The Clockwork Crown

Posted on August 17, 2015 by Katy K.

I found this one just looking through for advance materials to put on my ereader.  Hooray for steampunk and thanks to Harper Voyager for the copy!

Clockwork CrownThe Clockwork Crown by Beth Cato. Harper Voyager, 2015.
This is the sequel to The Clockwork Dagger, which I’d heard good things about but not yet gotten around to.  I was able to enjoy the story without having read the first book, but there was enough puzzling that I’d recommend starting at the beginning if this sounds interesting.

Octavia, a Medician, and Alonzo, formerly a Clockwork Dagger and her enemy, are now travelling together hunted by people from all sides.  Octavia has healing powers that are supposed to come from the Lady and her tree.  That tree is supposed to be magically hidden in a wasteland that’s claimed by countries on both sides and inhabited by rebels working for control of their own country. Naturally, getting to a tree hidden in such a zone will be neither easy nor direct.  It involves traveling to lots of other places, including those where Octavia’s powers are dangerously suspect.  There are unfriendly relatives, animal-machine hybrids (Alonzo is forced to do battle in the arena with one such creature, especially created for combat), and cursed kingdoms.  There’s also a nice partnership between Octavia and Alonzo, some serious soul-searching on Octavia’s part as she questions the divinity of the Lady from whom her power comes, and danger on scales both large and small.

This is a nicely realized and diverse steampunk-fantasy world – not the more traditional alternate Earth history, but its own fully created world.  I really appreciated the thoughtfulness of the world-building, including social customs that felt right for a quasi-19th-century world.  The romance between Octavia and Alonzo thus progresses with the reserve that one would expect of that era, despite their obvious mutual attraction, thus making the relationship feel that much more genuine.  And while it seemed for much of the book that Octavia was just going to have to make peace with a very unpleasant personal fate, I was both pleased and surprised with the eventual ending.  It did take me a while to figure the world out, so that I really want to go back and read the first one, but I’d recommend this to adult steampunk fans, as well as older teens.

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Beastkeeper

Posted on August 15, 2015 by Katy K.

I love fairy tale retellings and I’ve enjoyed Cat Hellisen’s When the Sea is Rising Red and  House of Sand and Secrets – so I was very excited to see this new retelling of Beauty and the Beast!  This is one of those older middle grade books that my library shelves in the teen section.  I’ll also note for any who, like me, are trying to diversify the authors we’re reading, that Hellisen is South African.

BeastkeeperBeastkeeper by Cat Hellisen. Henry Holt, 2015.
Sarah has been used to her parents moving at the first breath of cold, but her parents have always been home.  Then her mother walks out, leaving Sarah and her father alone.  Her father doesn’t seem to realize that Sarah is taking care of him instead of the other way around, until suddenly he decides that Sarah would be better off with her grandparents, whom she’s never met.  Continue reading →

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Bayou Magic

Posted on August 12, 2015 by Katy K.

I’m still working on unpacking from our camping trip and trying to get back into the routine of things. Also, I’m officially registered to go to Kidlitcon in Baltimore this October!!! Do let me know if you’re going, too.

Bayou MagicBayou Magic by Jewell Parker Rhodes. Hachette Books, 2015.
Maddy, short for Madison Isabelle Lavalier Johnson, is the youngest of four sisters. All the older ones have been sent, one by one, to spend a summer in the bayou with Grandmére. Now that it’s Maddy’s turn, they warn her that there will be nothing to do. But Maddy finds that she fits into the bayou better than she’s fit anywhere before, and the boy named Bear whom Grandmére decides will be Maddy’s friend turns out to be a good one. The bayou is filled with nature, with people who are all different shades but universally friendly and giving despite not having things that Maddy would have considered basic back home. Maddy is surprised to learn that everyone calls her Grandmére Queenie, and comes to her for healing remedies and advice. Most important to Maddy are her grandmother’s stories, stories of her ancestress coming over from Africa as a slave, followed in the water by Mami Wata, a mermaid goddess, who carries the light of hope along with her.

