I identified with Keri immediately because in the first chapter she explains that she likes to be prepared. She has plans for every possible disaster, keeps emergency supplies in her bedroom, that sort of thing. But of course, she does not have a plan for what to do when her beloved older brother kills himself. Unless it turns out to be murder, as her childhood friend Janna suspects. It turns out that Keri’s brother is part of a pattern of “suicides” that includes Janna’s brother, her friend Sione’s brother, and ten years’ worth of other oldest brothers, all from different parts of New Zealand, who have visited their idyllic resort town for the New Year’s festivities. The three only have a short time until New Year’s comes around again to identify this year’s victim and find the killers.

I loved Healey’s last book, Guardian of the Dead, and I loved this. For many of the same reasons: believable, flawed friendships between fully realized characters; sensitive handling of sex (and the lack thereof); a stunning sense of place. The magic felt a bit less organic here than in Guardian and required more suspension of disbelief for some reason; I kept waiting for a twist, that it wasn’t what the kids thought, but nope — it pretty much was, and was an idea we’ve all seen before, and therefore had something of a “Buffy monster-of-the-week” feel, like with established characters all of this could have happened in 50 minutes on TV.

So while this feels less original than Guardian (with the exception of the New Zealand setting, which is unusual enough to get a bunch of automatic originality points for an American audience), it was no less fun to read. I chewed through it in one day, home sick recovering from BEA. Healey is an outstanding writer with a gift for dialogue, characterization, and foreshadowing. She drops hints along the way that only seem sinister in retrospect, but doesn’t make us wait for the characters to catch up to what we’ve already figured out. And she weaves race, class, and sexuality (and, in this case, temporary disability) into the story in such a way that it feels like she’s creating real people rather than checking character traits off a PC list.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the role of fear in my own life, and how to avoid sacrificing long-term sanity for short-term peace of mind. I said at the beginning that I identified with Keri’s need to plan for every eventuality. At the end she says, “I still planned for possibilities, but it was easier to recognize the planning as part of the anxiety and not being about real things that might actually happen,” and it was eerily like reading words from my own head.
…

SPOILERS (which might be interesting if you’re not going to read the book, since (surprise!) I go off on a tangent)

One of my favorite things about Healey’s books is how the magic has lasting consequences — good and bad. At the end of Guardian the earthquakes had still happened and people needed to clean up afterwards. And at the end of this, people do start losing their jobs and leaving Summerton. That is the consequence of putting an end to the spell that demanded the boys as sacrifice. (It’s implied that the town is going to be okay anyway, which is maybe a cop-out considering how similar West Coast towns are described as “ghost towns.”) “Dystopia” is the big buzzword right now, but this is a dystopia in the truest sense — it aims for utopia and misses horribly, and we see that from the inside.

It made me think of Ursula K. LeGuin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.” (If you’ve never read it, the text is behind that link. It’s very short and I think it’s pretty much required modern reading.) To what lengths are we willing to go to keep the places we love safe and prosperous? Is there any amount of sacrifice that’s worth it? We (and here I’m making some assumptions about my readership) are, of course, all citizens of Omelas or Summerton — enjoying our cheap and plentiful fuel and food and material goods at the expense of the impoverished people who create those things for us. There are ways to walk away from Omelas, to go off the grid, but almost no one does it because the pull of the comfort and safety and community is far too strong. (And because — and this is something not allowed for in the parameters of LeGuin’s story — maybe it’s better to stay and try to change things from the inside?)

I think that’s why it took people who had been damaged by the Summerton spell to finally see the rot at the core of the town. The pain of losing their brothers was enough to intrude on the cocoon. Everyone else chose to look away, and the coven members themselves — who, like the people of Omelas (and us), know and are making a fully conscious choice — find ways to justify it.

