Review: Winter Oranges by Marie Sexton

Thank goodness for people who gush about books on Twitter, and for everyone who RTs them. A couple months back, I witnessed a storm of enthusiasm for Marie Sexton's WINTER ORANGES [Amazon | The Book Depository | Scribd] and knew I had to read it.

Because y'all, this book is awesome right from the premise on up. Jason used to be a child star/teen hearthrob in the JTT mold, but these days he’s muddling along through an assortment of horror sequels and one-off TV guest spots. Despite this decline in his fortunes, he’s been the tabloids’ favourite mark ever since they caught him making out with his best friend Dylan a year back. Ugh. Desperate for some privacy and a little time to reevaluate his life, Jason buys a furnished house in a small Idaho town and decides to hole up there until at least New Year's.

His plans change somewhat when he discovers his new possessions include a cursed snow globe with a Civil-War-Era farmer attached. Ben hasn’t talked to anyone since his sister bound him to the snow globe a hundred and fifty years ago to prevent him from joining the army, and he’s beyond thrilled someone can actually see him. Jason is initially less thrilled to have an incorporeal person living above his garage, but once he accepts Ben is a) not a paparazzo on a mission and b) real, the two of them quickly become friends, and eventually boyfriends.

Which is super awkward because to outsiders, from the local sheriff to a deeply concerned Dylan to the photographers who eventually track Jason down, it looks like Jason’s holding long, involved conversations with himself.

Review: The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater

I attempted to review the first three books of the Raven Cycle, with varying degrees of success, so I figure I ought to make an effort with the finale as well. Preserve some continuity and all that.

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.

Review: Anna Dressed In Blood by Kendare Blake

Y’all know the Basic Buffy Plot (hereafter BBP). Destined monster hunter arrives somewhere new, befriends local youths, turns them into allies, and ends up falling in love with one (or more) individuals their job demands they treat as enemies. It worked beautifully for Buffy, but it’s everywhere now and I no longer find it fresh enough for my tastes.

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.

Review: Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

A couple years back, Rainbow Rowell wrote a contemporary YA novel called FANGIRL. I talked about it at great length because I loved it deep in my soul, and I’m bringing it up again now because CARRY ON has a vital connection to that earlier work. Cath, FANGIRL’s protagonist, is a popular fanfic writer hard at work on CARRY ON, SIMON, her own conclusion to the bestselling Simon Snow series. Said series follows a young wizard through his eight years of schooling, in which he faces off against both a dark force called the Insidious Humdrum and his own possibly vampiric roommate, Baz.

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.

Review: The Vengeful Half by Jaclyn Dolamore

Review copy provided by the author via NetGalley. In the interests of full disclosure, be aware I beta read an early version of this book.

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.

Review: Commercial Suicide by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie et al

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

COMMERCIAL SUICIDE [Amazon | The Book Depository | comiXology] is the third volume of THE WICKED + THE DIVINE. You’ll enjoy it so much more if you’ve read the first two volumes that I’ll strongly urge the newcomers you to take a step back and start with THE FAUST ACT and FANDEMONIUM before you even consider reading this one. Comics are naturally structured so you can get something out of a single issue, if that's all you've got on hand, but THE WICKED + THE DIVINE is a puzzle series from top to toe. It encourages readers to question the premise on every level as they assemble the wider picture for themselves. That’s a tough trick to perform if you don’t have all the pieces in front of you.

While the text gives us enough clues that we can easily engage in rampant speculation and draw some damned good conclusions, concrete confirmation is slow in coming. Even the definite answers to the questions we’ve been asking for multiple issues bring a slew of new questions along with them, giving the reader another reason to want to view the whole thing in its entirety. THE WICKED + THE DIVINE is fascinating and interactive; flashy and entertaining on the surface, but with a deeper core for those who choose to explore it.

Not unlike fandom itself. Hmmmm.

Review: Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin

Long, long ago, someone told me I had to read WINTER’S TALE [Amazon | The Book Depository].