Maddy will need to learn everything she can about her family’s heritage, because she has inherited magic from her long-ago ancestors, and a crisis is about to come where she will need to use it. This is a book filled with heat of multiple kinds – the sticky warmth of a bayou summer, the spicy heat of a community jambalaya, and the supportive warmth of family and community, as well as the cool light of the fireflies that follow Maddy around. There’s a strong environmental theme, love of place, and the deep history of Maddy’s people. And Grandmére asks Maddy a question no one has ever asked her before: “Maddy, who do you want to be when you grow up?”

This one would pair naturally with Kathi Appelt’s True Blue Scouts of Sugarman Swamp.

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Guest Post: Top 10 Heroines with Maureen of By Singing Light

Posted on July 31, 2015 by Katy K.

I am on an internet-free vacation right now, but my blogging friend Maureen of By Singing Light has kindly written a wonderful post on her favorite heroines.  Thank you so much for your post, Maureen!

The inspiration for this post is definite the great series my friend Brandy has been writing on her favorite heroines. So I set out to write down my own favorite heroines! And it turns out that I have very many. In the interests of space (and Katy forgiving me) I pared my initial list down to ten (10!!) names.
queennimonaperilous gardone crazy summer
Irene Attolia from Megan Whalen Turner’s Queen’s Thief series: Attolia is one of my favorite characters ever, but part of what makes her so interesting is that she starts off as the antagonist. She does horrible things, and yet MWT writes her character with such understanding and delicacy that by the end of the second book, I had fallen in love with her too.

Harriet Vane from Dorothy Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey series: I have a tag on Tumblr that says, “Harriet is the best” and that pretty much sums it up. It’s astonishing to remember that when I first read the Lord Peter books, I resented her for Peter’s sake. Now I admire so much her stubborn integrity, her sheer Harrietness.

Kate Sutton from Elizabeth Marie Pope’s The Perilous Gard: I have loved Kate ever since I first read The Perilous Gard in middle school. She’s fierce and stubborn, but she’s also brave. She drags Christopher, kicking and screaming, into hope. And she understands, in some way, the Lady Under the Hill.

Goewin from Elizabeth Wein’s Aksum series: I’ve talked a great length about how much I love Wein’s Maddie and Verity and Rose. But I wanted to mention Goewin because I think she’s a fantastic, complex character. She has an amazing combination of love and ruthlessness that comes out in the series.

Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel from G. Willow Wilson’s Ms. Marvel comics: I love Kamala for several reasons. She’s hilarious–she has a great sense of humor that I totally believe from a teenage girl. She’s conflicted about her sudden abilities, and yet she takes on the responsibility. And I love the way her relationship with her culture & faith have been written.

Maskelle from Martha Wells’s The Wheel of the Infinite: Maskelle is a fantastic character, and one who’s all too rare. She’s older than many women in fantasy. She has power and knows how to use it. She has regrets, but she is also determined to make things right. And in the end she knows her own mind & her own strengths.

Delphine Gaither from Rita Williams-Garcia’s Gaither sisters trilogy: Oh, how I love Delphine! I love all three Gaither sisters, but Delphine is my very favorite. Probably partly because I’m an oldest child and think Rita Williams-Garcia did a great job of showing that relationship. But mostly just for herself, her wonderful, vivid, thoughtful self.

Tiffany Aching from Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching series: I didn’t find Tiffany until fairly recently, but she quickly became one of my favorites ever. She’s kind, she gives of herself, she takes care of people, and yet she’s the furthest thing from self-sacrificing or doormatish that I can think of. She’s fierce when it’s needed and powerful when that’s needed too.

NIMONA from Noelle Stevenson’s Nimona: Nimona is a fascinating character. She’s a shapeshifter in more ways than one, and yet she’s also undeniably herself. She can be hurt and angry, but she can also be funny and even silly. I found her story beautiful and heartbreaking and hilarious all at once.

