Parenthetical

Ever since the Cybils ended, I kept thinking I’d go back and review all the books I read for the Science Fiction & Fantasy panel. But it’s been like a month now, and I’m clearly not going to do that. (Note to self: next year, review as I go, even though I can’t post them [...]

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The sequel to Incarceron. No point in reading this review if you haven’t read the first book and are planning to, so SPOILERS AHEAD for both books! I wanted to love this. I really did. And there were many things I did love — it’s tense and thrilling in many places, and I was happy [...]

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I apologize for being slow on the posting; it’s been a rough week. But yay! Cybils winners! The fabulous YA Fantasy & Science Fiction panel chose… Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Maberry, the most deliciously brainy* zombie book you ever thought you didn’t want to read because you’re not into zombies. Read it anyway; you [...]

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5 out of 5! Nailer is a ship breaker — he works for a salvage operation on a Gulf beach, taking apart rusty oil tankers from the Accelerated Age (ahem, that would be us). Nailer lives day to day, barely making quota and avoiding his dad’s drug-addled rages — until a storm washes up the [...]

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Trella is a scrub, a denizen of the cramped, joyless lower levels whose job is to keep Inside clean for the wealthy Uppers. When her friend Cog introduces her to a guy who claims to know the location of the legendary Gateway to Outside, she gets involved despite herself and ends up starting a rebellion. [...]

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Incarceron is the ultimate prison: no way in, no way out. It was designed long ago to prove that even the dregs of humanity could create a paradise if properly managed, but the AI that manages the prison became sentient and turned it into a hell. Finn was born full-grown in Incarceron and remembers nothing [...]

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Autoshare for Hunger Games and cocktails: the long-awaited Hunger Games drinking game, including delicious-sounding cocktails like The Katniss (Pernod Absinthe, gin, bitters, & grapes) and The Cinna (balsamic, strawberries, & vodka). Why aren’t there more YA-themed cocktails and drinking games? Someone should do something about that. Thank you. (Thanks, Arianna!)

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Remember back in October, when I encouraged you to Kickstart Tu Publishing, a new independent press dedicated to multicultural YA genre fiction? Good news! Tu (now Tu Books) has been acquired as an imprint of Lee and Low! (Yes, I’m a little late to the party on this one; sorry.) They’ll publish 3 books per [...]

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Apocalypse how? Aliens. The Clordians didn’t want to compete with humans for habitable planets to colonize, so they wiped us out. The Clordian Sweep “rapid[ly] disintegrat[ed]… all carbon compounds, which destroyed all life.” (Not to mention all paper records of knowledge, all wooden structures… the thoroughness of this destruction is impressive.) Some people, plants, and [...]

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Sorry it’s been awhile. Fortunately the 7th grade trip to New York was not apocalyptic in the slightest. Anyway, speaking of New York, it’s the setting of today’s old-school apocalypse! In the future, everyone lives in vast suburban Tracts in little boxes made of ticky-tacky. All Cities have been evacuated and sealed, deemed too filthy [...]

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