I know this not because I can remember it happening--as far as I can recall, I’d never even heard of the book until they adapted it into a movie--but because it’s impossible that no one, over the entire course of my life, ordered me to acquire this glorious, wallowsome, perfect-for-me book.

WINTER’S TALE and I are the same age. That’s a lot of years during which someone could’ve recced it, so it must have happened and it’s my fault for forgetting.

Then again, it’s possible everyone knew about this book and declined to bring it up because they hated it. It is very hateable, friends. Like, it’s one of those novels where you’re either gonna be over the fucking moon about it, or you’re gonna finish it solely so you can slag it off to everyone in sight. If there’s an in-between, it’s of the “abandoned it in disgust after a hundred pages of weird-ass nothing” variety.

Because WINTER’S TALE is really fucking weird. And while it was perfect for me, it might not be perfect for you.

Review: Half Bad and Half Wild by Sally Green

I finished Sally Green’s HALF BAD and said, “Wow. That was excellent. I’m gonna have to write about it right away.”

But my dears, I am not always the speediest at transcribing the thoughts that whirl through my head. Before I’d done so much as draft a rough outline, I’d also finished the sequel, HALF WILD, and the books were hopelessly tangled together in my mind.

Therefore, we shall discuss the two in a single space, trying to stay clear of spoilers but with, perhaps, the occasional implication. I don’t think anything I’m about to discuss will damage your reading experience, but I do say a fair bit about why Nathan and his world fascinate me, so proceed at your own risk.

I knew very little about these books before I downloaded the audio of HALF BAD from Scribd. I'd overheard an enthusiastic Twitter conversation or two, but I mostly took note because someone on my Instagram feed received swag. And I kind of suck at reading words from left to right (as we do in English, or so Jenny once informed me¹), so I thought it was called BAD HALF for quite a while there. Oops.

Anyways, all I knew was there were witches, maybe, who probably existed in a contemporary setting. No one in my circle reached out to recommend it to me specifically, from which I deduce my particular bookish friends either haven’t read it yet, didn't like it, or didn't think I'd like it.

(It must be one of the first two, because how could you know me and not think I'd love this? I mean, really?)

I went in dark, and now I want to rush around informing everyone, from my particular bookish friends to random people on the street, that I am excited as all hell about these books and really think they should read them.

Really.

But I guess y'all need reasons, so let's start with some summary and move along to the meat of the thing.

Review: Bone Gap by Laura Ruby

The me of four months ago wasn’t even sort of interested in BONE GAP. In fact, I was actively disinterested in it on account of the title. It put me in mind of the thigh gap, that thing all women are meant to strive for and so few people are genetically capable of achieving, only dialed up to eleven. Don’t just ensure your thighs are discrete entities with at least two inches between ‘em; peel away the flesh and leave nothing but bones. So skinny. So perf.

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.

Review: The Faust Act by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie

You know the nice thing about reading lots and lots and lots of superhero comics? They introduce you to lots and lots and lots of creators, many of whom also produce non-superheroic books in a variety of genres.

Is it a coincidence that so many of these non-superheroic books are published by Image? Probably not. Image has made a name for themselves as the place for creator-owned comics; that is, for comics where the writers and artists own the characters and the universe outright, eliminating many creative stumbling blocks.

Y’all know I love superheroes comics, but sometimes it’s just nice to read something self-contained, where truly crazy shit can happen without the need to coordinate the event across multiple books written and drawn by fifteen different people.

Plus, creator-owned comics tend to feature nudity and profanity, because realism.

(What, like you’re not up for the occasional profane nude?)

Gillen and McKelvie's YOUNG AVENGERS gave me my latest push to explore the great, wide world of creator-owned books. I got off to a rocky start with the creators' vision of the young superhero team, but they quickly hooked me but good¹. I needed to read more of their work, so I turned to their current ongoing series: THE WICKED + THE DIVINE.

The premise is as follows: every 90 years, twelve gods possess twelve humans. For the next two years, they make a huge splash as pop stars and soak up all the worship. After that, they die.

17-year-old Laura is a devout worshipper (except not of Tara) (fucking Tara). She goes to as many gigs as she possibly can, and when you’re willing to ditch school, that’s quite a lot.

