The Different Girl by Gordon Dahlquist

The Different Girl by Gordon Dahlquist (Penguin - Dutton Juvenile) is one of the most interesting—and frustrating—books I read this year. Veronika is a girl; she lives on the island with her three sisters and Irene and Robbert. The girls’ parents died in a plane crash, and now, every day, they learn about learning…in a way that will tweak the brains of philosophers. They are observed, and they obey, and they struggle with a new idea: you must obey, but you must also decide.

When May washes up on the shore, after a storm that disrupts the supply boat schedule, the girls must unravel this mystery: who is the different one? Or are they not different, any of them?

The Different Girl draws from classic SF in a way that many YA books don’t in that it brings science and technology to the forefront, and it doesn’t wrap things up neatly, which is both a feature and a bug.

What makes this book tick:

   

1. Really, really trusts the reader. 
2.  Philosophical questions are embedded here; a good book for that reader who still asks "Why?"
3. An open ending (perhaps it’s a series; I prefer this as a standalone) that leaves room for discussion and imagination.
4.  Asks: what does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be different, and how is that constructed?

Dark Triumph by Robin LaFevers

Sybelle, assassin of the convent of St. Mortain, is Death's daughter--but she's also the daughter of d'Albret, who would kill you if the shadows on your face hinted of your disloyalty. Or maybe just because. In the war for Brittany to remain separate from France in the late 1400s, the convent takes the side of Brittany, and sends forth its assassins, including Sybelle, to murder those who are marqued for death.

Sybelle, however, is not easily led. She struggles with the rules of the game; she's not nearly the pawn others would have her be. When she has to flee with a mysterious knight who's been held in a secret dungeon, her mask is torn away, and she must fight openly. And somehow, she must be willing to face Death and all its attractions head on.

What makes this book tick:
1. Sybelle, Katsa, and Katniss deserve a quiet retreat together....
2. Subtle meditation on identity and faith wrapped up in a violent war setting.
3. Romance that does not require the heroine to take a back seat.

When We Wake by Karen Healey

When We Wake by Karen Healey (Little, Brown - Books for Young Readers) starts off in the not-so distant future--and in Melbourne, one of my very favorite cities. Tegan is your average teenager (without that awful "normal" boringness that sometimes pops up before stories take off). She's going to a protest with her friends, and she's in her first breath of love, and she's got a lot of life left to live. The next thing she remembers is waking up...a hundred years later. It's not as simple as taking the next breath; Tegan has to decide what to do in the world she has to inhabit.

What makes this book tick:
1. Dystopian elements extrapolated from modern-day Australian and other politics
2. Science and psychology
3. Rebellion!
4. Inventive story frame

All Our Yesterdays by Cristin Terrill

All Our Yesterdays by Cristin Terrill (Disney - Hyperion) wasn't in my most-urgent reading pile for the Cybils. The cover, while nicely done, fits the mold of a dozen other orange-blue "adventures" I've seen lately. But I thought I'd share this as an example of how all nominated books are being viewed and reviewed by the first round judges--it's great to open to the first pages and be surprised! After a bit of a mysterious start, the action is non-stop.

Em is imprisoned. What she knows is that she dreads the drain, and that Finn, on the other side of the vent, is her whole world, the only person she can talk to. Then, one day, she steals a spoon and opens the drain, and finds a letter, to her--from her. And there's one instruction: kill him.

What makes this book tick:

1. Time travel!
2. Nonlinear storytelling.
3. Questions about fate versus free will.

Conjured by Sarah Beth Durst

Oh, the Cybils and its abundance of riches. This year, it seems like review copies are coming in about two weeks later than normal, so I'm hustling along as best I can...

One book that stopped me in my reading tracks was Conjured by Sarah Beth Durst (Bloomsbury - Walker). Eve hardly knows anything that the agents in the protection program don't tell her. She needs instructions on the basics of everything in her life. But when she looks at the birds on the wallpaper, she can make them fly. She remembers...a magician, a storyteller, a circus, deaths. But when she uses her magic, when she remembers, she's sick and loses time. The only way to use her magic safely is to breathe it into Zach, a boy who can take it and shape it anew.

Who is she? What do her memories mean?

What makes this book tick:

• Memory as mystery
• Secrets! Lies!
• Meditation on humanity
• Following your heart to find justice

Antigoddess by Kendare Blake

Antigoddess by Kendare Blake (Macmillan - Tor Teen) swings away from the ghostly toward the gods. They aren't gone from this world, but they're trying their best to live quiet lives away from the stresses of being, well, gods. Now they're getting sick, and there's a war coming. Knock off another god, and you'll live longer...

