Basically, Prentisstown is a human settlement on an alien planet. There was a war with the natives, who were wiped out — but not before they released some nasty biological warfare in the form of Noise. Noise killed all the women in Prentisstown and left the men able to hear each others’ thoughts, all the time, whether they want to or not. (Noise also makes animals talk, so if talking dogs are your thing, well, here you go. Just remember that this came out before Up whenever Manchee barks, “Squirrel!”)

Todd is the last boy in Prentisstown, about to become a man when he turns thirteen in a month. But shit is going ill, and even though he doesn’t understand any of it, he and his dog need to run, now, into the rest of New World beyond the swamp. He’d always been taught there was nothing beyond Prentisstown, but it turns out that a lot of what he thought he knew is a lie…

“Everything he thought he knew was a lie” books are some of my favorites. I love tragic misunderstandings and deep secrets that slowly unfold. Books that take place on other planets are ideal for this (think Speaker for the Dead and The Sparrow), and I realized it had been way too long since any of my SF had been other-world rather than Earth’s-future.

Knife is an outstanding book. I gobbled it up in two days and will be reading the sequel as soon as I can get my grubby paws on it. My only gripes (because criticisms are more interesting to write about than kvells):

• It’s actually too fast-paced. Riding a roller-coaster for two days straight started to make me sick, rather than exhilarated.
• I figured out the secrets long before the book laid them out. Which was doubly annoying because the characters figured them out long before the book saw fit to share with the rest of the class. Ness seemed to think he needed to hold on to them for the bang-up conclusion, but there was enough interesting stuff going on that it would have been fine if he’d paid them out earlier, after he’d given enough clues that they were pretty obvious anyway. For a book that’s about what an overabundance of information does to people, Ness’s characters are infuriatingly stingy with theirs.

  SPOILER

• I’ve never bought into the “Come to the Dark Side, Luke” school of boss battles. It strikes me as an artificial valorizing of innocence. Not that I know what I’m talking about — I’ve never killed anyone — but it seems to me that a nuanced, mature person ought to be able to make a moral distinction between Being a Killer and killing that one evil dude who has been chasing you without mercy for the whole damn book. (Sure, Todd’s thirteen, but the whole book is about his journey to manhood, so I think he counts as “mature” by the end.)

  I get that in this case, it was more not wanting to give in to Prentisstown’s crazy worldview than real belief that Todd would be a horrible person if he killed Aaron. I felt much better about it all after Viola killed him herself. But there was far too much discussion of Todd’s Boy Who Wouldn’t Kill purity for my taste — like, when did he become Harry Potter? Why is he special? You know I hate destiny books anyway, and here the destiny felt tacked-on. He’s a more interesting character if he’s just a victim of circumstance.

  Also reviewed at: Allow me to introduce you to Asking the Wrong Question, my new favorite blog about smart stories (books and TV). Her posts are long — really, really long — but worth it.

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In a post-apocalyptic U.S., now called Panem, the merciless Capitol rules the twelve Districts. The Capitol gets all the good food, all the advanced technology, all the comforts; all most District people get is work and hunger. To remind the Districts who’s in charge, every year the Capitol forces each District to choose at random a boy and a girl as tributes. The twenty-four lucky kids are contestants in the Hunger Games: a fight to the death, broadcast throughout Panem as the ultimate reality show entertainment.

Catching Fire – SPOILERS for Hunger Games, of course (and you don’t want to be spoiled)

Why do they go back to the Games? At first I thought it was a lame choice — this is what the readers want, so back we go. The same reason you can’t have Harry without Hogwarts.

But I think it sets up a necessary parallel. In the 74th Games, each contestant is out for him or herself, and just trying to get home — until Katniss and Peeta subvert that by becoming the first pair of victors. In the 75th Games, the contestants from a number of Districts work together, and people from the Capitol are helping as part of the underground resistance. The Games are a microcosm of what’s going on in Panem at large. The Games are what the book is about, so that’s how we have to see the change in the world, and the beginning of the rebellion that presumably we’ll follow in book 3.

I love, by the way, seeing a rebellion built over such a period of time in YA SF. Usually these rebellions feel wrapped up too quickly — ta da, the world is changed, thanks to some scrappy kids with good luck! Now I want to re-read the Uglies series, which I remember as having a similar slow progress of the rebellion, with a similar broad-scale feel implying heroes we don’t know in cities we never see.

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Gingerbread bills itself as “edgy,” with cover quotes from Teen People, Elle Girl, and Twist magazines rather than other authors, and a cover featuring a punky girl with platform boots. But it’s basically your average finding-yourself novel: Cyd hates living with her mom and stepdad, so she acts like a brat until they send her to her “Bio-Dad,” where she learns about her past and becomes more comfortable with her present and future. Sure, she’s a little “wild,” and — ooooh — she makes out with a guy who’s too old for her, but it’s really all pretty tame.

Despite the totally generic plot, something about the writing stuck with me. It has a strong sense of place (San Francisco and New York), which is a kink of mine.

Plus I got caught up in the Francesca Lia Block-esque stream-of-consciousness:

I thought about it on the plane ride home to San Francisco, my new ultra fantastico tribute commune to all things ginger…. Sid and Nancy will chill on the whole scene because we will serve them ginger tea laced with mellow vibes, and just the thought of all those gingerbread-house colors will keep Nancy occupied, coordinating peppermint-stick patterns and LifeSaver-stained glass windows, and will keep Sid-dad on his toes, worrying about cost overruns and labor laws.

Yeah, ok, it’s totally overwritten — but can’t you just taste those ginger-flavored LifeSaver windows?

Anyway, it took me awhile to get into it — mostly because I couldn’t tell whether the book was going to admit that Cyd was being a brat — but I ended up enjoying it in spite of myself. Ooh! And apparently there are sequels!