Category: Young Adult

From Beijing to France, with Cyborgs and Lunars

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews, Science Fiction, Young Adult9 Comments

I’m waiting in line at the library for Cress, the third book in the Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer.  Waiting turned out to be a good thing…because it gave me time to reread the first two books, Cinder and Scarlet.  You can click the links for my original reviews, but I thought I’d do a quick re-read review too!  (Some spoilers to follow for Cinder)  These are sci fi, but since they retell fairy tales, I’m still counting them for Once Upon a Time.

The Lunar Chronicles are set a vague but significant distance in the future. Earth has formed itself into seven countries, all at peace–but in an uneasy truce with the Lunar Colony, ruled by the cruel Queen Levana.  Lunars possess magic-like abilities to manipulate the minds of others, and no one is more powerful than Queen Levana.

Cinder is a teenage girl living in New Beijing, a gifted mechanic–and a cyborg.  Despised by society and her adoptive mother, her best friend is Iko, a robot with an overactive personality chip.  Her path crosses that of Prince Kai, shortly before the annual ball (can we see where this is going?)  At the same time, life begins to spiral out of control for both of them–Cinder’s sister is deathly ill with the letumosis plague, Cinder begins to find out startling revelations about her own past, and the death of Kai’s father forces him to take the lead in dangerous political dealings with Queen Levana.

My favorite thing about Cinder may be that she is just so level-headed.  I never understood Cinderella’s relationships in the original story, but I love how Meyer has reimagined things for Cinder.  She has no choice but to stay with her adoptive mother, because as a cyborg she’s legally property.  Cinder is fiercely loyal to her kind younger sister, and her robot friend, so we know she cares about people…but she doesn’t fall immediately under Kai’s spell.  Oh, there’s a crush going on…but she keeps perspective about it all.  It feels like how someone might legitimately feel about a near-stranger they’re attracted to.

I love a Cinderella who would rather run away and start her own life than go to some ball and dance with a cute prince.  Not that she wouldn’t like to dance with the cute prince, but she has priorities!

Oddly enough, much as I love the not-ridiculously-fast romance, it backfires to a certain extent in that I don’t find myself especially rooting for Cinder and Kai as a romantic couple.  Cinder gave us the very beginning of a romance for them…and I hope subsequent books will give us more so I can get more invested in them as a pair.

My other favorite part is Cinder’s amazing cyborg abilities–from the relatively mundane, like having a cabinet in her calf, to the really awesome like being able to detect lying.  They’re woven throughout the book in a very cool way.

Scarlet picks up right where Cinder left off.  Cinder is now a fugitive from both Queen Levana and the Earth authorities, and winds up joining forces with the dashing Captain Thorne.  In his stolen spaceship, they’re on the trail of information about the missing Lunar heir, Princess Selene.  The trail takes them to France, to intersect with our other heroine of the book, Scarlet.  Scarlet is desperate to find her grandmother, who vanished two weeks previously.  She meets Wolf, a street fighter who fluctuates between gentle and fierce, who may have a clue to her grandmother’s abduction.  Although she doesn’t really trust him, Wolf is her only help, and they set out together for Paris.

I liked Cinder, but I really liked Scarlet.  Scarlet is fiery, impulsive, and even more fiercely loyal than Cinder.  And unlike Cinder and Kai, I definitely got behind this romance.  Yes, it’s fast–yes, it doesn’t always make sense–yes, I know all that…but it just works.  Although I tend to like Brooding Heroes with Hearts of Gold (it’s a thing), so that may be a factor…

And a purely personal aspect that will probably not matter nearly as much to anyone but me–a big chunk of the book takes place in the Opera Garnier!  It’s never identified by name, but trust me, it’s the Opera Garnier, former home of the Phantom of the Opera, and Meyer clearly researched the floor plan.

With broader appeal…much as I enjoyed Scarlet’s storyline, I also enjoyed Cinder’s storyline, which kicked into a higher gear in this installment–and how can I not love Captain Thorne, roguish and charming, if not quite as charming as he thinks he is.  I have this thing about arrogant charmers too, so this book was just hitting all my favorite hero-types.

