The Mark of the Dragonfly

Posted on June 14, 2014 by Katy K.

Hooray for middle grade steampunk!

The Mark of the DragonflyThe Mark of the Dragonfly by Jaleigh Johnson. Delacorte Press, 2014.
Piper lives on her own in a scrapper town, where everyone lives off of scavenging and selling the objects from some other dimension that fall down through the meteor showers. And then one day, her best friend Micah risks the radiation of heading out during the meteor shower instead of afterwards, hoping to get first pick. Piper follows him, and finds an injured girl in the wreckage. She has a luminous dragonfly tattoo on her arm, something given only to the most important people of the next country south, the Dragonfly territories. Even though Anna can’t communicate very well, she’s clearly both valuable frightened of someone finding her. Piper hatches a plan to make her fortune by sneaking Anna onto the grand old 401 train to the Dragonfly Territories and turn her in for a reward. On the train, after a rocky start, the girls are befriended by Gee, a mysterious boy with bright green eyes and a wandering soot smudge.

This was a very fun book set in a nicely detailed, multi-species world that had both steampunk and fantasy elements. There are lots of mechanical devices, which Piper is very good at repairing, as well as creatures that can shift between human and dragon forms, as well as other, even stranger intelligent beings. It felt a little bit Asian to me, but perhaps only because of the great armored train – there’s nothing really more to establish the setting as being drawn from any particular real Earth place. I enjoyed it and the developing friendships between the children quite a bit. They were all orphaned for different, believable reasons, and Piper struggled believably between wanting the monetary reward she needs to be able to start a decent life and her increasing sense of duty towards Anna. My mother picked it up and made it three-quarters of the way through in an evening, also enjoying it – though she rightfully pointed out that Piper makes the same mistake multiple times in the book, and one does wish she would learn her lesson the first time. The ending also, alas, is not quite believable. Still, this is one I’d happily give to a middle grade child or adult in search of a fun fantasy adventure.

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Black Dog

Posted on June 13, 2014 by Katy K.

I was lucky enough to win this from Maureen at By Singing Light. I’ve enjoyed Rachel Neumeier in the past (The Floating Islands) and was very excited to read this!

Black DogBlack Dog by Rachel Neumeier. Strange Chemistry, 2014.
In this modern-day fantasy, three siblings flee their village in Mexico that their enemies burned to the ground, for the dubious potential safety of Vermont. Alejandro is a Black Dog, able to shift between human and animal form. His sister, Natividad, is Pure, with the magic to help him control his Black Dog Shadow. Miguel is Natividad’s twin, not supernaturally gifted, but exceptionally bright and perceptive. With their parents dead, their only hope is that the strongest Black Dog clan on the continent will shield them from their enemy – but Black Dog clans are notoriously unfriendly to outsiders, and the Dimilioc is the least open of all. Their best hope is that the Dimilioc will be willing to trade shelter for the promise of Natividad marrying into the clan, with both sides skirting very uncomfortably around Natividad’s youth on the one side – she’s almost 15 – and the clan’s urgent need for new blood on the other.

But their enemy, von Heusel, is more determined than they thought, willing to trail them all the way. He’s willing to turn as many people into the less-powerful moonbound werewolves as it takes to defeat the Dimilioc and take Natividad for himself. She needs to figure out the secret he thinks her mother taught her before it’s too late, all while managing the complicated dynamics of her own still grief-stricken family, their new place in Dimilioc, and the slight possibility of genuine romance with Ezekiel, the young Dimilioc executioner.

You might have noticed that this book was on my top ten list for the year. I read it, and have already loaned it out twice to other people to read. Everything is in place, from the larger politics of the supernatural struggle that’s going on and the mechanics of the magic to the smaller details of personality and the shift to America. Natividad, in the blank white kitchen in Vermont, longs for the smells of her mother’s Mexican kitchen, and gets to work trying to make the Dimilioc house, also filled with loss, into a home, starting with homemade cinnamon rolls. I really like how cautious she is about getting romantically involved with anyone in her new place, precisely because she knows she will have to soon. She also walks a tightrope between needing to seem obedient because of the strict hierarchy of Black Dog society and having a very strong sense of what just needs to happen. I’m trying and failing to think of some part of this that didn’t work for me – not that everything was sunshine and rainbows, because clearly not, but everything made sense. I cared about the characters, and there was enough of a balance of tension with some lighter moments to make it very, very hard to put the book down.

