprise remains a surprise as long as possible. Instead, everything was telegraphed miles ahead of time.

I loved the scene where Cinder drives to the ball and shows up in all her grease-stained glory to try to rescue Kai, but I saw it coming miles away.

And, as many other reviewers have noted, what does Kai look like? He’s never described. Ever. There’s a rule somewhere that all brides are, by definition, beautiful. Is there a corollary that all princes are handsome? Therefore there’s no requirement that they be described? Is he blond? Does he have black hair? Brown eyes? Blue eyes? Swoon-worthy is just not a sufficient description.

And I still want to find out what happens next. I want to see that Lunar Queen get what she deserves. Ring-side seats for that show would be very nice indeed.

Darker Still

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews

Darker Still, by Leanna Renee Hieber, is a Victorian ghost story with a twist. The strange romanticism of Victorian spiritualism was particularly suited to this haunting tale of a painting that had captured rather more than just the likeness of its handsome subject.

Natalie Stewart was struck mute at the age of 4 when she witnessed her mother’s death under the wheels of a runaway carriage. When our story begins, the year is 1880, and Natalie has returned to her father’s New York City townhouse after her schooling in the Connecticut Asylum. The Asylum is a school for children with unfortunate handicaps like Natalie’s; some are blind, some are deaf, some are crippled, but all are well-to-do. As is Natalie, since her father is an important man at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

An intriguing new painting has arrived in New York. It is a portrait of the late Lord Denbury. Denbury is a compelling subject in his own right, young, aristocratic and handsome. Dead by his own hand just after the portrait was completed, distraught over the death of his parents. His case is tragic. But there is something about the painting itself: it seems as if the man’s spirit inhabits the painting, almost as if he is somehow alive in that canvas.

The story of the tragic young lord compels Natalie to visit the current owner of the portrait, Mrs. Northe, in spite of the fact that Natalie can only “speak” either by writing or by sign language. But Mrs. Northe is eager to meet Natalie.  She almost seems to be waiting for her…and Mrs. Northe knows how to sign!

When Natalie is brought before the painting of Lord Denbury, she is certain, she feels, that Denbury is trapped in the painting. Each time she looks at the painting, she sees that something has changed, something has been moved. In the painting, Lord Denbury is writing on the desk, asking her questions, communicating with her!

Natalie takes Mrs. Northe into her confidence, fearful that she will be thought mad. But when Mrs. Northe believes her, they conduct an experiment. Natalie touches the painting, and falls in–to the world of the painting, where Lord Denbury waits for her to save him.

On that other side of the canvas, Natalie must face her greatest hopes, and her greatest fears, in order to have the chance at a real life. The one thing that she feared her handicap had placed forever beyond her reach.

Escape Rating B+: This was a neat story to be reading the night before Halloween. Very gothic, with an added slice of the Picture of Dorian Gray thrown in for good measure. Just a slice.

While I enjoyed Natalie as a character, I found that having the entire story told from her first-person point-of-view to be a little limiting. I wanted to know a lot more about why the other characters were doing the things they did. Mrs. Northe’s motivations were not as clear as they might have been. Was her flirtation with Natalie’s father a ruse, or was she genuinely interested? Why did the demon choose Denbury in the first place? What society of devils? Who else is involved? I still have questions.

And how are Natalie and Denbury going to get out of the pickle they’re in? When is the next book?????

The Iron Knight

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

More than Team Ash, more than Team Puck, I’m on Team Julie! The conclusion to Julie Kagawa’s Iron Fey series, The Iron Knight, is simply awesome. As in full of awe and wonder and all of the things that we read fantasy in order to find.

The Iron Knight is a blend of old fairy tales and modern myths, and it casts the time-worn tales into new guises. This story is a marvel. And the more I think about it, the more I find.

Julie Kagawa has stated that the story was intended to be a trilogy, and it was supposed to be Meghan’s story: her journey from the half-caste daughter of the Summer King to become the Iron Queen in her own right. But the ending was bittersweet. She comes into her own at the cost of her great love. Ash, the Winter Prince, literally cannot live in the Iron Realm. The defeat of the evil Ferrum comes at a very high price. With great power comes great responsibility–Spiderman’s Uncle Ben strikes again. If Meghan were not willing to pay that price, she wouldn’t be worthy of being the Iron Queen in the first place.

But Ash is not a King. He only wants to be her Knight. And an Unseelie fey capable of truly loving anyone no longer has the emotional defenses capable of surviving in the Winter Courts. But in order to survive in Meghan’s Iron Realm, Ash can no longer be a Winter fey. He must become human. And for that, he needs a soul.