Much to Laura’s delight, her devotion draws Lucifer’s attention. Laura is more than happy to start rushing around on Luci’s business, even before Luci asks her to, because hey! A god noticed her! When Luci is framed (?) for murder, Laura takes it upon herself to find the real culprit and clear her god’s name. To this end, she teams up with Cassandra, a journalist/academic/sceptic who studies the gods’ return, and descends into the dark underbelly of divinity.

And it's awesome.

Review: Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater

So, Jenny was all, “When are you going to write about BLUE LILY, LILY BLUE???” And I was like, “I dunno, dude. I just haven’t felt like writing about books lately.”

I blame winter. Winter sucks the joy out of everything.

Not out of BLUE LILY, LILY BLUE, though. BLUE LILY, LILY BLUE gave me much joy and a fair measure of heartache, and I really do want to share that experience with y’all. I just... don’t have a review in me.

I do have some generalized rambling in me, though, so this is me making a list of stuff I thought about while I devoured the book. Said book is the third in a series and so arbitrarily exempt from the need for a summary, but if you’re new to the Raven Cycle and want to know what the whole thing is about, I suggest you peruse my (sort of a proper) review of THE RAVEN BOYS.

Okay. List.

Conversation: The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater

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.

Review: The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

As is so often the case with the books I most love, THE MAGICIAN'S LAND demands two reviews.

The Short, Gushy, Ungrammatical Version:

OMG BEST BOOK OF 2014 RIGHT HERE there's no point in beating around the bush it is THE BEST I loved it SO MUCH it was EVERYTHING I COULD EVER POSSIBLY HAVE WANTED I mean there's a magical heist and FUCKING ASMODEUS and also FILLORY and OMG WE GET ELIOT'S POV and ALSO JANET's and I AM INCAPABLE OF THINKING ABOUT THIS BOOK IN ANYTHING OTHER THAN CAPSLOCK BUT I'LL TRY STARTING now also there are all these great magical workings that tie into the first two books thematically and we see Quention becoming more truly himself and OMG I LOVE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT SO MUCH sorry those caps just slipped out and the sheer amount of power in Lev Grossman's prose you guys omg I kept giggling and gasping and swearing at the book because when I really love things I swear at them and also I kept my hand clamped over my mouth a lot which is what I do when I'm seriously worried about fictional characters and I kind of don't even want to talk about this book because it was so perfect but I also want to say everything about it everythingeverythingeverything because IT WAS SO PERFECT if you loved the first two books you need to read it right away why haven't you done that yet get on that right now please and thanks.

Review Rerun: The Magician King by Lev Grossman

A slightly different version of this review originally appeared on my old blog, Stella Matutina.

You recall how this is the sequel to THE MAGICIANS (which you need to at least try to read, please and thanks, because it's frickin' amazing)? I'm afraid I can't properly discuss it without one rather large spoiler for the previous book. It's a mostly guessable spoiler, since the very fact that the series keeps on going kind of gives the game away, but it does deal with something Grossman leaves up in the air until the very last line of THE MAGICIANS.

So, yeah. Keep that in mind.

Now we have that out of the way:

THE MAGICIAN KING picks up about two years after the end of THE MAGICIANS. Quentin, Eliot, Janet, and Julia have emigrated to Fillory, where they’ve taken up their kingly and queenly mantles. Everything’s going swimmingly... except Quentin's kind of bored with ruling a magical utopia, and worried about Julia to boot. Still, he accepts that his chance for heroism has passed him by when he rejects the possibility of an epic quest in favour of a much tamer tax collecting mission to a far-flung island.

Except one things leads to another, as things tend to do, and the "tame" mission becomes a frantic quest to return to Fillory after a spot of bother with a magic key sends Quentin and Julia back to the real world.

Review Rerun: The Magicians by Lev Grossman

A slightly different version of this review originally appeared on my old blog, Stella Matutina. I've updated it to reflect my current feelings for the book, which I reread earlier this month.