I really hope there will be a sequel.

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Black Dog

Posted on June 13, 2014 by Katy K.

I was lucky enough to win this from Maureen at By Singing Light. I’ve enjoyed Rachel Neumeier in the past and was very excited to read this!

Black DogBlack Dog by Rachel Neumeier. Strange Chemistry, 2014.
In this modern-day fantasy, three siblings flee their village in Mexico that their enemies burned to the ground, for the dubious potential safety of Vermont. Alejandro is a Black Dog, able to shift between human and animal form. His sister, Natividad, is Pure, with the magic to help him control his Black Dog Shadow. Miguel is Natividad’s twin, not supernaturally gifted, but exceptionally bright and perceptive. With their parents dead, their only hope is that the strongest Black Dog clan on the continent will shield them from their enemy – but Black Dog clans are notoriously unfriendly to outsiders, and the Dimilioc is the least open of all. Their best hope is that the Dimilioc will be willing to trade shelter for the promise of Natividad marrying into the clan, with both sides skirting very uncomfortably around Natividad’s youth on the one side – she’s almost 15 – and the clan’s urgent need for new blood on the other.

But their enemy, von Heusel, is more determined than they thought, willing to trail them all the way. He’s willing to turn as many people into the less-powerful moonbound werewolves as it takes to defeat the Dimilioc and take Natividad for himself. She needs to figure out the secret he thinks her mother taught her before it’s too late, all while managing the complicated dynamics of her own still grief-stricken family, their new place in Dimilioc, and the slight possibility of genuine romance with Ezekiel, the young Dimilioc executioner.

You might have noticed that this book was on my top ten list for the year. I read it, and have already loaned it out twice to other people to read. Everything is in place, from the larger politics of the supernatural struggle that’s going on and the mechanics of the magic to the smaller details of personality and the shift to America. Natividad, in the blank white kitchen in Vermont, longs for the smells of her mother’s Mexican kitchen, and gets to work trying to make the Dimilioc house, also filled with loss, into a home, starting with homemade cinnamon rolls. I really like how cautious she is about getting romantically involved with anyone in her new place, precisely because she knows she will have to soon. She also walks a tightrope between needing to seem obedient because of the strict hierarchy of Black Dog society and having a very strong sense of what just needs to happen. I’m trying and failing to think of some part of this that didn’t work for me – not that everything was sunshine and rainbows, because clearly not, but everything made sense. I cared about the characters, and there was enough of a balance of tension with some lighter moments to make it very, very hard to put the book down.

I really hope there will be a sequel.

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Nightingale’s Nest for 48HBC

Posted on June 11, 2014 by Katy K.

I always keep an eye out for a good fairy tale retelling, and this one has magical music as a bonus. This one had been on my radar for a while (thanks, Charlotte!), and was the last book I finished for the 48HBC.

Nightingale's NestNightingale’s Nest by Nikki Loftin. Razorbill, 2014.
Twelve-year-old Little John’s family, never well off, has been reeling ever since his little sister fell out of a tree and died. The funeral expenses ate up their small savings. His mother keeps forgetting that she’s dead and has told Little John that’s he’s too old for hugs, while his father drinks through the rent and grocery money. The only person in town with the money to hire him is the despised Mr. King, owner of a large chain of stores. It’s while helping his dad work for “the Emperor” that Little John hears the most beautiful singing he’s ever heard coming from a tree in the yard next door. It’s a young girl, described in the text as brown-haired and brown-eyed, and shown on the cover as African-American. She introduces herself as Gayle, the latest foster child taken in by mean Mrs. Cutlin. Mrs. Cutlin says that her name is Suzie and that her parents are dead; Gayle says her parents have just flown away, and she needs to stay in the tree so they can find her. Little John can’t really believe her on that, but he can’t deny that her singing heals his cuts. He trying to keep her safe from Mrs. Cutlin and her son brings her to the Emperor’s attention. More than anything, the Emperor wants Gayle to sing for him in his recording studio, so much that he’s willing to offer Little John anything to convince her. Little John sees how Gayle shakes when she’s near him – but surely just singing once for him couldn’t be so bad?

