It will be on my Best of 2016 list. I’ll tell you that for free, spoilers for future posts be damned.
I loved it so much, and on such a visceral level, that I want to rant about it to the rooftops without the limitations of coherence, so we’re gonna take the short, gushy, ungrammatical route:
DARK JEM [Amazon | The Book Depository] is the third volume of JEM AND THE HOLOGRAMS, writer Kelly Thompson and artist Sophie Campbell’s take on the 80s icon. I must confess, I’ve been a bad Jem fan--I missed most of Volume Two, VIRAL. As per the comics tradition, though, this didn’t affect my enjoyment of DARK JEM. Yes, I’m sad I’ll have to read those vol 2 issues later than I might’ve done, but the story itself works perfectly well without them in the mix because Thompson and Campbell carefully seed their story with reminders as to the series’ overall premise and what’s happened in the recent past. I caught up easy-peasy and settled in to enjoy the ride.
Which is GREAT. Like, super-great. Like, all the Jemerrific goodness I loved in volume one with an extra dose of “let’s play with the wider comics tradition” in the mix. It delighted me and made me gasp in horror; my most favouritest combination, made all the better because it happened within one of my favourite comics.
The basic story is as follows: something’s wrong with Synergy, the AI the Holograms use to craft Jerrica’s stage persona and all their special effects. Really wrong. “Hey, let’s brainwash everyone,” wrong. Eep! Jerrica quickly falls under Synergy’s spell, and the other Holograms aren’t far behind her. With their new sound, they look set to infect everyone with Synergy’s pernicious virus and turn the world into a dark yet orderly hellscape.
Unless they can break Synergy's hold, round up a few helpers, and save everyone.
Plus, THE RAVEN KING forced me to expand my Top 12 list into a Top 161. It’s serious between us, y’all, and I’d like to mark the occasion.
At the same time, though, this was a 6-star read. 5 stars is my “I loved it to the point of incoherence and/or verbosity” rating. 6 stars dials the incoherence angle right the hell up, especially when we’re talking about a highly anticipated finale I really, really don’t want to spoil for y’all.
So we’re taking the Short, Gushy, Ungrammatical route, with the understanding that I might imply some stuff about the other three books but I won’t get all, “OMG LEMME DESCRIBE THIS EXTREMELY VITAL SCENE” on you.
Fourteen-year-old Faith is a gifted natural scientist committed to decoding the world around her--but Faith lives in 1860s England, and girls of her social class aren’t allowed to be anything more than attractive, soft-spoken burdens on their loved ones.
When her family relocates to an island that houses an important archaeological dig, Faith sees her chance to grasp the engaged life she’s always wanted; however, tragedy and Faith’s subsequent discovery of a mysterious plant changes everything. The Lie Tree grants true visions to those who whisper potent lies to it, and Faith is certain she can use it to unravel the mystery of her family’s misfortunes and bolster her own desperate desire for more.
Assuming the lies don’t drag her under before she gets the answers she needs.
THE LIE TREE [Amazon | The Book Depository], Frances Hardinge’s latest offering, received high praise upon its UK publication last year. Now North American audiences can get their hands on it, and I’ve got four reasons you should do just that:
And yet, I adored ANNA DRESSED IN BLOOD [Amazon | The Book Depository], a book that hits every beat of the BBP.
Theseus Cassio Lowood--better known as Cas--is the only person in the world who can kill ghosts. He sends them to the other side with the athame he inherited from his father; the athame that’s only a knife in anyone else’s hands. He and his mother move from place to place whenever someone in Cas’s network of informants gives him a promising new lead, and now they’ve ventured to Thunder Bay, Ontario, for the ultimate prize.
Anna Korlov became Anna Dressed In Blood after she was brutally murdered by an assailant who was never found. She’s spent the last sixty-odd years ripping people to shreds when they venture into the Victorian boarding house her mother once ran. And yet, she lets Cas leave unharmed.
Intrigued, Cas sets out to discover what makes Anna so powerful, and so different from every other ghost he’s ended.