Also reviewed by: Pink Me, Wandering Librarians, and Bookshop

In the French fairy tale on which this is based, one sister is kind to a fairy/witch/whathaveyou and is blessed to have jewels and flowers drop from her mouth when she speaks. The second sister goes to demand the same blessing, but because of her rudeness is cursed with toads and snakes. In this twist, the snakes and toads are a blessing of a different sort — toads are lucky and snakes are revered as rat-catching symbols of the goddess Naghali. The setting is a fictionalized polytheistic 17th century India, occupied by fictionalized pseudo-Muslims who call themselves Believers.

Tana and her mother Hiral are the only family Diribani has left after her father, Hiral’s second wife, dies. Miracle of miracles, they actually love each other; no wicked stepmother and sister here. Newly impoverished, both sisters want to keep the family together, but the goddess’s blessings make that impossible. Diribani wants to share her gift, but nearly starts a riot during a parade for the visiting prince and is taken to his palace far away for her protection. Tana’s gift is feared by the Believers. The prince orders her and Hiral to live in the temple grove outside the village, where her beasties can quietly slither off to the forest. They are sad to be separated, but it seems for the best.

But of course it’s not that simple. Diribani has a hard time fitting in with her new companions, who are Believers and royalty to boot. The wicked, greedy local governor drives Tana out and wants Diribani and her jewels for himself. And of course both girls fall for men they think they can’t have.

I liked the delicate interplay between the two religions. The Believers are an occupying power, yes, but they are only portrayed as evil at the beginning, while they’re still “the other” — as Diribani gets to know them she comes to appreciate their customs. I also liked Diribani’s and Tana’s separate quests to determine what Naghali intends for them to do with her gifts. Both girls have quite believable crises of faith, but the goddess never really forsakes them. This is an unabashedly religious book in a way that modern readers will relate to, I think, even though the religion is made up. There was also a surprising amount of complex political intrigue; I can see this appealing to fans of Megan Whalen Turner’s The Thief.

None of the characters ever particularly grabbed me, unfortunately. There’s too much “oh woe, I am a plain/useless/lazy girl; my sister is so much better than me” from both sisters, though that improves some once they start traveling and having adventures. The book struck me as a bit overwritten, with a lot of unnecessary explanation of thoughts and feelings that were obvious. But the descriptions were certainly gorgeous, and Allegra and I both loved the fairy tale “twist.” Most importantly, a lot more happens than in Tall Story, and on that basis we thought it would be more appealing to young readers. I had a blast chatting with Allegra about these books, as she is a young teenager herself and therefore very differently qualified than I am to judge kid appeal!

Also reviewed by: My Library Card Wore Out (my co-judge), Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog (who sent it on to our round of Nerds Heart YA), The Book Smugglers, and Forever Young Adult.

I can’t believe it took me so long to read this after how much I loved the author’s Dairy Queen trilogy. Unsurprisingly, I really enjoyed this too, though it is a quite different book. Ben’s voice couldn’t be more different from DJ’s: where DJ is plainspoken and even sometimes inarticulate, Ben writes like Oscar Wilde. I was reminded of M. T. Anderson’s Octavian Nothing, written in old-fashioned language with the kind of humor that grows naturally out of such a style. It’s challenging, but entertaining enough that I think a lot of fantasy fans will push through it.

My favorite thing about the book is Ben’s growth as a character. Most of the time, the YA fantasy heroine’s arc is one of discovering self-confidence: the confidence to make her way in the world, to believe in her own competence, etc. This is, of course, a pretty common arc of real-life YAs. And it’s part of Ben’s story, but the other part is that she actually is pretty incompetent at first. She’s likeable enough, and you sympathize with her harsh treatment by the Queen… but you can also see that while the Queen maybe isn’t using the kindest methods, she does legitimately need to whip her stubborn, uneducated heir into shape. Montagne needs a Queen, and like it or not, that’s Ben’s job. Watching Ben realize that and come to take pride in her role was so satisfying. I love a heroine who screws up a lot.

