Crown of Embers

Posted on November 6, 2012 by Katy K.

I read this depressing but accurate post yesterday morning at Teen Librarian Toolbox… This book, mentioned there, is one of the best recent teen series for gender-busting teen girls. She was dismayed at how few others have come out recently, so I’ve included a list at the end of my favorites… not necessarily romance-free, but certainly books where the women are strong and strong-minded, rather than beautiful, passive and tractable.

Crown of EmbersThe Crown of Embers. Fire and Thorn Trilogy Book 2. by Rae Carson.

In the first book, Queen Elisa successfully drove off the invading Invierno army, was able to use the power of the Godstone in her navel, fell in love and watched her love be killed in front of her, and made friends with her husband and watched him die slowly. Now she is the 17-year-old queen by marriage of an entire kingdom, one still reeling from the destruction of the war. She may be the queen who saved the kingdom, but few people are confident that she has the strength and wisdom to rule the country going forward. There are numerous attempts on her life in the first couple of chapters alone, and the council urges her to marry or pick a regent for herself to allay the fears of the people. One of these attacks occurs in the crypt where her husband is buried, despite the presence of a loyal guard outside the door. His execution in her name but without her knowledge before she’s even able to get out of bed opens her eyes to the fact that at least some of her council members are actively working against her. There are hordes of suitors showering her with lavish gifts, but she finds herself falling for Lord Hector, the captain of her guard. When Elisa learns that there is an Invierno working inside the palace, she, Lord Hector, and her guardian Ximena plan to leave the city until things cool down somewhat. Elisa forms an alliance with the sweet if ultimately unmarriageable Lord Tristan, as well as the outcast Invierno and underground leader Storm, whom she likes to deal with because his hatred of her is refreshingly open. Lord Tristan will be her cover and Storm her guide as she tries to find the narrow Gate of Life the scriptures talk about, which the Inviernos believe to be an actual location.

While the action is steady, there’s also a lot of personal growth as Elisa struggles with issues like how to use her Godstone, the appropriate use of power and role of a Queen, and how to balance the roles that she and Hector have always had to each other with the very different one that romance would require. She’s still overweight, and the world is such that she finds the blond hair and pale eyes of the Invierno Storm unsettling, which I find wonderfully refreshing. She’s a devout believer in her faith, with the tangible proof of God’s existence the living Godstone in her navel, but she learns more and more that she must use her mind more than its vague guidance. The only part that I found unbelievable (spoiler alert here) is that her captain of guard would be considered a remotely good match for her sister, the heir to a throne, if he isn’t considered good enough for Elisa and when he is most definitely needed to ensure her safety. The unlikelihood of this pulled me right out of the story to ponder it. As I couldn’t figure out much better what would have accomplished the author’s purposes, though, and I’m not her editor, we’ll have to leave it. I went on to enjoy the story, which wraps up the current storyline in some pleasantly surprising ways and opens up several more cans of worms in readiness for the final book.

Recent and favorite strong girl fantasy books for teens and older elementary:
Anything by Robin McKinley – The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown would be particularly appropriate.
The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia Wrede
The Wolves of Mercy Falls series by Maggie Stiefvater
Seraphina by Rachel Hartmann
Graceling and others by Kristin Cashore
Peaceweaver by Rebecca Barnhouse
Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier

I’m sure there’s more, but that feels like a good start. What are your favorites?

Edited to add: WordPress tells me this is my 701st post.

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Why I Vote

Posted on November 2, 2012 by Katy K.


It’s voting time again.

Colleen at Chasing Ray and others are asking litbloggers to say why they vote. You can take a look to see the posts that are already up.

I blogged about this in 2008, as well. Going to vote while in labor with my son and suffering from undiagnosed appendicitis was the most dramatic story I had, at least until I had a daughter needed a liver transplant before her first birthday. But that isn’t really a why.

I vote for noble reasons: because people have worked and suffered over centuries for the right to vote. I vote for the people around the world who still risk death to vote. I vote because even if democracy isn’t perfect, it’s the best thing we’ve hit on so far, and a democracy where people don’t vote, isn’t. I vote so that my kids can see me take an active role in our government and believe that one person can make a difference.