You see the BBP there, yes? The parallels only strengthen as Cas settles in to his new home and allies himself with the usual suspects: a nervous yet personable young witch who’s also a social outcast, a Queen Bee who’s more than a stereotype, and a guy named Will Rosenberg.
Then, of course, there’s the dangerous entity he really should kill without hesitation, but with whom he forms a strong, and perhaps even loving, bond because she calls to him like no one else.
And somehow, it all works. Instead of shunting me out of the story as the BBP usually does, it pulled me further in and left to desperate to wallow in Cas’s world.
In Cath’s version, Simon and Baz fall in love instead of (or maybe as well as) killing each other in the Grand Denouement, as events are trending towards in the source text from which Cath takes her inspiratioin.
Rainbow Rowell’s CARRY ON isn’t Cath’s fic. Nor is it the canon series conclusion Cath finally gets to read at the end of FANGIRL. Rather, it’s Rowell’s take on the idea of a young adult fantasy series ender that brings the protagonist into a new kind of conflict with the antagonist.
And it all happens without the previous seven books in the series, since no one who's liable to read CARRY ON really needs them. We all know how children's fantasy series work, so we can guess most of what's happened prior to this. Besides, Rowell slots in all the relevant details as the current book’s plot demands.
THE VENGEFUL HALF [Amazon] is veteran author Jaclyn Dolamore’s first venture into self-publishing. She’s released five novels through Bloomsbury and Disney Hyperion, but chose a different path for her new series so she could have greater control over each volume’s release schedule, packaging, and bonus content, as she wrote about in greater detail on her blog.
The book centres on sixteen-year-old Olivia, an exile from the Hidden Lands adjoining Earth. Olivia and her mother, Adelise, live in America so’s to avoid the man Adelise cursed after he destroyed her husband, but their quiet life gets a whole lot more exciting when an intriguing boy from their homeland tracks them down.
Alfred inherited Adelise’s curse when his gangster grandfather died. He’s been blind ever since; something his parents would very much like to rectify, against Alfred’s wishes. No sooner has he voiced his request, though, than a rival faction whisks in and abducts Adelise. Desperate to help her mother, Olivia follows Alfred into the Hidden Lands--and discovers her own terrifying past in this unfamiliar world of dark magic and strange delights.
Ooh, friends, this was awesome! I began it the very moment it hit my ereader, other obligations be damned, and only reluctantly emerged until I’d reached the final page. It made me giggle, it made me cry, and it gave me a fascinating new sphere to explore.
Y’all know how much I love poking around in a well-built world.
A lot of 80s kids have fond memories of JEM AND THE HOLOGRAMS, and I’m no different. I spent seven years in the Hell Decade1, and Jem et al were one of the things that brightened it up.
That said, the vast majority of my Jem-related recollections have to do with my awesome star stage that was also a tape deck, and with how my one Jem doll2 was way taller than everyone else’s Barbies. If I ever saw the cartoon, it's faded from my memory.
So for me, Kelly Thompson and Sophie Campbell’s JEM AND THE HOLOGRAMS [Amazon | The Book Depository | comiXology] falls into that strange realm between nostalgia and brand newness. I have an emotional connection to Jem as a beloved thing from my childhood, but not Jem as a particular story.
Which is to say, I don't mind the ways this incarnation of Jem may or may not differ from the older version.
Jerrica Benton and her three sisters, Kimber, Aja, and Shana, are ready to burst onto the music scene as the Holograms. The Misfits Vs! contest offers the perfect chance to get their video in front of thousands of listeners, especially since they’ll have an opportunity to face off against the uber-popular Misfits in a live battle of the bands if the video gets enough likes. There’s only one problem: Jerrica’s stage fright makes it impossible for her to perform in front of even a small crowd. Ulp!
Luckily, the girls’ scientist father left them the ultimate solution in the form of Synergy, an AI that can project three-dimensional holograms over anyone or anything--including Jerrica. Armed with an amazing stage persona for Jerrica and some kick-ass visual effects to go with their awesome music, the Holograms are ready to take on the world--provided the Misfits' jealous lead singer doesn’t sabotage them before the big day.