I have to say, I am even more excited for Cress now, which was kind of the point…that, and making sure I’d actually remember who everyone was when I picked up the new book!  I also snagged on to a possible clue about Cress in the first book that I’m sure I didn’t spot on a first read, and I can’t wait to find out if my guess is right. 🙂

Let’s see…#15 in line, and with 27 copies circulating, that’s not so bad!

Don’t forget, you can win a signed copy of my fairy tale retelling, The Wanderers! Just put #WanderersGiveAway in your comment to enter.  Ten days left!

Author’s Site: http://www.marissameyer.com/

Buy them here: Cinder and Scarlet

Hatching a Gryphon, and a Lot of Chaos

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews, Young Adult9 Comments

After rereading all of Diana Wynne Jones’ Chrestomanci series, I think I may finally have a favorite–the final book, The Pinhoe Egg.  It’s a perfect blend of new characters, old friends, and high hilarity.  And a great fit for Once Upon a Time!

The Pinhoe family has been practicing their secret magic for generations, avoiding the eye of “the Big Man,” Chrestomanci, who is a kind of magic regulator for the government. The plot beyond that is…complicated.  When Gammer Pinhoe, clan matriarch, goes insane (possibly cursed by a rival magical family), chaos, upheaval, and magical feuds are inevitable.  And there’s a magical egg, long-held by the Pinhoes, which comes into the possession of Cat, ward of Chrestomanci Castle, and hatches into a baby gryphon.

I loved seeing Cat take center-stage again, even more than he did in the first (written, though not chronological) book, Charmed Life.  Cat in this book still struggles with trust and openness, but has also come into more confidence about himself and his abilities.  It’s a nice development from his previous book, while being remarkably consistent for two books written almost 30 years apart!

Centering much of the book around Chrestomanci Castle also meant seeing more of its other residents, and here was where I was especially glad that I’d read the whole series in order pretty quickly.  I’m sure that when I read this before, I’d forgotten who most of the supporting characters were.  This time I still had everyone in mind and could draw all the connections between books.

Along with familiar faces, there were delightful new characters too.  Marianne Pinhoe is our second major character, alongside Cat.  She has some parallels to Cat in the first book, actually, as someone with strong magic who has never fully realized it.  She’s less passive than Cat was, and spends much of the book trying to deal with problems no one else seems to be able to see.

The Pinhoes en masse (and especially Gammer Pinhoe) are a wonderful group, mixing humor deftly with much more sinister undertones.  They form an interesting contrast to the spell families in The Magicians of Caprona.  In both cases we have a busy, clannish family, full of aunts and uncles, fiercely proud of their magic and having an uncanny ability to know what’s going on with family members.  There, however, the Montanas clearly care about their young family members and want to protect, teach and encourage them.  The Pinhoes seem largely bent on stifling Marianne, or at least forcing her into the mold they consider appropriate.  Parents often come off very badly in Jones’ books, and this is a definite case where that happens.

But even with some sinister undertones, there are still hilarious incidents of magical mayhem, including a runaway kitchen table that rampages through town…

If I have one criticism of the book, it’s that I had to suspend disbelief on one of the central plot points.  The Pinhoes are supposed to be practicing magic secretly–and yet they seem to be very bad at hiding anything.  They’re practically on Chrestomanci’s doorstep, they fly around on brooms, and a cursed table runs down Main Street.  I honestly don’t know how Chrestomanci managed to not notice them.  Possibly they were only keeping their particular method of magic secret, not the fact of doing magic in general…but if that was the point, it wasn’t clear to me.  However…the rest of the book is so good that I’m willing to just run with that one idea and not ask too many questions!

So now that I’m at the end of my chronological reread, I do have some thoughts on reading order!  I think there’s actually a lot of room for flexibility, but the books can generally be looked at in pairs.  Charmed Life and The Pinhoe Egg; and The Lives of Christopher Chant and Conrad’s Fate each pair together and should be read in order–although you could make a case for reading either pair first!  Witch Week and The Magicians of Caprona are much more removed from the series and could be read at any point, although probably not first.  And the short stories in Mixed Magics really are best when read in connection to their relative books (see review for details!)