And I vote for more petty reasons: I vote for the right to complain to whoever wins afterwards, whether or not I voted for them, and because I don’t want my next-door-neighbors, with their odious signs and bumper stickers, to have the last word on the matter. I vote so that I can remind people at the library where I work to vote, just by wearing my “I voted” sticker.

I’ve gone through Vote411 and local papers, and put together my list. My son, who turns eight today, will be at school when I go to vote on Tuesday, but I’ll bring my daughter’s tricycle so she can zoom around the school gym that’s my polling station while I’m waiting in line and filling out the ballot.

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The Jewel of the Kalderash

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Katy K.

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Here is where I notice that my being bothered by language discrepancies is selective… Rutkoski also fails to use proper feminine endings on last names, but since her last names sounded more Latin than Czech to me to start with, it didn’t bother me.  Petra really should be Petra Kronosova if her father’s last name is Kronos. 

 

The Jewel of the Kalderash by Marie Rutkoski

Our three friends, Petra, Neel and Tomik are all sailing on a gypsy ship when we meet back up with them.  They are traveling to the secret Romany kingdom of Vatra, located off the coast of India, where Petra hopes to learn how to turn her father back from an evil killer Gray Man.  But when they get there, these concerns are quickly overtaken by Neel’s difficulties. It seems that the Romany have a rotating 4-year rulership, and Neel is the bastard son of the current, near-death queen.  Once king, Neel will have the power to help Petra and Tomik – but also be the very young ruler of four competing tribes, many of whom would like to see the crown just rotate to the next tribe.  There are several assassination attempts, and also a lot of upset that Neel’s closest friends are gadje.  While Petra is trying to learn how to control her magic, they receive news from Bohemia that the evil Prince Rodolfo’s brothers, the other potential heirs to the Empire, are mysteriously dying off.  Leaving Neel to fend for himself, Petra, Tomik and of course, Petra’s little spider Astrophil, journey to Austria to try to intercept Prince Rodolfo on his journey to pick up his crown.  In the midst of all this, neither Neel nor Tomik is content to be just friends with Petra anymore, and both are trying to be romantic and win her over.  There were just the barest hints of this in the earlier books, and, inveterate romantic that I am, I was surprised to find that I didn’t like the romance.  I enjoyed the purity of just being friends with multiple people of the opposite gender, without having to bring romance into it.  I was also not sure that I agreed with Petra’s choice at the big climactic moment, though of course I could tell that the story had been building to some kind of choice for a long time.  The ending was, therefore, a little disappointing to me on two levels.  Still, the intrigue and politics from three kingdoms, combined with lots of personal action, and vivid, growing characters was impossible to put down and should definitely be read by fans of the first two books. 

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The Iron Wyrm Affair

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Katy K.

Iron Wyrm AffairThe Iron Wyrm Affair. Bannon and Clare Book 1. by Lilith Saintcrow.
Adult New Books – Main Level – SCI FI SAINTCROW