Our first spotlight went live today and features six recent YA titles we're superduper excited about. Half of our picks would be great for Diversiverse, so those of you committed to reading diversely should totally pop on over there and read our take on 'em.
The book picks up a couple months after the end of THE DIVINERS. While all the characters from the first volume are still present and accounted for, the current focus rests on the two dream-walkers: Ling, who we barely glimpsed last time, and Henry, teenage songwriter extraordinaire. As a frightening number of New Yorkers succumb to a mysterious sleeping sickness, Ling and Henry spend every night in the ghostly dream of a subway station that transports them to their heart’s desires--and that may prove key in saving sleepers and dreamers alike from a terrible fate.
Meanwhile, Evie fosters a career in radio even as she suffers from PTSD in the wake of everything that happened with Naughty John; Sam searches for leads on Project Buffalo and the truth behind his mother’s disappearance; Jericho and Mabel grow closer as they mount an exhibit they hope will save the Museum of the Creepy Crawlies from foreclosure; Memphis wrestles with his newly-regained healing abilities; and Theta tries to learn more about her own powers without revealing them to her friends. Some of the cast gets significantly less page time, but Bray gives us enough forward momentum with everyone that I don’t doubt they’ll resurface in a big way in future books.
When I first read THE DIVINERS, I felt like Libba Bray had written it just for me. It had heaps of my favourite things: ghosts, magic, dreams, intense friendships, sinister houses (and apartment buildings), a museum, an unlikely romance, and all the best bits of the 1920s without any denial of the decade’s darker aspects. I drank it in.
And y’know, it’s like she’s dialed everything up to eleven with LAIR OF DREAMS. The sequel brims with all the same wondrous stuff as THE DIVINERS, with an added emphasis on dreams, another lovely friendship, more queer folks, more POC, more awesome character interactions, more intrigue, and a legitimately viable love triangle.
Thank you, Libba Bray. Thank you.
Why? She’d rather not get into it, seeing as how it’s horribly painful, but she supposes she really should. You need to hang her, but first you’d better understand why.
CHIME [Amazon | The Book Depository | Scribd Audio] begins in the early 20th century, presumably before 1914 because nobody mentions the war. Briony is a young witch who lives in Swampsea with her parson father, her neuroatypical twin sister, Rose, and their new lodger, Eldric, whose father has decided it’d be best if his son lives with religious folk following his expulsion from university. Briony used to have a beloved stepmother, too, but she died a few months ago. The coroner ruled it suicide, but Briony is certain Stepmother was murdered.
Not that she can talk about it with anyone. Briony’s life is built of secrets. The secret of Stepmother’s death; of the terrible thing Briony did to Rose; of her relationship with the Old Ones who dwell in the swamp; of her past as a Wolf Girl; of her inability to be a real person, or to love anyone at all.
Briony isn’t a girl. Not really. She’s a witch and a monster and the cause of all her family’s woes.
Except there’s a dramatic difference between what Briony tells us about herself and what we observe in her. Part of it’s a bit of a cheat when you experience the audio instead of the prose edition, though. Had I, a first time prose reader, been charged with imagining Briony’s voice, I’d have taken her early declarations of inhumanity and used them to cast her as a flat speaker; someone who relates the truth without ever fully feeling it. I’m sure my mental delivery would’ve soon shifted in response to other textual clues, but the audiobook delivered a rather different experience. Susan Duerden’s impassioned performance immediately told me that Briony is not only an unreliable narrator (something I’d have assumed anyways, given my well-documented distrust for first person narrators), but also a possessed of deep emotional reserves.
It’s a hell of an auditory hook; a girl who claims to feel nothing, but whose voice tells us she feels everything.
So gross, more like. That terrible image fixed firmly in mind, I didn’t even check to see what the book was about.