Got all that?  🙂  Maybe the real conclusion here is that it doesn’t matter all that much which order these are read in…because they’re just wonderful books anyway!  My favorites are chronologically at the beginning and the end, The Lives of Christopher Chant and The Pinhoe Egg, but every installment is excellent!

Author’s Site: http://dianawynnejones.com/

Other reviews:
A Journey Through Pages
Charlotte’s Library
Taking a Break
Anyone else?

Buy it here: The Pinhoe Egg

Following a Hero to the Top of the World

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews, Young Adult3 Comments

I launched my reading for Once Upon a Time with Hero by Alethea Kontis.  This also goes to my goal of reading more sequels, as it’s the follow-up to Enchanted.

Enchanted introduced us to the Woodcutter family, with their seven daughters, three sons, and penchant for stumbling into fairy tale situations.  Hero focuses on Saturday, the sixth daughter.  She’s spent her life out in the woods, felling trees with her father and brother, and dreaming of journeying in pursuit of a great destiny.  A series of mishaps leads to Saturday’s arrival at the mountain at the Top of the World, where she meets Peregrine and Betwixt.  Peregrine is an Earl’s son who was cursed by a witch’s daughter to assume her place on the mountain, and has been running around in masquerade (and a skirt) for uncounted years.  Betwixt is a magical creature who frequently shifts shape, but always to something combining animals (like a chimaera or a gryphon).  The three join forces to fight the witch, and the sleeping dragon under the mountain.

There’s quite a lot going on here…and I reduced half of it down to “a series of mishaps.”  I had trouble with the first several chapters of this book.  So much happens so quickly that I was beginning to get whiplash.  But then Saturday arrives at the Top of the World, where time moves much more slowly than the rest of the world…and the book slows down too. Rarely do I talk about a book slowing down as a good thing, but this was exactly what Hero needed.  The focus on only five characters on the mountain also helped…

In a way I had opposite problems to my experience with Enchanted–there, I rolled with the plot shifts but the romance felt insanely fast.  Here, the plot shifts were more dizzying, but the romance felt better.  The good news is that I still enjoyed both of these books!

The romance was not what I would call slow, but it still felt more like the normal YA book or chick flick speed.  Peregrine does fall pretty quick (but there’s a magical explanation about these visions he’s been having…) and Saturday holds out for a while longer.

One of the most interesting aspects of this book is the gender-reversal of the two leads.  Saturday is tall and strong and tough, a warrior who’s mistaken for her brother Jack.  Peregrine is described as effeminate, and spends most of the book in a skirt.  It’s a little vague on how much is who he really is, and how much is the curse, but it’s still the prevailing situation for most of the story.  In some ways the book is somewhat heavy-handed on the subject, but hey, I’m always happy to see a fierce heroine in fairy tales!

My favorite part may be Betwixt, the shape-changing creature with a snarky wisdom.  It seems to be a truth universally acknowledged that a hero in possession of a clever animal sidekick will find himself upstaged…

After a frenetic opening, Hero has a somewhat frenetic closing too, mostly (I think) setting up plot threads for the next book (which won’t be out for almost a year!)  That seems to be the fate of second books in a trilogy, and I felt satisfied by the plot threads that did wrap up…and I guess I’ll just have to wait until February, 2015 for the rest!

Author’s Site: http://aletheakontis.com/

Other reviews:
Fyrefly’s Book Blog
Good Books, Good Wine
The Book Smugglers
Anyone else?

Buy it here: Hero

Don’t forget, you can win a signed copy of my fairy tale retelling, The Wanderers! Just put #WanderersGiveAway in your comment to enter.