The Iron Wyrm Affair drops us into the middle of a fight scene in a complex alternate-Victorian steampunk world. I think it was the complexity of this world that made the first couple of chapters feel slow to me, even though it started off with action and never slowed down. Emma Bannon is a top-level sorceress, a Prima, in service to Queen Victrix, current vessel of the ancient spirit Britannia. Emma is talented, beautiful, fashionable, and fiercely intelligent and has fought her way up from the gutter to be the only Prima among several male Primes. (Though she’s fashionable because she wants to be, her jewelry stores power for her and is always chosen carefully as an ensemble.) As our story begins, she’s searching for Archibald Clare, an unlicensed mentath. Here we must learn that a mentath is someone along the order of Sherlock Holmes, more intelligent than your standard-issue genius, who notices details without trying, processing them into patterns, and who will go crazy without enough information to process. Clare, having lost his license, is indeed on the verge of insanity, but Bannon is looking for him because he is the last mentath of any kind to be found in London, the rest having been recently murdered. Bannon’s out to protect Clare, but as long as he’s in her house, he might as well be useful – and all the murdered mentaths are the first pieces of a dark puzzle that leads to a threat against Queen Victrix herself. (Here I confess that I was did double takes the whole book, trying to keep straight that Bannon meant Emma and Clare, Archibald – I kept want Clare to be the woman. Oy.) Bannon is assisted by a single Shield, Mikal, a man with yellow eyes and a dark past, whom Bannon both can’t completely trust and can’t stop being attracted to (but not in a romance-novel, can’t focus on anything else kind of way, and we never see inside his head). As mentaths and sorcerers don’t really work well in close proximity, Bannon hires Ventinelli, an assassin whom Clare rightly immediately pegs as an aristocrat hiding as gutter scum, to act as Clare’s bodyguard. Bannon and Clare set off in opposite directions, she investigating the magical murder of another sorcerer as she was trying to interrogate him, and he to find out the reason there are suddenly no Prussian capacitors on the market, a line of investigation which leads to large clockwork war spiders. The combination of magic and Holmesian mystery is intriguing, the setting brought beautifully to life, the characters interesting. It’s not as funny as Gail Carriger’s Soulless, and deals much more with the dark and seamy side of politics, though with somewhat fewer serious underlying issues than The Iron Duke There are dragons and griffons here, rather than werewolves, vampires, or zombies. It still worked very well as a steampunk vision, and I’d look forward to reading more of Bannon and Clare’s adventures. It’s written for adults, and though the language is a little off-color, there’s nothing here in the way of sex or violence that action-loving teens would find exceptionable.

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Black Heart

Posted on October 27, 2012 by Katy K.

Black HeartBlack Heart by Holly Black. Read by Jesse Eisenberg. This is the final book in the Curse Workers series. Cassel Sharpe is still meeting with the Feds, who are trying to get him to sign up as a permanent part of their program. His mother is hopefully just in hiding, after her botched attempt in Red Glove to seduce the governor and get him to stop anti-curse worker legislation. The love of his life, mob boss heir Lila Zacharov, has officially joined the mob herself and still hates him. When the feds have Cassel doing surveillance training with his older brother, Baron, he uses the time to track Lila. Meanwhile, back at school, his two best friends Sam and have miserably broken up, and Mina Lang, random unacquainted student, comes to him for help saying she’s being blackmailed. While he knows that she’s definitely not telling him the whole truth, he can tell that she is in some kind of bad trouble. And since new Cassel is trying to be good, he agrees to help her anyway. Then, when the Feds come to him with a job using his transformation abilities in exchange for amnesty for his mother, he agrees despite his misgivings. Being Cassel, he can’t just trust them, and his digging shows that he’s right not to. In all of the situations – his fraught relationships with his family members and Lila, his poor attempts at normal relationships with his school friends, and the problems with Mina and the Feds – he’s dealing with trying to find a difficult balance between what will work and what he considers ethical. There’s no margin of error, and people will end up dead at the worst and emotionally devastated at best. It’s deliciously noir, Cassel’s brief moments of happiness countered with almost immediate downturns, and kept from being unbearable by Cassel’s sarcastic humor. There’s also a nice character arc for Cassel as he realizes just how gray the world is.

I was very interested reading this book to see how Black would handle the essential conflict between the dark noir storyline and the general need for a teen book to have a happy ending, and was satisfied with the conclusion. It was also interesting drawing parallels between Black Heart and the other dark teen books I was reading at the same time, Maggie Stiefvater’s Forever and Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games. On the subject of romantic relationships: Cassel talks to the reader about how he has seen relationships with one party or the other in control, but while he thinks that an equal relationship might be possible, he’s never seen one. For Sam and Grace in Forever, equality in relationship and counting on the strengths of the other is what it’s all about. The world around them is dark and the path to being together uncertain, but the relationship when they’re together is one anyone could aspire to. And while Collins plays up the love triangle in The Hunger Games and Katniss and Peeta have the potential for a very solid relationship, it’s pretty clear that Katniss is being thrust into this whole romantic relationship thing a couple of years before she’s really ready. On families of origin, by contrast, Cassel has it marginally better than anyone in Stiefvater’s books – at least he knows that his family will always do what they think is in his best interest, even if they’re wrong, while active neglect is the best that any of the Mercy Falls teens can hope for. Katniss, of course, while she’s connected to her family, is really the adult of the family for most of the series. Note on the subject of romance that there is one scene of actual sex in Black Heart, though it’s only explicit in the use of protection. And, as previously mentioned, immediately followed by terrible events. Also, random note, they will never be able to use smart phones in Cassel’s universe, because they couldn’t use the touch screens with their gloves on. I’m pretty sure those new touch-sensitive gloves you can get now here would send their curses through them as well. Jesse Eisenberg did a competent job with the narration. He sounded a little young to me, where I’d always thought of Cassel as pretty sophisticated, but maybe it is fine for his voice to reflect his actual age. While I’m sorry to see the last of Cassel, I highly recommend this series if you’re in the mood for dark, modern magic.