The longer BONE GAP was out in the world, though, the more positive buzz I heard. People loved it. Friends loved it. Maybe it was worth looking into after all.
I tamped down my concerns over the name (which, for the record, still nauseates me) and investigated my options. My library's holds list was long, but Scribd had the audio so I downloaded it and started listening.
And, um, I didn’t like it.
I recognized the beauty of the prose, but the story just wouldn’t click for me. It simultaneously gave me too much and too little. Laura Ruby begins BONE GAP right in the middle, well after the inciting incident has occurred. We know Finn has lost Roza, a girl for whom he harbours deep feelings. We know he lives in Bone Gap, a town where everyone is steeped in everyone else’s business. And from there, we’re expected to piece everything together based on a few spare details.
The weird thing is, this is my favourite sort of setup. Hell, it's why I love fiction. Of course you begin in the middle. Of course you trust the reader to keep up. Nobody wants every element of a story handed to them on a platter. Reading is no fun when you’re unable to discover anything for yourself.
In this case, though, I wanted considerably more than what Ruby gave me. I felt I lacked the narrative tools I needed to make sense of the relationships on the page (or in my ears; same diff). Ruby asked me to know a lot of things I had no way of knowing, without enough incluing1 to help me figure out the shape of the story.
I might well have bailed if so many of my friends weren’t over the moon about BONE GAP, or if I’d been reading it in print. Unsatisfying audiobooks usually get more of a buffer before I ditch ‘em simply because I’m trapped with them. I rarely keep more than one or two audios on my iPod at any given time, and I do much of my listening while I’m bumming around out in the great, wide world without access to wifi. I can’t easily switch to another audiobook if my current listen ain’t doing it for me, so I stick with it longer than I might otherwise have done so.
That’s how it went down with BONE GAP. I kept on listening because I was in the midst of a long-ass walk with nothing better to do.
And you know what? Somewhere around a third of the way in, the book stopped being a chore and began being awesome.
HIDDEN HUNTRESS, out today (unless you're reading this in the future), is the sequel to STOLEN SONGBIRD, a book I loved and adored and encouraged everyone of my acquaintance to read. I’ll have to adopt the same tack with this worthy follow-up, because Danielle L. Jensen’s emotional resonance game is strong, strong, strong.
I want y'all to have books like this in your life.
HIDDEN HUNTRESS picks up three months after STOLEN SONGBIRD ends. Cécile is determined to find and kill Anushka, the witch whose curse keeps the trolls imprisoned, and her search becomes all the more frantic when King Thibault extracts a binding promise from her. Meanwhile, Tristan deals with the fallout from the choices he made at the end of the previous book, with plenty of soul-searching all around.
I recognize it’s possible you didn’t heed my advice to rush out and buy STOLEN SONGBIRD, so let's begin with a brief primer. The trolls I'm about to discuss have almost nothing in common with the grotty, naked, big-haired creatures of Norwegian mythology (or the mid-90s Treasure Troll craze). They’re sexy trolls, many of whom have physical disabilities due to inbreeding. They’ve been trapped underground for the last five hundred years, you see, and that’s made it difficult to maintain a large gene pool. They've crossbred with humans, yeah, but that's done little to diversify their population as the law mandates that all halfbloods are slaves no matter who their parents are. This rigid structure holds everyone static.
Many of the people in charge of Trollus are Not Very Nice (to put it mildly), but fear not! The protagonists aim to change things, as protagonists have done since time immemorial, and that’s where we find them at the start of HIDDEN HUNTRESS. Cécile wants to break the troll-trapping curse (or does she?); Tristan aims to give trolls of all bloodlines better rights (but at what cost?).
That’s more or less what you need to know going in. If you’re after a more detailed take on the series’ premise, I’ll direct you to my review of STOLEN SONGBIRD.
And now for the review proper.