This is a beautiful, heartbreaking book, with everyone hurting each other so much even when they’re trying not to and a hopeful but not happy ending. I really wanted to love it – the characters, the setting, the feelings all done so well – but I’m not sure that I really did. I was angry with Little John’s parents for being so hard on him because of losing their daughter, instead of treasuring the child they had. Maybe it’s that Hans Christian Andersen (again) isn’t my favorite, and maybe also that it’s got the plot motivated by one dead child and one abused child, things I know don’t really work for me. And maybe that I just wasn’t quite in the mood for heartbreak that day. I enjoyed it, but it didn’t quite touch my heart the way it did some people’s. As a child, though, I went for the sad books more often than I do now, and I’m pretty sure that the parents’ failings wouldn’t have struck me so hard before I was a parent myself. So I’d still highly recommend this to readers, middle grade and above, in the mood for quietly heartbreaking magical realism.

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Top Ten Books I’ve Read So Far in 2014

Posted on June 11, 2014 by Katy K.

Top Ten TuesdayOnce again, those clever folks over at The Broke and Bookish have come up with another Top Ten Tuesday theme I couldn’t resist – this time it’s my Top Ten Books read this year. It’s really hard to limit myself to just ten when I’ve read so many great books recently, but here’s going with my gut, roughly in the order in which I read them.

And, holding over from this weekend’s 48 HBC mindset, I’m pleased to note that half of these have diverse protagonists. That’s better than I would have guessed, even if I’m not doing so well with diversity in my authors.

Stolen MagicStolen Magic by Stephanie Burgis
Eleanor & ParkEleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
Jinx's magicJinx’s Magic by Sage Blackwood
Coldest Girl in ColdtownThe Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black
The Castle Behind ThornsThe Castle Behind Thorns by Merrie Haskell
Black-Dog1Black Dog by Rachel Neumeier
cracksThe Cracks in the Kingdom by Jaclyn Moriarty
Velveteen vs. the MultiverseVelveteen vs. the Multiverse by Seanan McGuire
amazingthingThe Amazing Thing About the Way It Goes by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
Bad Luck GirlBad Luck Girl by Sarah Zettel

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The Savage Fortress for 48HBC

Posted on June 9, 2014 by Katy K.

I finished this on Saturday as part of the 48 Hour Book Challenge. I’d read about it originally on Charlotte’s Library, and then saw it again on a list of What to Read Next: Percy Jackson from Fat Girl Reading shortly after I’d posted my own list of Rick Riordan Read Alikes. That reminded me that I really should read it!

The Savage FortressThe Savage Fortress by Sarwat Chadda. Arthur A. Levine, 2012.
This book has a really great tag line: “Heroes aren’t made. They’re reborn.”
The Savage Fortress tell the story of Ash Mistry and his little sister, Lucky, who are spending the summer visiting their uncle back in India. Their parents came from India, but they’ve grown up in London, and the heat and crowds of India are strange to them. Ash has grown up loving Indian mythology, though, so when his uncle is invited to help with some research around a civilization that vanished from India 4000 years before, he’s thrilled.

Then (very early on), he accidentally finds himself in the study of Lord Savage. There he finds lots of creepy things, including scrolls written on human skin, and overhears Lord Savage calling his servants (all of them wearing sunglasses at night) rakshasa – demon. Then, on a trip to the dig, Ash finds a buried statue of the legendary hero Rama, shooting an arrow with a gold tip. That tip falls off into Ash’s hand – and before he knows what’s going on, he and Lucky are being pursued through the streets of Varanasi by horrible demons. It’s soon clear that Lord Savage is trying to resurrect the horrible demon king Ravana whom Rama defeated thousands of years ago. Can Ash stop him before it’s too late???

This is a high action book with plenty of gore and exciting chase scenes. It’s a good introduction to Indian mythology which should be lots of fun for mythology fans. Ash does a little bit of reflection on his heritage – in London, he’s definitely considered Indian, but in India, he’s a “coconut”, brown on the outside, white on the inside. There’s a tiny bit of romance and some thought about that – but Ash is only 13, and it’s really just a tiny bit of romance. The villain is purely villainous, and our hero is never going to be anything else. 10-year-old Lucky, unfortunately, never gets to develop much beyond someone for Ash to save, but the Wise Old Guru’s demon assistant lady is much more active and very entertaining. But this is not trying to be a character-driven book. It’s all action and setting, quite fun if not my usual choice. It definitely belongs in the hands of Rick Riordan fans.