My only serious objection to Princess Ben is from a fat acceptance standpoint. She’s fat, she doesn’t particularly care, she doesn’t lose weight despite the Queen’s best efforts (because dieting doesn’t necessarily work), I’m all set up for a positive fat character without a weight-loss arc… and then she returns from a climactic mid-book adventure having lost weight. Which might not have bothered me — she’s an underfed prisoner, after all — but it coincides, of course, with her maturation into a responsible future Queen. So close, Ms. Murdock, so close.

Overall, slightly offbeat castles-and-magic fantasy for fans of Shannon Hale, the Farsala trilogy, and Flora Segunda.

Also reviewed by: Abby (the) Librarian, Em’s Bookshelf, and Feminist Review.

Wisdom’s Kiss is a companion book, though you don’t really need to have read Princess Ben first. Ben is the grandmother of one of the two main characters: Queen Temperance and her younger sister Wisdom (known as Dizzy, a far more accurate description of her nature). Hoo boy, are there a lot of characters in this book! And they all get voices via letters or memoirs, plus there’s a play and an Encyclopedia of Exposition and probably some other things I’m forgetting. The plot, more or less, is that Dizzy is engaged to marry Roger, Duke of Farina. On their way to the wedding, Dizzy and Ben pick up Trudy, a bar wench who can sense the future. She’s excited to be reunited with her long-lost childhood sweetheart, Tips, who she thinks is a soldier in the capitol. It turns out that Tips has actually joined the circus, and at a performance in Dizzy’s honor, he and Dizzy fall in love at first sight. Dizzy wants out of her engagement, which is of course politically problematic, but even more so when it turns out that her wedding to Roger is all part of Roger’s ambitious mother’s plan to take over Montagne, which threatens Temperance at home.

Whew! You got all that? Yeah, me neither, a lot of the time. I commend the author for her ambition, but there’s kind of too much going on in this book. It would be fun to teach in an English class; you could do exercises on unreliable narrators, exposition, point of view, and on and on. It was a little overwhelming to read, though, and distracted me from actually getting to know any of the characters. Maybe I’m boring, but I found the more straightforward Princess Ben a much more enjoyable read.

Spoiler alert:

Trudy doesn’t end up with Tips, which I liked. That’s believable — they haven’t seen each other in 6 years, and it’s realistic that he’d move on to Dizzy. But it’s so set up that Temperance and Trudy will end up together. Trudy is pulled to Montagne by a sense of unfathomable future joy; when they meet, the narration goes on and on about how important they will become in each other’s lives; there’s even an offhand remark about how Roger’s older brother married a dude, so gay marriage is accepted in this world (though maybe not for queens who need blood heirs?). And again, Murdock gets so close and then pulls back! Trudy, we’re told, eventually marries some random guy; Temperance must marry — she has a son — though we don’t even find out to whom. Cop. Out. In my head, their marriages are shams and they love only each other.

E-galley of Wisdom’s Kiss generously provided via NetGalley.

Also reviewed by: Night Reader and The Novel Gnome.

“Strong female character” is one of those shorthand memes that has leached into the cultural groundwater and spawned all kinds of cinematic clichés: alpha professionals whose laserlike focus on career advancement has turned them into grim, celibate automatons; robotic, lone-wolf, ascetic action heroines whose monomaniacal devotion to their crime-fighting makes them lean and cranky and very impatient; murderous 20-something comic-book salesgirls who dream of one day sidekicking for a superhero; avenging brides; poker-faced assassins; and gloomy ninjas with commitment issues.

Or the YA versions, typically found in fantasy or historical fiction: the girl who dresses up as a boy to fight or do some other “male” activity; the girl who hates the feminine tasks assigned her and runs off to do boy stuff instead; the girl who saves the world with her ass-kicking skills.

Chocano acknowledges that the original goal of “strong female characters” was “strong” as in “interesting or complex or well written,” and that is certainly the goal of these YA characters as well. Too often, though, the thing that makes them interesting or complex is the fact that they don’t want to do what their society expects of them as women. They buck their culture’s expectations while fitting neatly into the reader’s. What girl would want to be stuck with no options but cooking and sewing and getting married? By modern standards, a girl who submits to those restrictions couldn’t possibly be strong.