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Victricia Malicia, Book-Loving Buccaneer

Posted on October 24, 2012 by Katy K.

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Victricia Malicia, Book-Loving Buccaneer. Written by Carrie Clickard.  Illustrated by Mark Meyers. 

Victricia Malicia is a young pirate girl whose family members have all been pirates for generations.  Born on ship and taught pirate ways, everyone expects her to grow up to be a pirate.  But Victricia Malicia loves books and dry land.  Can she find a new life for herself and still keep the respect of her pirate parents and peers?  Only if she can show them that she’s still capable on board ship and find a way for her life on land to be relevant to them.  It’s just a little bit odd in concept, as the book looks like it’s meant for young pirate fans, who might wonder why Victricia would want to give up life as a pirate.  It’s still a funny story told in bouncy rhyme with bright, cartoony acrylic illustrations that will charm preschoolers and up. 

 

Other recent, fun picture books for pirate fans:

The Pirates Next Door: Starring the Jolley-Rogers by Jonny Duddle

 Pirate Boy by Eve Bunting

Charlotte Jane Battles Bedtime by Myra Wolfe

A Pirate’s Guide to First Grade by James Preller. 

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The Secret Chicken Society

Posted on October 23, 2012 by Katy K.

Thanks to fabulous librarian Ms. S. for this recommendation! Walking in from the school parking lot today, I was the only mother in a group of four who doesn’t own chickens. My boy wants them, too, after reading this book.

Secret Chicken SocietyThe Secret Chicken Society by Judy Cox. Illustrated by Amanda Haley.
Daniel, our third-grade hero, is the second oldest in a family of six, which also includes teen older brother Tyler, sisters Kelsey (7) and Emmy (4), as well as a nurse mom and stay-at-home blogger dad. One day, his beautiful teacher, Mrs. Lopez, announces that the class is going to try to hatch some eggs. No one in the class is more excited or devoted to the five chicks that hatch than Daniel. When the school year ends and it’s time for the chicks to find permanent homes, though nearly all the kids put their names in for a chick, he’s the only one whose parents actually say yes. His family is on board (mostly) with the five adorable chicks. The neighbors’ reactions are more mixed – sweet Mrs. Grafalo next door loves them, but her grouchy husband (nicknamed Mr. Gruffalo) is sure one of them will be a loud rooster, and that they’ll get into his yard and destroy the garden. And when it turns out that one of the sweet chicks might actually be an illegal rooster, the siblings form the Secret Chicken Society to protect Peepers. This is realistic and funny family fiction in early chapter book form, with enough details in the text and the appendix that would-be chicken owners could really get started. My son, the same who likes bloody epic fantasy, ate this up and begged for more chapters every night I read it to him.

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The Book of Three

The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander. Read by James Langton.

The Chronicles of Prydain were one of my favorites growing up.  I read and reread our paperback copies with their bright, folk-art inspired covers.  I found the zombie-like Cauldron Born terrifying as a child, so I asked my son if he thought the books might be too scary.  When I told him about deathless zombies and people being burned alive (in passing), he started panting and said the book sounded great.  I should stop listening to it just for myself and only listen with him.