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48 Hour Book Challenge Finish Line

Posted on June 8, 2014 by Katy K.

Sunday morning

48 Hour Book ChallengeSo, yesterday, I read over my breaks and wrote reviews between library patrons. I listened in the car on the way home from work, took a break for supper and kid-wrangling, and read The Savage Fortress for 15 minutes next to the boy while he read Eddie Red: Undercover: Mystery on Museum Mile to himself. Then I washed dishes and listened to a half hour of Legend, finished The Savage Fortress, and started Nightingale’s Nest before turning in at 11.

This morning, I kept my alarm set for 6:30, hoping to squeeze in some more reading before my 8:20 cutoff time. Well… the girl crawled into our bed at 6, and having her awake made it a bit harder to read, though I won’t complain about the cuddles. I managed 45 minutes of reading by 8 am, which was enough to finish Nightingale’s Nest. I was hoping to get in another 15 of The Goblin Emperor, but the girl insisted on being read to herself. (I still enjoyed what I read of The Goblin Emperor over breakfast.)

That means time for the final totals. My total time for the event comes to 16.76 hours. My total writing time was definitely more than the rules allow, but my rounded-way down estimate of my blogging time total on my Excel came to 2.84 hours vs. 13.92 hours of reading time, which my love calculates is 3.6 minutes too much estimated blogging time. I think, since going back to my numbers is taking way too much time and it’s not going to put me over any records one way or the other, I’m just going to leave it, with apologies. It’s still over the 12 hours 11 minutes I read last year – hooray!

I finished five books this year, way over the two I finished last year, largely because only 2 and quarter of my hours this year were audiobooks. Here they are:
Bad Luck Girl
The Great Greene Heist
Tankborn
The Savage Fortress
Nightingale’s Nest

Now I need to get back to real life – I’ll try to check in on everyone else and finish reviews tomorrow. Happy continued reading to those still going!

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Tankborn

Posted on June 7, 2014 by Katy K.

This is the third book I read for this year’s 48 Hour Book Challenge. I heard about it from the Book Smugglers a while back and asked my library to buy it last December… so it’s about time I got around to reading it.

Tankborn Tankborn by Karen Sandler. Tu Books, 2011.
Kayla and Mishalla are best friends, but they know that when they turn 15, they’ll be Assigned to jobs anywhere in the country, with no way to communicate with each other again. They are both Tankborn, genetically engineered to meet specific needs in serving the Trueborn and Lowborn residents of Loka. Kayla, with engineered extra-strong arms, is assigned to care for an elderly trueborn man, while nurturing Mishalla is assigned to a crisis crèche, caring for a rapidly changing room full of babies and toddlers. They think they are just ordinary GENs, as the tankborn are called – but someone must think something else, because they both have secret data uploaded to their annex brains via the interface tattoos on their faces, along with being given physical datapods that will get the girls wiped if they are found. And both of them meet very good-looking, sweet boys who are way out of their league.

This was a really solid, entertaining book. Sandler did her work with a well-developed world that includes details of religion, dress, food, social customs and more. For most people, rank is easy to tell by skin color – the perfect shade of mahogany. Kayla’s skin color on the cover looks pretty accurate, and it’s unfashionably light, though too dark is also bad. Kayla’s romance was definitely on the insta-love side at the beginning, and I was worried, but they did go through and develop more of a real relationship. This is a thoughtful sci-fi/dystopian look at a caste system, with enough intrigue, action and romance to keep everything moving. I started not quite sure it would all work, and now I really want to go on to read Awakening, the next book in the trilogy. And I need to ask the teen librarian to buy Rebellion, which just came out this week.

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The Great Green Heist

Posted on June 7, 2014 by Katy K.

This is the book that got picked to be the poster child for the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign. The librarian at my son’s school and the local bookstore that runs the book fair there were kind enough to agree when I asked if we could take pre-orders there for this book, as part of that. I don’t usually buy books by authors I’ve never read before, but I thought that since I’d asked for it, I should put my name on the list, too.

greatgreeneThe Great Green Heist by Varian Johnson. Arthur A. Levine, 2014.
Jackson Greene is supposed to be reformed. His cons – however masterfully planned – have gotten him into a lot of trouble. The event from last year known as the Mid-Day PDA got him in so much hot water that the girl he likes won’t even talk to him anymore. So when the first people start asking for his help to make sure that very girl – Gabriela de la Cruz – wins the student council race, he says no. That’s until he finds out that she’s running against the mean and rich Keith Sinclair, who’s definitely pulling strings that shouldn’t be pulled to make sure that he wins no matter what. Once he gets in, he makes it clear that his plans are to make the school work for his friends and take funding away from any student groups that he’s not in himself. Only someone with Jackson’s skills will be able to steal the election back for Gaby, and he finds a very diverse group of students from around the school willing to help.