Sophie Hatter from Diana Wynne Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle: Sophie is one of those characters that I just instantly loved, from the very first page. She’s prickly, stubborn, kind, and brave. She doesn’t know her own strengths, and yet she does. I love how fiercely competent she is & yet how she can also push people in the wrong directions. She’s so wonderfully human.

I am somewhat startled to find that I have only read four of these – but since I also love Irene, Tiffany, Nimona and Sophie, I think I need to read all the rest of these as well!  Who are your favorite heroines?

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State of the Book Basket – July

Posted on July 24, 2015 by Katy K.

It’s a super-short State of the Book Basket because I need to go get ready for vacation.

The Girl
I’m very excited to be reading The Ordinary Princess by M.M. Kaye to my daughter – a favorite from childhood, with the author’s own beautiful illustrations.  In the car, we’re listening to Soccer on Sunday by Mary Pope Osborne, Magic Tree House #52.  I’ve also taken out three of the Little House books for the car ride, since both kids really like these.  We have a big stack of nonfiction for her, for one of the library’s summer reading challenges.

The Boy
We finally finished Jinx’s Fire!!!!  Thank you, Sage Blackwood – we loved it! I’m finishing up my old favorite Parsley Sage, Rosemary and Time by Jane Louise Curry with him (it’s only about a hundred pages), and then we’ve decided that he’s old enough for one of my even-favoriter old favorites, The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley.  He’s reading The Inventions of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick to himself, and listening to Inkheart by Cornelia Funke and the last of the Spirit Animals books, by Marie Lu.

My Love
…snagged Uprooted by Naomi Novik when my hold finally came in from the library.  I’m anxiously waiting my turn for this, too!

Me
I just finished Nimona by Noelle Stevenson in print and a re-listen of Deathly Hallows in the car.  I have Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mendel on my iPod, and have just checked out Black Dove, White Raven by Elizabeth Wein – a first from an author I’ve been wanting to read for a long time.  Up next in print is either Pip Bartlett’s Guide to Magical Creatures by Maggie Stiefvater and Jackson Pearce, or The Long Black Curl by Alex Bledsoe.

Let me know what you’re reading, and stay tuned for a guest post or two while I’m gone!

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The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage

Posted on July 15, 2015 by Katy K.

And on with the Victorian historical characters!  This is mostly a graphic novel.  I bought it for the adult graphic novel section, though there’s nothing inappropriate for kids in it, because it has a lot of footnotes and they are dense, and also because I only get to buy the adult graphic novels at the library.  I’ve been a fan of Padua’s web comics for years, and really, really wanted to make sure we got this.

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and BabbageThe Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Sydney Padua. Pantheon Books, 2015.
In real life, Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace, the daughter of doomed romantic poet Lord Byron, had a brilliant mind which was lost to the world far too soon, as she died in her early forties.  While she lived, she corresponded with Charles Babbage, inventor of the first proto-computer, helping him refine his ideas and figuring out new uses for it.  But she died, and Babbage was too wrapped up in theoretical improvements to his plans ever to actually complete his devices.  So much for real life.

In fiction, however, there is no need for things to follow these paths.  In The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, Padua has created what she calls a “pocket universe” in which Lovelace does not die.  Instead, she goes on to help Babbage complete his Analytical Engine, and the two of them work together to fight crime, especially in the form of poetry and street musicians.  Babbage is full of good ideas and so much self-importance that he frequently shoots himself in the foot; Ada tries sometimes more successfully than others to rescue him from himself. Padua has clearly done tons of research into this, so that while the stories are fictional, the most hilarious parts of the already funny stories comes when she has the characters speaking in their own real-life words, drawn from their correspondence and memoirs.  (We know this because of the ample footnotes, which are hilarious in their own right and well worth reading.)

Many other famous characters of the day truthfully appear, owing the circle of English intellectuals at the time being so very small and tightly connected.  Some modern humor is included as well, such as this: Queen Victoria comes to get a tour of the amazing Analytical Engine. She is not amused by the large numbers (useful as they were to science at the time), so Ada quickly jumps into the machine and rigs it to print out a cat picture made up of various characters.