As the book opens, our young hero, Taran, is bored of his life at peaceful Caer Dallben.  Taran and Coll manage the farm, while the ancient Dallben handles the important but tiring work of meditating.  When Taran says that he wants to be something, Coll gives him the title of Assistant Pig-Keeper, in charge of their oracular pig, Hen-Wen.  Then the usually peaceful Hen-Wen runs away, and Taran dashes off into the forest to catch her.  She was running from the approaching army of the Horned King, who goes about with a horned skull mask and a red cape.  (The Horned King is featured on most of the more recent book covers, and I think makes it look like just a boy book, though it isn’t really just for boys and the Horned King, while important, has only brief appearances in the book.)  He is the war leader for the evil Arawn, Lord of Annuvin, Land of the Dead, making a bid for world domination.  Taran, naturally, manages to miss Hen-Wen and catch the army.  After being sliced with a sword, he wakes up as he’s being cared for by a man with rough, sturdy clothes and a very nice sword.  He’s Gwydion, Prince of Don, in this first book startlingly similar to Aragorn.  Gwydion was also in search of Hen-Wen, and because of the danger of sending Taran back through the forest alone, ends up taking Taran with him, closely followed by the furry creature Gurgi.  Only, of course, until they are captured by the evil sorceress Queen Achren and Taran is thrown into her dungeon.  He and the other prisoner are rescued by the impetuous and talkative Eilonwy of the red-gold hair.  Not knowing what has happened to Gwydion, Taran, Eilonwy, Gurgi, and the bard Ffleuder Fflam set off together, now partly to find Hen Wen but mostly to warn the Sons of Don of the approaching armies, which they’ve seen gathering along their way, and which are not coincidentally also blocking their way to the castle of the Sons of Don.  It manages to be funny, serious and high action, all packed into a book that’s very short by modern standards – only four CDs. 

The characters are all very brightly drawn.  I loved them as a child, but found them cartoonish and flat as an older teen.  Now, as an adult – yes, they are drawing on archetypes, one could even say stereotypes.  But they are also, especially Taran, given the opportunity to grow.  I love Ffleuder Fflam, the bard, of course, who has some wisdom to share with Taran but more often provides a sense of humor as his magical harp (HARP!!) breaks a string or two when he embroiders the truth, as he so often does.  Gurgi – is just odd. He’s not sure himself whether he’s a monster or a cuddly and lovable sidekick.  Together, Ffleuder and Gurgi make sure that the book is nearly always funny despite the near-constant life-threatening danger.  Eilonwy and Taran’s relationship feels like it suffers a bit from the book having been written in the 1960s.  Eilonwy quite definitely wants to be part of the action, and she is brave, assertive, and in charge of herself.  But she’s also a chatterbox and reacts with old-style girl attitude of the “you have offended me and I won’t speak to you until you figure out what you did wrong” type, which I find very frustrating, as does Taran, who at least thinks he wants her to be the kind of girl who sits quietly at home and takes orders from boys.  He, of course, is such an idiot at first, that he makes mistakes that, while believable, made even my seven-year-old cringe.  Slowly, over the course of five books, he learns, but even by the end of this first book, he’s learned that actions are more important than looks in a hero, and to appreciate peace. 

All of the books are filled with references to Welsh mythology.  Alexander isn’t quite retelling the legends, but many characters are taken from the legends and reformed.  I think I was in high school when I read The Mabinogi, and it’s fun to go back with more knowledge of the source.  James Langton did an excellent job as reader, with voices for all the characters, most with Welsh accents.  His Gurgi sounded more like Chewbacca than the small creature I’d imagined, but I don’t think the text really makes it clear one way or the other.  My son and I very much enjoyed listening to this, and are now working on the next book in the series, The Black Cauldron.

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Katy K. | 5 Comments

Forever

Posted on October 19, 2012 by Katy K.

I’m several Maggie Stiefvater books behind still, but at least I finished the Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy. I read this on breaks at work at the same time as listening to Holly Black’s Black Heart in the car and finally reading The Hunger Game trilogy at home for an excess of dark teen books.

I realize as I write this that I’m writing up Forever, but not either of the other two books. I never used to write up sequels, and often didn’t even read them, on the theory that one gives you the feel for the series and if you, my reader, liked the first, you’d keep reading. But as we know, series books aren’t always the same and it isn’t always easy to keep up with new ones being published. Should I blog Black Heart, too? Should I not blog this one? I’d not planned to write anything about The Hunger Games trilogy, because really, you’ve all heard of it already, right? Plus it breaks some major rules for me about not reading books where kids getting killed turns the plot engines. Still, they are the kind of books that leave one full of things to say, which makes it very hard not to blog it. So if you have any thoughts on blogging sequels and/or over-discussed books, please share!