Turns out, all my top recs are assassin-oriented. Like, guess what profession Fitz trains for in Robin Hobb’s ASSASSIN’S APPRENTICE! (Go on. You’ll never get it.) The Will, the sorta-kinda villain of Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’s SAGA, calls himself a freelancer, but dude, he’s been paid the big bucks to put an end to Our Heroes, and we all know what category that puts him in. Mildmay, co-narrator of Sarah Monette’s MELUSINE, dodges his assassin roots but can’t escape them entirely. Jos, protagonist of Karin Lowachee’s WARCHILD, doesn’t technically kill people for money (except for the whole soldier thing), but he’s trained as an assassin-priest so he gets the title free and clear.
And so on and so forth. Assassins, they follow me around.
Soon as I noticed this trend, I challenged myself to make a recs list without a single assassin on it. No assassin protagonists; no assassin antagonists; no secondary characters who occasionally assassinate people. No assassins lurking the background doing nothing of any great importance, even.
No assassins. None.
I opened my LibraryThing account and scrolled through my top-rated books in search of qualifying titles. A wealth of possibilities spread themselves before me. I could rec THE DREAM THIEVES by Maggie Stiefvater--except no, wait, the Grey Man is a hit man. Damn. Michelle West’s fabulous Averalaan novels were a clear choice until I remembered they’re packed with demonic assassins. I can’t immediately recall any assassins in THE SNOW QUEEN or THE SUMMER QUEEN by Joan D. Vinge, but neither can I swear to their absence given how that world works. The same is true of Kristin Cashore’s BITTERBLUE. And some of my other less frequently pushed top picks--A GAME FOR SWALLOWS by Zeina Abirached, THE MAGICIANS AND MRS QUENT by Galen Beckett, and THE SIREN by Tiffany Reisz--contain sneaky-ass, hidden assassins.
Even SKIP BEAT, my comic-du-jour, has an on-screen assassin tucked away in one of its storylines.
The hell, self? Why you gotta fixate on books about contract killers?
For that matter, why you gotta sneak a ton of assassin-laden recs into what is supposed to be an assassin-free recs list?
Um.
Moving on, I present to you five books I’m 98% sure are assassin-free, and which I loved and adored and think you should read:
SHADOW SCALE is the sequel to SERAPHINA, Rachel Hartman’s justly lauded debut and the subject of last Thursday’s review. It's also been on my must-read-this-oh-god-oh-god list since the very moment I finished SERAPHINA. I could not wait to devour it.
Wait I did, though, through three full years. A long stretch indeed--but my dears, it was so worth it.
SHADOW SCALE begins about three months after SERAPHINA ends and follows our intrepid hero--that would be Seraphina--on a quest to unite the world’s half-dragons (hereafter, ityasaari) and keep the nation of Goredd from becoming entangled in the draconic civil war that rages to the north. It's a lengthy, difficult task to begin with, and it only grows more perilous when a woman from Seraphina's past sets out to draw the ityasaari into her own twisted schemes.
The resulting story is glorious, painful, and utterly wallowsome. Hartman has crafted the sort of world you want to linger in and populated it with characters you can't help but year to spend time with. I'd happily read nearly anything about Seraphina and her friends (and enemies), and I'd be quite content to explore the Southlands right down to the bedrock.
SERAPHINA originally made it onto my must-read-oh-god-oh-god list thanks to AMY UNBOUNDED, the self-published comic we discussed on Tuesday. When I learned the comic's creator, Rachel Hartman, was at work on a novel, I was a happy girl indeed. When I learned said novel was set in the same world as the comic, my excitement grew exponentially.
The happy dance may or may not have been involved. I ain’t saying, but you can draw your own conclusions.
Alas, traditional publishing is a slow beast, so it was four years before I at last got my hands on a DRC (digital review copy) of this most coveted novel. And y'all? It was more than worth the wait. I loved it so much that I proceeded to talk it up to everyone. I spent months upon months doing this prior to the book's official release date, and I ain't stopped since.
You need SERAPHINA in your life.
If you need to justify your need with reasons and stuff, read on.
Some of these are probably wishful thinking, and I'm sure I've forgotten a few frightfully important titles, but I figured I might as well give y'all a snapshot of what I'm looking forward to reading as soon as ever I can.