But that ends up implying that cooking and sewing and raising a family can’t be strong things to do — or more to the point, that they can’t be strong things to want, since to be strong a YA character must go after what she wants. (Though that’s a pretty American attitude — it could also be strong to submit to what one doesn’t want for the good of the many. But that’s a discussion for another time.) I would love to see more YA historical fiction and fantasy with more strong (as in complex, interesting, and possessed of inner strength) female characters who aren’t strong (as in wielding a sword).

Arianna of Wandering Librarians writes more about that inner strength idea.

The writing is lovely, I suppose, but I was disappointed by this book (which everyone else on the internet loves, so my opinion shouldn’t necessarily dissuade you from reading it). None of the characters felt real. The entire time I felt like I was reading through wavy glass or something — the images were beautiful, but kept at a distance, not solid.

In this world homosexuality is unquestioned (at least for women… I don’t remember any gay male couples mentioned) — that felt slightly off given the very traditional medieval fantasy trappings of the rest of the world, but okay. It was nice to read a lesbian YA fantasy in which the relationship gets to proceed like any hetero romance. And it set up a good progression from Sidhean, the otherworldly lover of her childhood who represents escape, to Kaisa, the grounded adult relationship who helps Ash want to live in reality.

But the novel brought up so many other issues that could have been fascinating but were never really explored. The story starts with a conflict between the old ways (“greenwitch” magic) and new science. Ash’s mother believes in the old magic, while her father doesn’t; it’s their major fight, and it’s implied that both died because the town greenwitch wasn’t allowed to care for them her way. The scientific medical establishment has only progressed as far as leeches, so I suppose this isn’t a surprise — but that eliminates any interesting conflict between the two ways of life. We know that fairies exist, so we know that magic works; we know that medical science is dumb because ha ha, leeches. The former is represented by Ash’s beloved mother; the latter by her abusive stepmother. It’s too easy.

And then there are the class issues. The stepmother tells Ash that her father left a lot of debt, and it’s Ash’s responsibility to work it off. She cooks, she cleans, she is her stepsisters’ ladies’ maid. We’re meant to bemoan her fall from the leisure class, but what about servants who’ve been servants all their lives? Ash befriends some of them at another house that her stepfamily visits, and they seem perfectly happy with their circumstances — is it fine just because they have better masters? And the huntress has her own servants, who simply bow in and out and are given no character at all. One of Ash’s trials as a servant is that her time is not her own, to visit Sidhean or Kaisa — what about Kaisa’s servants? Don’t they have lovers they might like to visit, rather than hovering around waiting for their mistress to call them? This is mentioned in passing, but it’s never really dealt with, and it’s something that almost always bugs me in fairy tale retellings. Why should we cheer when a character aspires to have servants but be saddened when she has to be one?

Also reviewed by: The Book Smugglers and Racebending

It is, of course, “to be continued.” Sigh.

Cover: The top image is of the final cover. The bottom image is of the cover on the ARC I have, which I vastly prefer. The mask is pretty, but it could be any fantasy with Venetian-inspired masked balls and whatnot. The discarded cover expresses more effectively, I think, the otherworldliness of the story and its characters. Plus, those colors! So striking. Ah, well. I will treasure my ARC, anyway.

Also reviewed by: Reading Rants, ABQ Teen Readers, and Ramblings of a Teenage Novelist.

ARC generously provided by the editor.

Okay, let’s get the totally unavoidable Harry Potter comparisons out of the way. The first third of the book is made up of the requisite “Sunny sees the magical world and starts magic school” sequences, and I couldn’t stop drawing parallels. There’s Diagon Alley Leopard Knocks, full of wonder for Sunny, where the kids buy the books they’ll need for their magical education. There’s Dumbledore Anatov, the wise teacher who tosses them into danger without ever giving them quite enough information. There’s the mysterious, dead magical relative whom Sunny’s family won’t discuss. There’s the scene where Sunny breaks a magical rule to terrify a bully and is taken to the Ministry of Magic Obi Library to be punished. And of course, there’s the team of untrained kids who must save the world.