This is one that felt so much like it might have been written just for me that it’s hard to nail down who else might like it, though my love definitely enjoyed it and my son was begging us to read it to him as well.  Definitely anyone interested in Victorian history, steampunk, or (most obscurely) the history of computers should enjoy this.

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The Detective’s Assistant

Posted on July 15, 2015 by Katy K.

I really enjoyed Kate Hannigan’s Cupcake Cousins, which I won after last year’s 48 Hour Book Challenge.  This one is historical – more my usual style – so I was especially excited to see it coming out.

The Detective's AssistantThe Detective’s Assistant by Kate Hannigan. Little, Brown & Company, 2015.
Cornelia Warne is 13 years old and the last of her immediate family.  She’s sent from rural New York State to her last remaining aunt, who lives in Chicago.  “Aunt Kitty”, or Kate, as she prefers to be called, is enjoying the freedom of widowed life (though not having been widowed in the first place) and really doesn’t want a child.  Happily, she’s convinced to take Nell in (she decides right off that Cornelia is too awful a name to call even an unwanted niece), at least until she can find someplace better for her.  Nell dubs her the Pickled Onion, as she is so unfriendly toward her, and sets out to make herself as useful as possible, both to Aunt Kitty and to the owner of the boarding house where they live, to keep the rent down.

It turns out that Aunt Kitty is a Pinkerton agent, who works undercover to solve various mysteries.  Kate Warne, it turns out, was a real person, and the fictional Nell gets to tag along on Aunt Kitty’s cases, which get increasingly complex and important over the course of the book.  This following of real cases is held together with Nell’s struggles to fit in.  Nell has her own mysteries to solve, too. She is trying to learn the family secret that drove Aunt Kitty away in the first place. She is also exchanging letters with her best friend, whom we gradually learn is a freeborn African-American now moved to Canada, and who in turn is trying to find her father, an operator on the Underground Railroad.  Often it seems historical novels will either be about the Underground Railroad or about the doings of white people.  I really enjoyed seeing these separate threads tied together so nicely and so simply by friendship, rather than left separate or connected by chance.

I’ll say that I have loved many a dreamy historical novel – but this is decidedly not that.  The Detective’s Assistant is packed full of action and suspense, with plenty of appeal for both boys and girls.  Definitely for kids who are already fans of historical or mystery, but also a great one to keep in mind for the reluctant reader who’s been assigned to read a historical novel.

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Fly By Night and Fly Trap

Posted on July 10, 2015 by Katy K.

Many of my friends – most especially Brandy at Random Musings of a Bibliophile – have raved about Frances Hardinge’s novel A Face Like Glass. Unfortunately, this one book of hers isn’t available in print in the U.S., and I haven’t yet been desperate enough to have it shipped from the UK, there being so many good books I haven’t read around me already. Instead, I picked up the earliest of her books that was on the shelf at my library.

Fly by NightFly by Night by Frances Hardinge. Macmillan, 2005.
Mosca Mye (probably aged 11 or 12) is an orphan in a world that’s falling apart.  (The author’s note at the end says that the world is very loosely based on 17th century England, with a lot of disregard for actual history and some for the laws of physics.)  Continue reading →

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As You Wish

Posted on July 8, 2015 by Katy K.

I vividly remember the first time I watched The Princess Bride – on a rented TV and VCR at an overnight with my high school Girl Scout troop.  We watched it twice through that night, and then watched our favorite bits over and over again the following morning.  It’s still one of my favorites, one of the most-quoted around my house.  Even at work, people were quoting it at one of my recent library events.  Which is a roundabout way of saying that of course I had to listen to this book when I heard it was coming out.