Enchanted by an Abundance of Fairy Tales

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews, Ruminations, Young Adult10 Comments

I’ve been seeing Enchanted by Alethea Kontis float around book review blogs for a couple of years, and it’s been on my To Be Read list all that time.  So have a lot of books, but I should have got to this one sooner, seeing as I have this thing about fairy tales…

The plot is, well, complicated.  Sunday is the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter (with three brothers besides).  One day she meets a talking frog named Grumble.  From there it’s “The Frog Prince,” which, upon Grumble’s restoration as Prince Rumbold, morphs into “Cinderella.”  Plus there’s a wicked fairy, a couple of different threads relating to “Tam Lin,” a bit of “Snow White,” a changeling child, and did I mention there are pirates?  Also a giant beanstalk, and a house shaped like a shoe…

According to the author’s note, and the evidence of the plot itself, Kontis set out to write a novel with as many elements of fairy tales as possible.  She seems to have succeeded…creating a plot that is a very fun ride, although at times you do have to just throw up your hands and go with it.

Mostly I didn’t find that too difficult, and I was willing to roll with all the new developments.  I mean, it’s an endless string of fairy tale elements.  That’s fun!

I have to confess I had a little more trouble with the romance and some of the characters’ choices.  Sunday and Grumble the frog fall in love very, very quickly.  Then when Grumble turns back into Rumbold, he doesn’t tell Sunday that he was the frog…for reasons I never quite understood.  There’s bad blood between their families, he thinks she won’t love him as a prince…so he invites her to three balls, which pretty much just shoves his princeliness in her face.  I don’t quite understand that decision either.  And yes, of course, Sunday falls in love with Rumbold very quickly too.

But, but, but–if you can suspend disbelief a bit, it is a fun ride.  And very fast romances are a particular pet peeve of mine, so you might be far less bothered.  Even I wasn’t bothered enough to not enjoy the book anyway.  I mean, endless fairy tales references!  Fun!

Author’s Site: http://aletheakontis.com/

Other reviews:
Fyrefly’s Book Blog
Charlotte’s Library
Katie’s Book Blog
Anyone else?

Buy it here: Enchanted

The Secret Side of Empty by Maria E. Andreu

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews, Young Adult2 Comments

Life seems to be perfect for M. T. in her senior year of high school–she’s a straight-A student who enjoys her classes, she has a great best friend she’s known since childhood, and there’s a cute boy interested in her.  But M. T. has a secret.  Her family is from Argentina, and they came into the United States illegally when M. T. was six.  As high school graduation approaches, M. T. feels trapped with no future–unable to go on to college, get a job, or even get a driver’s license.  With well-meaning pressure from friends, trouble at home, and a dearth of options, M. T.’s life begins to unravel.

The Secret Side of Empty by Maria E. Andreu was a departure from my typical fantasy and sci fi, but it’s about a real life situation I’m particularly drawn to.  My mom is an immigration attorney, so while I’m no expert myself, I’ve absorbed a fair bit on the subject.  M. T.’s story felt tragically real to me, a very accurate picture of the situation illegal immigrants can find themselves in.

This book deals with a lot of heavy issues.  The immigration is the core, but there are also boyfriend and academic problems, and the more serious topics of domestic abuse and suicide.  In some ways this is a huge amount for one book, but Andreu balances it very deftly by keeping everything circling around the immigration issue.  M. T.’s trapped feelings prompt her academic problems, and her father’s trapped feelings prompt the domestic abuse.  That escalates in part because M. T. and her mother are afraid to call the police…because they expect they would be deported.

M. T.’s narration of the story provides a strong, natural-sounding voice that contributes to making such a heavy book work so well.  The subject matter is heavy but the writing isn’t dense, and while the topics are hard, the reading itself is easy.  M. T.’s voice propels us through the story.

The immigration issue is clearly the center of this book, but the themes are universal as well.  That feels slightly contradictory, to say it’s all about immigration but it’s not…!  I think I mean that M. T.’s fear of the future, her keeping of secrets, her struggles with family and friends and finding a place in the world, are universal…even if the immigration issue is at the center of her particular struggle.

I wasn’t surprised when I got to the author’s note at the end of the book and Andreu explained that she grew up as an illegal immigrant too.  This is clearly a deeply personal, very real book.  I’m glad to know that her immigration story had a happy ending–and I’m glad she ended M. T.’s story on a hopeful note too!

Author’s Site: http://mariaeandreu.com/

Buy it here: The Secret Side of Empty

Disclaimer: I received an advance copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.