Quentin Coldwater nurtures a powerful intellect, an enduring obsession with the magical land of Fillory, and a strong desire for something more. He gets his wish when an admissions interview for Princeton instead becomes an entrance exam at Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy. At Brakebills, Quentin finds a new purpose in the magic he's always longed to wield, but discovers it has very little in common with the version he knows from the Fillory books.

And the same is true of supposedly-fictional Fillory itself.

Part of me is desperate to write about THE MAGICIANS and part of me would really rather not. It's the sort of book you want to share with everyone and also keep more or less for yourself. Obviously, I've opted for Option Number One, but I'm still not entirely sure I've made the right choice.

And so I shall ramble.

Before we get any further in, let me assure you I loved the hell out of it both times I read it. It's fucking awesome My reticence springs not from indifference but from the highly personal nature of my love. When you get right down to it, I loved THE MAGICIANS because I’m me, and because I’ve spent time considering certain things and feeling certain things, and I’m not sure I want to analyze all that. I just want to feel it.

Review: The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater

Maggie Stiefvater doesn't play fair. You’re reading along, composed as can be, when she throws out a small detail--one line, perfectly phrased--and all of a sudden you’re on your metaphorical back, staring at the sky and blinking away tears as you try to recover from the punch she just landed on your jaw.

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.

Television In 2013, Part IV - Current Viewing

We’ve spent the last three weeks talking about my favourite new-to-me shows of 2013. Now let’s look at the stuff I watch on a weekly basis.

Or, well, a semi-weekly basis. Sometimes even a monthly basis. I added a lot of shows to my roster late last year; so many that I now watch more TV as it airs than I have ever watched in my entire life.

I guess this is what happens when you catch up on every current show you started watching on DVD even as people keep recommending stuff to you.

I’ll try to break them down for you as briefly as I can, omitting ELEMENTARY and SUPERNATURAL because I’ve already discussed them elsewhere. I’ll also limit myself to shows that aired new episodes between September and December; so, nothing that wrapped up early in the year, like GAME OF THRONES or TRUE BLOOD, and nothing that’s just begun, like DOWNTON ABBEY or BITTEN.

Review: The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

I often feel left out of the readerly loop. Yes, I read a lot, but I seem to read differently from everyone else. For example, I often hear others say they’ll refuse--absolutely refuse--to continue a book that doesn’t entrance them from the very beginning. "It had damned well better hook me from the first line," a friend once told me. "Otherwise, I'm out."

If I read this way, I’d never finish anything. In my entire life, I’ve found exactly eight books that hooked me from the first word and managed to keep me hooked straight through to the end¹. The rest of them took anywhere from twenty to two hundred and fifty pages to really pull me in².

I’m a suspicious reader, to put it mildly. I don’t give my love lightly. Hell, I don’t even fully commit to sequels right off the bat, just in case the quality’s slid downhill between volumes.

The good news, though, is that my wee First Word Love list contained only seven books before I read (or, rather, listened to) THE RAVEN BOYS. Hurray for new additions!

Television in 2013, Part II - Supernatural

Every once in a while, a TV show affects me so deeply that it becomes an integral part of my life. Hell, it takes over my life until I’ve finished it. All my spare time goes to watching it, thinking about the characters, gnashing my teeth over recent plot developments, and wondering where the story might go from here.

While I love TV an awful lot, this sort of all-out immersion doesn’t happen too often. I live in keen anticipation of the next show that’ll sweep me off my feet.

At the start of 2013, it’d been a couple of years since I found one. I’d watched some great stuff, yeah, but nothing I loved anything like as much as I love VERONICA MARS, the last series that totally floored me. Two particular shows called to me, though. A few friends had recommended them, and they sounded totally up my alley.

So of course, neither one was readily available, given my resources. Bummer.

Then, last spring, the stars fell into place. Both shows came within my grasp. And grasp them I did, with the expected results.

I intended to cover them both in a single post, but things got, um, lengthy. Let’s talk about SUPERNATURAL this week, with my thoughts on AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER coming your computer screen next Thursday.

I’ll warn you: this is gonna be long and tangential and gushy. There’s liable to be gifs, too, starting with a flashing one right after the cut.