As You WishAs You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of the Princess Bride by Cary Elwes with Joe Layden. Read by Cary Elwes et al. Simon & Schuster Audio, 2014.
Starring in The Princess Bride was a dream come true for Cary Elwes, then a relatively unknown actor.  Following its 25th anniversary, he put together his memories of the movie and the people in it.  From time to time, other members of the team put in their thoughts on people or events, as well, often read by them on the audio version as well.  This is not a Rita Skeeter-like exposé of the event – Elwes is full of happy memories of his time on set (and training beforehand!) and looks with kindness and respect on everyone except occasionally himself.  He is also digs a little deeper into the background of the original book and its long history of being batted around between studios and labelled as unfilmable before finally making it to the screen.

I could wish that the contributions from other people had been a little more extensive – I would particularly have liked to hear more about some of Robin Wright’s work in scenes where Elwes wasn’t present – but this isn’t a deal breaker by any means.  I won’t spoil this for anyone who hasn’t read it yet by sharing the fun parts – but I came away full of warm fuzzies and secret knowledge of things to notice when re-watching the movie.  If you are a fan, you should definitely read this – and I’d highly recommend getting the audiobook out of the library.  Not only do you get to hear Elwes’s familiar accent, plus those of more people both familiar and not, but Elwes is a consummate actor and uses the appropriate voice for each person he’s talking about.

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Mortal Heart

Posted on July 6, 2015 by Katy K.

I’d been very much looking forward to this book, the last in the His Fair Assassin series, but it came out last fall when I was in the midst of the Cybils and had to wait for a bit.  It was worth it, though!

Mortal HeartMortal Heart. His Fair Assassins #3 by Robin LaFevers. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014.
This book follows Grave Mercy and Dark Triumph, and continues the trend of each book featuring a different one of our young assassin nun trio, Mortal Heart stars Annith, the shy and obedient sister who has been primed to be the abbey’s new seeress.  Annith was never excited about this, as the seeress is kept locked away, isolated even from the rest of the convent.  But with her superior skills at all the other assassin arts, and no sign of actual seeing talents, she had hoped at least to be sent on some missions outside the convent first.  Instead, the abbess – formerly her protector, Sister Etienne – is assigning her to care for the mysteriously ailing seeress, and sending out too-young Matelaine on a mission instead.  Annith’s obedience is put to the test, as she is forced to wonder if Sybille and Ismae’s dark suspicions about the Abbess might be true after all.

It’s only a slight spoiler to say that Annith leaves the convent, because what kind of a story would it be if she didn’t? And once out she meets very interesting people, including the dark, handsome and very troubled leader of lost souls (literally), who ride around the countryside trying to redeem the sins of their living lives.  We also meet, for the first time, the followers of another of the old God-Saints.  The Arduinnites are the daughters of the Goddess-Saint Arduinna, mother to those children born of women scorned or abused by their partners.  These women are skilled at the bow and ride around dressed in leather protecting the innocent.  And there are a lot of innocents in need of protection, as the French army is closing in on the young Duchess Anne, raiding the countryside on their way, and even her mercenaries are starting to turn against her as she runs out of money to pay them.  Into this mess rides Annith, trying to find her missing young convent sister, as well as Sybella and Ismae.

I was very happy to spend more time with both of them in this book as well – it’s always a bit sad when a series like this completely drops the old beloved characters in favor of new.  This felt like a decently satisfying balance, even as the focus stays squarely on Annith.  Things in the decended-from-Gods department do get a bit squicky at times, but I guess that’s what you expect when Gods start having children with mortals.  And – more like the first than the second book here – the international politics are very important to the plot, making this just as appealing for fans of political and historical fantasy as for romantic fantasy fans.  It’s top-notch stuff, and I recommend it highly to adult as well as teen readers.

Last month Tansy Raynor Roberts had this great post at SF Signal about how we keep collectively forgetting that women fantasy authors aren’t new.  She said, among other things, that Katherine Kurtz started the historical fantasy genre, and is not really credited for it.  I’ve talked about my love for Katherine Kurtz before and, now that I think about it, her Deryni novels might very well appeal to fans of this series – magic and dangerous politics with some romance in a solid historical setting.  Thanks also to Maureen at By Singing Light for her thoughts on remembering authors.  Following the assassin link might also take you to the more recent Death Sworn by Leah Cypess.

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