The Iron Knight is the story of Ash’s quest to become human. Like any quest story, Ash takes companions along on his journey. Ash’s crew is more motley, and more legendary, than most. Robin Goodfellow accompanies Ash. Of course he does. Puck loves Meghan as much as Ash does. So much so that he is willing to help his dearest rival achieve his greatest happiness, because it is Meghan’s best chance at joy.

Grimalkin is the guide, well, some of the time. Grimalkin has all the tricksiness of the Cheshire Cat, and all the dignity of Bast. The Big Bad Wolf decides to join them, in the hopes of extending the life of his legend, and consequently, his own life. And, as with Grimalkin, the legend is the modern version, so think of the Wolf as influenced by Bill Willingham’s Fables. Except he’s always in wolf form.

Then there’s the surprise mystery guide. Spoilers after the rating.

Escape Rating A+: Read the book. Read the whole series, because the payoff comes if you’ve read everything. I received The Iron Knight from Netgalley, and I hadn’t read the series. I bought the rest from Amazon, and swallowed in one gulp. Yum.

Ash’s journey is kind of a reverse Orpheus and Eurydice. Everything about the Iron Fey is a very neat meld of traditional fairy tales and modern myth, and this was just beautifully done. Ariella, Ash’s first love, has been waiting for Ash and Puck to make the journey to the End of the World for Ash’s soul. It was necessary for Ash and Puck to be there to help Meghan, and the only way for that to happen was for Ariella to die, and stay dead. Ariella is a seer, and she saw that her death brought about the best of all possible options regarding the incursion of the Iron Fey.

But Ariella still loves Ash, and she wants him to be happy. Just like Puck wants Meghan to be happy.

The Orpheus and Eurydice myth is that Orpheus goes to Hades to bargain for his love’s soul with Hades, God of the Underworld. The deal is that if Orpheus takes the long, dark journey back to the surface, with Eurydice following behind him, and Orpheus trusts that she is behind him without him ever looking back to check, when they reach the surface she will be free.  Orpheus looks back very close to the exit.

But the concept, the idea of traveling down a river (there are 5 rivers in Hades in Greek myth) to the End of the World (Underworld) so that Ariella can give Ash her soul so that he can be reborn, it works.

It all works.

Dearly, Departed

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

Dearly, Departed by Lia Habel is an excellent read. It’s also absolutely the best YA post-holocaust steampunk zombie romance I’ve ever read. Admittedly, it’s also the only YA post-holocaust steampunk zombie romance I’ve ever read.

Nora Dearly is the daughter of the late Dr. Victor Dearly. As in Dr. Victor Dearly, the recently departed. The title of the book is a pun. Oh is it ever.

Miss Dearly’s world is that of the Neo-Victorians. You see, we screwed up. Climate change happened, and it sucked. The survivors ended up in our equatorial regions, and they were the hardiest of the survivors. They deliberately looked back in history for an era of peace, stability and civilization. What did they choose? The Victorian Era! Even as they recovered our technology, and even surpassed it, their society became further entrenched in the cultural and societal norms of the Victorian Age.  So by Miss Dearly’s time, we have airships, steampower, electric power, digital diaries, parasols, crinoline, and corsetry. In other words, we have steampunk.

The Neo-Victorians are at war with the Punks. The two sides have somewhat different views of how technology should and should not be used. And everybody wants everyone else’s territory. War is like that. But there’s a much bigger, badder threat from the outside, and both the NVs and the Punks are using the war against each other as a smokescreen to cover up who they are really fighting. They’re really fighting–zombies.

There’s a mutated disease out there in the wilds. It’s called “The Laz”. That’s a bit of appropriately gallows humor, as Lazarus was a man raised from the dead. Well, the Laz does that too, sort of. Victims of the Laz may or may not be as functional as the biblical Lazarus when they come back.

Nora’s father, Dr. Victor Dearly, figured out a way to keep victims of the Laz mentally functional and as physically capable as possible for as long as possible. For that, he became Director of Military Health of the Department of Military Health. It’s usually referred to as DoMH, pronounced “Doom”.

With the aid of Dr. Dearly’s research, there are now zombie troops fighting zombie incursions. In secret, of course. Nora knows none of this. All she knows is that her father is the only one who treats her like an intelligent human being, instead of a decoration, which is what girls are supposed to be. Then he dies and leaves her an orphan in the care of a cold-hearted Aunt.