None of the post-August releases have cover art yet, so I've used author photos to represent those books. All such images were pulled from the authors' websites, Wikipedia, publishers' websites, or Goodreads.
This sequel to SERAPHINA was perhaps my most anticipated book of 2014--until it got bumped back a year. Still, the wait is nearly over! Hurray!
I'm so excited about the book that I'm tempted to actually ask for a review copy, but I'm also way too shy/anxiety-ridden to cold-email a PR rep. Since it never showed up on NetGalley (sadness), I guess it's the library for me.
A month or two back, several of us took to Twitter to squee and speculate about Maggie Stiefvater's Raven Cycle (THE RAVEN BOYS, THE DREAM THIEVES, and the soon-to-be-released BLUE LILY, LILY BLUE). We had such a good time that we decided to take our conversation elsewhere so's we could delve a little deeper into the subject and avoid spoiling any onlookers.
Which is to say, I'm over at Lady Business today, discussing the series with Aarti, Ana, Jenny, and Teresa. We cover material from the first two books, with plenty of speculation as to what we'd like to see in BLUE LILY, LILY BLUE and the as-yet untitled final book. Spoilers abound, as do FEELS.
If you've enjoyed the Raven Cycle, please join us.
I have a thing for green stuff, glowy things, and caves. Give me all three and I am a happy girl indeed.
Give me an awesome story beneath an awesome cover and my happiness increases exponentially, as it did within the first few pages of STOLEN SONGBIRD. This book is every bit as wonderful as the trappings that drew me to it in the first place.
17-year-old Cécile looks forward to a career as a singer in the big city. But the day before she’s set to depart, she’s kidnapped and sold to the trolls who secretly dwell beneath the nearby mountains.
Five hundred years ago, the city of Trollus was buried by a magical catastrophe, its otherworldly inhabitants cursed to remain forever within its boundaries. A recent prophecy says the curse can finally be broken--but only if a human girl of Cécile’s exact description is bonded to the crown prince of the trolls.
Neither Cécile nor the troll prince, Tristan, is terribly happy about this development. But the better Cécile comes to know the trolls, the more sympathy she feels for their impossible situation. Drawn to her prickly husband and his quest to end the inequalities that plague trollish society, Cécile begins to wonder if a life below the mountain might be just as good as what she's left behind.
STOLEN SONGBIRD, like so many other awesome books, requires two reviews.
The Short, Gushy, Ungrammatical Version:
OMG YOU GUYS THIS BOOK IS SO AWESOME I mean it has alllll my favourite things like okay there’s a musically inclined protagonist and music is the BEST and also pretty well the whole thing takes place underground and I have a TOTAL THING for underground settings and also there are sexy monsters and lots of political intrigue and class issues and hey I haven’t even mentioned that the whole thing has an eighteenth century French feel and YOU GUYS EIGHTEENTH CENTURY FRANCE IS MY FAVOURITEST OF FAVOURITES oh and there’s dark magic too which is always fun who doesn’t love dark magic amirite and the worldbuilding is so tasty you just want to eat it up and also Jensen provides actual answers for the sorts of things that bug the hell out of me and many writers just expect you to overlook which is great AND HOW HAVE I NOT MENTIONED THE ROMANCE YET I am the world’s worst sucker for arranged marriages that begin with lots of trepidation but end with affection and respect and maybe some hardcore sexual tension too it is so great you guys I want you to read it right away go buy it go buy it go buy it.
You know?
I’m tempted to leave it right there, because that’s basically what you need to know about THE DREAM THIEVES. It’s a rich, powerful story that occasionally knocks you to the floor and kicks you in the kidney.
I suppose you want a few more details, though, so let’s go.
THE DREAM THIEVES is the sequel to THE RAVEN BOYS, which you may recall I loved straight from the first word to the last. I must confess, I didn’t feel quite the same about this second offering; it took me, like, three pages to fall in love with it. From thereon out, though, it is pure, shimmering gold.