Here’s the thing, though: it doesn’t matter. “There are only x stories in the world” and all that, and the details of this one are fabulous and original enough to distinguish itself. Okorafor’s imagination is just as boundless as Rowling’s (and in fact her magic holds together better), and she has created just as immersive a world.

And I’m kind of burying the lede here, but: it’s not a white world. Kids who love fantasy — white kids, black kids, everybody — devoured Harry Potter, but Hogwarts grew from a very particular British fantasy tradition and boarding school tradition, and with a few secondary character exceptions, everyone’s British and white.

I don’t think there’s a single white character in Akata Witch. And not only that, but the American characters — the only Westerners — are singled out for their Americanness; being American is Other, even explicitly in the title. Nigeria, an African country, is portrayed as a place where normal people live out their lives — not crushingly impoverished people, not people in a war zone, but kids and adults who go to school and have jobs and cell phones. Sunny’s parents had jobs in the U.S. and chose to move back to Africa. I don’t even know how to say how rare that is in an American children’s novel.

Stacy Whitman of Tu Publishing talks about “mirrors” and “windows”:

mirrors to see your own experience reflected back, windows to see into another world. Author Zetta Elliott recently added a dimension to that which I like, the idea of “sliding glass doors” to walk in and experience someone else’s world.

Akata Witch is a much-needed mirror for African-American kids and West African kids who like fantasy, and a heck of a rich, entertaining sliding door for everyone else. Highly recommended.

(Also highly recommended is the rest of Stacy’s 3-part piece on diversity in children’s literature, which begins here.)

Also reviewed by: The Happy Nappy Bookseller, Brooklyn Rail, and Waking Brain Cells. Odnani gives some fascinating background about the Igbo magical tradition from which the book draws.

I have been a Diana Wynne Jones fan as long as I can remember, since the hilarious Lives of Christopher Chant wandered into my life — probably at a Scholastic book sale. Her books are by turns funny, clever, and often deeply weird. I haven’t read nearly all of them, but almost every one I read as a child left a haunting mark. Far too many are out of print and unknown to my students, though I’m working on that.

I have a great deal of work-reading responsibilities right now, but I think I’ll do a Diana Wynne Jones June. Christopher, Millie, Sophie, and Polly are calling to me. All my gratitude for the stories.

I already re-posted the blurb for Rot & Ruin, the winner. Before the finalists were announced, I’d already reviewed Ship Breaker and Guardian of the Dead. Here’s what’s left:

PLAIN KATE, by Erin Bow: Plain Kate the carver’s daughter is such a skilled carver herself that the townspeople call her “witch-blade.” After her father’s death the town shuns her out of fear, which is just fine with Kate and her pet stray cat Taggle… until they decide she really is a witch who needs burning. Kate and Taggle escape with the help of a mysterious sorcerer named Linay, who asks for only one price — Kate’s shadow. One of my very favorite books I read this year.

Reviewed by Steph Su Reads, Miss Print, and Finding Wonderland.

THE WAGER, by Donna Jo Napoli: Retelling of an Italian folktale in which a frivolous spendthrift makes a deal with the devil that he can’t wash, cut his hair, or change his clothes for years. Unlike most deals with the devil, this one turns out to be a great idea!

Reviewed by Miss Print and Finding Wonderland.

POD, by Stephen Wallenfels: Aliens land and trap everyone inside. Why? Who the hell knows?

Reviewed by Miss Print.

BRAIN JACK, by Brian Faulkner: Like reading a video game while watching the movie Hackers on one screen and a SyFy late-night movie marathon on another. If this sounds good to you, you’ll like it.

Reviewed by Steph Su Reads and Miss Print.