Forever
Forever by Maggie Stiefvater
In the introduction, a new werewolf turns back into a confused girl, who is promptly killed by another wolf. Already, we know the story will not be sweetness and light, though we return to following our regular cast of characters. Sam is adrift, unable to sleep or think straight without knowing how Grace is doing. To make matters worse, Grace’s parents and the police suspect that Sam has either kidnapped or murdered her. When Grace does start shifting back to human form, it’s for period so short that she calls Sam to pick her up and shifts back to wolf form before he can get to her. Cole is making a hobby of leaving creative voice mails for Isabel, who refuses to talk to him, as well as using himself as a lab rat for medical means of triggering the shifts. Isabel’s decided that Cole is a dangerous addiction from which she’s going cold turkey. But when she learns that her father is organizing a helicopter hunt to shoot down the entire pack and Sam isn’t able to think clearly enough to help, she has no choice but to bring Cole into the discussions. The Problem, as my son would say for school, is how to get the wolves moved to a safe location, and how to find that location in the first place. But there’s still a lot on the relationship fronts here as well. Grace and Sam, in the brief moments when they are both human, still have their strong, beautiful partnership. Isabel is slowly learning that her problem with relationships stems from her experience of all relationships having one dominant and one submissive person, when she’s definitely not the submissive type. Between the romances, the ongoing issues with parents (Grace’s and Isabel’s), thoughts of future and college – this is a fantasy books with a whole lot of real, where even the fantasy bits are as close to real as they could be. Forever is a bittersweet treat to savor.

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The Humming Room

Posted on October 17, 2012 by Katy K.

There was a day, about two weeks ago, when I finished a book and had no new library books waiting for me to read. Not one. In a panic, I went to the new fiction shelves at the library and took several youth fantasy books. I paid special attention when reading my journals and blogs and put lots of titles on hold, because I had nothing at home.

I have plenty to read now. Definitely more than I can read before they’re all due. This was one of the ones I pulled off the new shelf, just based on how many times I saw the title come up in the weekly review summary at Charlotte’s Library.

The Humming RoomThe Humming Room by Ellen Potter
Here’s a book that says straight off that it’s inspired by The Secret Garden, one of my favorites. This made me nervous once I realized it, but it came off well – like a well-done fairy-tale re-telling, close enough to follow the plot, but different enough to have its own unique spin.

Roo Fanshaw is 12 when her drug-addicted, ne’er-do-well father gets himself murdered. Only when she’s being taken to him does she learn that she has an uncle. He lives on Cough Rock, a small island in a river in upstate New York just big enough for his former child tuberculosis sanatorium turned mansion. The part of the housekeeper, Mrs. Medlock, is played by the stylish but strict Ms. Valentine, while cheerful Martha’s role is taken by the friendly, jean-clad 20-year-old Violet. Roo has been moved around often enough to be distrustful and antisocial, but she quickly learns to love the river and is curious enough to explore the large building, even though she’s told which wing to avoid. Outside, she finds a tiny cave by the river bank, just big enough for her. It’s there that she meets a boy who introduces himself as Jack, paddling around the river in his kayak and considered just a legend by most of the native population. Inside, she hears a mysterious humming noise, and traces it to her cousin Phillip, who’s been in poor mental and physical health since the unexplained death of his mother four years earlier. Both children are initially afraid that the noises that they hear from the other are the ghosts of tuberculosis victims, and some time is given to the sad fate of those children. There is, of course, an abandoned garden for Roo to bring to life as well – this one a greenhouse Amazonian jungle. Roo has never gardened before, but, unlike Mary, has always had a habit of listening with her ear to the ground and being able to hear the earth and what it’s saying to itself. The characters, especially Roo and Phillip, feel well-rounded and believable, similar but not identical to their counterparts in the original. Fans of The Secret Garden are of course the natural audience for this, but the modern setting and the slightly enhanced mystical elements give this appeal to those who wouldn’t necessarily go for historical fiction. Like the original, there’s frequent mention of death, but no in-book violence or romance, making this just right for middle grade readers.

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