Then the zombies come to New London. Opposing forces converging on Nora Dearly. One set to protect her, one to capture her. Nora finds herself whisked away from her home to the base for the NV Zombie unit in the care of Captain Bram Griswold, and her entire universe falls apart and reassembles itself, much like the human body does when it is attacked by the Laz disease.

It should be the end of the world as Nora knows it. A proper Neo-Victorian young lady should fall apart. But Nora is done falling apart. The new Nora kicks aside convention and kicks some serious ass. I like her a lot.

Escape Rating A: This turned out to be a great book. There was a tremendous amount going on, but all the elements were needed to make it work. I couldn’t figure out how anyone could make a zombie the hero/love interest, but it honestly does work in this book. On the other hand, if this were a contemporary book, and Nora actually wanted to have sex, I’m not sure how that would be managed. But since it is totally realistic for her not to even think of going there, it works. Nora wants someone to treat her like a real person and not a decorative object. Bram completely does that. This is about emotion, not body parts.

I’m looking forward to the next book, Dearly Beloved. I can’t wait to see where the story goes from here. I hope there’s a cure. I want Bram and Nora to have a happy ever after. That’s not realistic, but I want it for them just the same. Call me an optimist. Or call me a romantic.

South Carolina Librarians Rock!

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | About> Librarians> presentations

The South Carolina Collection Development Mini-Conference was an absolute blast! What an amazing event. Three days devoted to collection development, sponsored by the South Carolina State Library. There were 80 attendees every day, and folks were going home at night and letting their colleagues come in, so it wasn’t the same 80 people each day. One day was devoted to ebooks, one to adult collections, and one to kids and teens.

I was very fortunate to present for the adult collections and the teens on genre fiction. And, I was able to attend the day on kids and teens. Wow!

My presentation for the crowd on adult collection development was about genre fiction selection. “The Brave New World of Genre Fiction Selection, the Rap Sheet on the Fiction Vixen, or what the Locus are all these book blogs about?” It was a big title for a pretty big subject. I want to encourage collection development librarians to use book blogs as selection tools.

Why? The bloggers, including yours truly, cover more than just the traditional publishers. We cover a lot of ebook-only titles. Blogs may be the only review source for most ebook-only titles.

Blogs are as much, probably more, labors of love as they are anything else. Many are niche publications. If they cover a subgenre such as steampunk or biopunk or paranormal romance, they cover it more thoroughly than a general review magazine that has to cover the waterfront. And for a patron who wants stuff in their love and only their love, a specialized resource is where it’s at.

The slides for the presentation included pictures representing some of the different subgenres, along with breakdowns of the components that make up those niches. A lot of us who read in a genre throw around our own jargon, like steampunk or  cyberpunk or dystopia, and assume that everyone knows what we mean. (Us librarians do that too!) Hunting for images to show not just what cyberpunk looks like, but displaying a formula of what pieces of what genres make it up (Science fiction+ hackers+ artificial intelligence+ post-industrial dystopias+ very hard-boiled detectives) seemed to go over well.

I know the bibliography (webliography?) of recommended bloggers for book reviews I handed out disappeared like snow in July. I could have done a magic trick with that thing.

The kids and teens day on September 14 was absolutely fabulous. Pat Scales, an expert not just on children’s literature but also on intellectual freedom issues (Pat is a member of the National Coalition Against Censorship Council of Advisors) spoke eloquently about ratings systems as censorship tools. The post-lunch panel discussion tackled a broad range of questions, including the debate whether users should find the materials they want in the library or should only be able to find “quality” material. This version of the “give them what they want” conundrum is usually applied to so-called trashy fiction, but is just as applicable to SpongeBob SquarePants. The audience participation on this question was spirited. I think nearly everyone in the audience believed that every patron, no matter what their age, should find both their entertainment and their educational needs met at their local library. If we provide entertainment fiction, then we provide Spongebob.

After the Great Debate, the Talk Tables started. I had a two-table sized group on the endless proliferation of vampire books in teen fiction. “V is for Vampire, W is for Werewolf, Z is for Zombie,” was the title. But I didn’t intend to talk about just the vamps. As one member of the group commented, in every box or cart of teen books, all the books are grey or black, with just a tiny hint of red on the cover. Everything is dark and angsty, whether there are vampires involved or not. It seems as if things are always darkest just before they turn completely black. Even the non-creepy books are dark and gritty. Based on the group discussion, teens may be tired of vampires in particular, but their literature isn’t turning toward sweetness and light any time soon. Just towards a different shade of grey. Or black.

This was a great conference. I really enjoyed the energy. And I truly believe that book blogs are a terrific resource for library collection development, and I would love to have the opportunity to take the show on the road again. Hopefully to a library conference near you!