I’m glad that I was warned that there were a lot of people to try to keep track of. Usually, I expect the author to make the characters memorable for me without too much effort on my part, but since Jen at Jen Robinson’s Book Page said that this was tricky, I paid extra attention to the names at the beginning. Once into the story, it’s fast, furious, and very funny, with a group of very likeable characters. The villains are definitely one-dimensional, but that actually kind of adds to the fun in this kind of story. Jackson and Gabriella are both nicely developed – Jackson with his precise list of rules for cons and his seriousness about basketball; Gabriella with her devotion to the campaign and basketball. The kids felt older and cooler than I remember eighth grade being – but that might add to the appeal for middle school readers. It isn’t speculative fiction, but this is a very enjoyable book! I’m going to save it for my son to read in a couple years, as it’s just perfect for middle school.

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Bad Luck Girl for 48HBC

Posted on June 7, 2014 by Katy K.

Bad Luck GirlBad Luck Girl. American Fairy Trilogy Book 3 by Sarah Zettel. Random House, 2014.
At the end of the last book, Golden Girl, Callie defeated the Seelie King and freed her parents from his clutches. Everything should be just fine now, right? Well, not so much. For starters, Callie is still haunted by having been tricked into killing Ivy Bright, the Seelie King’s daughter. Then, it turns out that the Seelie King is not quite so defeated as all that, and has used her actions as an excuse to launch a war against the Unseelie Court. And while Callie loves her parents, it’s hard to have people telling her what to do when she’s been on her own for so long, hard to have her parents so absorbed in each other when she was used to having her mother to herself. Plus, her feelings for Jack have been growing more complicated, but with the random magical people she meets calling her Bad Luck Girl and all the people who’ve wound up dead from helping her, she’s really not sure she should be staying anywhere close to him. For the first time, too, she meets other people somewhat like herself – the Halfers, half fairy, half human, or half magic and half something else entirely. Her father shocks her with the strength of his prejudice against them, but Callie can’t just watch them be used as fuel for the war, forced to fight for whichever side gets to them first.

It’s all a lot to handle for a girl who’s just about to celebrate her fifteenth birthday. Callie manages with a combination of rising to the need and running off blindly into danger thinking dark thoughts about how her parents don’t trust her to do anything on her own, which actually felt about right. All four of them – Callie, her parents, and Jack – have fled as far as Chicago, where they take refuge in the slums with Jack’s none-to-friendly brothers. The chapters are all named for jazz tunes of the era, but whether it was because I don’t know jazz as well as the gospel tunes used in Golden Girl or because there’s not as much music in the story, the music didn’t feel as much an integral part of the story in this book as it did in the last one. The scene where Callie and her father work magic by playing piano together was really cool, though, and there’s a playlist at the back, so I could listen to the music if I were feeling motivated to track the songs down.

Especially since I read this partly for its diverse contents, I should note that I really like the way race is handled in this series, striking just the right balance between too much obvious attention being called to it without good reason and characters who aren’t affected by their background at all. In this book, traveling through highly segregated states, Callie’s parents (her black father and white mother) are in real danger of being separated or just thrown off the train. Jack, who’s mostly tried to avoid people knowing that he’s Jewish, has to face his heritage head-on as he comes back to the home he ran away from. Callie’s struggle in this book revolves more around what it means to be half human and half fairy than trying to pass as white, but all of these mixtures are a very important part of who she is. All in all, this was a satisfying end to one of my favorite recent series.

I will note once again, for the record, that Sarah Zettel was friends with my love in college, and indeed brought him into the group where I later met him (after she’d left). She still lives in town and we run into her at cafes every couple of years. While I’m very grateful to Sarah for indirectly introducing me to my love, I would not still be reading and buying her books if I didn’t really enjoy them on their own merits.

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