What makes this book tick:

• Larger-than-life characters who are also still teens
• Sharp, dark writing
• Dark take on mythology, including the Trojan War
• Combines fantasy and horror

Paper Valentine by Brenna Yovanoff

Paper Valentine by Brenna Yovanoff (Penguin - Razorbill) has a sort of lazy, hot, oppressive feel to it, and not just because the book takes place in midsummer. Hannah has a friend who’s always hanging around; wherever she goes, Lillian goes too. The thing is, Lillian is dead. And pretty soon, she's not the only dead girl Hannah knows, since there's a killer leaving bloody valentines in the park.

What makes this book tick:

• Excellent imagery
• Believable teenagers
• Murder mystery
• Characters who don’t fit the everyday stock types

The Rose Throne by Mette Ivie Harrison

The Rose Throne by Mette Ivie Harrison (Egmont) gave me a lot to think about. It follows the lives of two princesses in what could be called rival kingdoms. Both are of an age where they’re expected to take on their royal duties and marry for strategy, and both has to push against the boundaries of what girls are allowed to do. What gives The Rose Throne an extra twist is that there are two kinds of magic—one that’s the province of women, and one the province of men. To have the “wrong” magic can be a death sentence…

What makes this book tick:

• Interesting gender-related magic
• …that gets deconstructed
• Romance
• High-level politics

The Bitter Kingdom by Rae Carson

This is one of my absolute favorite series from the past few years--yes, I have collected the set of ARCs and the set of hardbacks. Don't think there aren't paperbacks coming. And I've put off reading the novellas (something I usually skip when reading series) because I wanted to have one last bit left....

The tags feature should show you a few past reviews; I am loath to give away anything if you haven't started from the beginning. Start at the beginning! Suffice to say that The Bitter Kingdom by Rae Carson (HarperCollins - Greenwillow Books) wraps up the series in spectacular fashion.

What makes this book tick:

• More exploration of the idea that with great power comes great responsibility
• More complication of the relations between Elisa's kingdom and her neighbors
• Political intrigue!
• Kissing
• Sacrifice
• Acceptance of leadership
• Family relationships, and related self-esteem
• Negotiation
• Big, epic adventure

The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson

The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson (Scholastic - Arthur A. Levine) marks the first of my 2013 Cybils (short, spoiler-free) reviews. I've been saving up this review because, well, this is a hard book to put into a review without spoiling it, even just as an opening summary.

In a far, far future Brazil, in Palmares Tres, a sort-of enclosed city ruled with a heavy hand by its matriarchy, June is caught up in the cycle of the Summer Prince, the selection of men and boys who are political and social sacrifices. Enki wins over June and her best friend, Gil--and inspires June to greater artistic heights than ever before.

What makes this book tick:

• Complete teenage rawness--the idea of being abuzz with hormones and life, and perhaps never closer to foolish death
• The compelling, contradictory desire to both be seen and to be invisible
• The need to make some sort of mark on the world and to prove oneself
• Tension between generations
• Flawed characters who keep moving through space
• The intersection of art and technology, especially once it's out in the world for consumption
• On the literary side of SF--no hand-holding on the worldbuilding or when the plot changes streams
• Explorations of class within an imagined culture
• Politics and being socially aware

The Cybils 2013

I'm excited to say that I'll be returning as a first-round panelist for the 2013 Cybils in the young adult speculative fiction category. The Cybils are book awards selected by bloggers in areas ranging from book apps to nonfiction to picture books to young adult books (split into contemporary and speculative fiction because there are close to 500 books nominated between the two, nowadays, and only about two months to select a short list for each). You can nominate books to be considered from October 1-15,. A shortlist is announced January 1 and the winners are announced in February.

Mid-September until mid-October are my busiest time of year because of Sirens, but once that's over, you can expect posts about what I'm reading. Some years, I stay up until the nomination form opens because I'm always hoping I'll pick a winner (and I've had years when most of my picks hit the short list). This year, I'll have to focus on battling my reading nemesis, the fantastic Tanita Davis, who I think sneaked past me in the last few days of 2012 and read the most books in our division for the year.* I'm also thinking about changing up how I review during the Cybils; I think that quick "what makes it tick" posts for more books would be fun.



*The rules state that judges don't have to read the entire book. I've found that I start by reading 10 or 20, and then reading parts of the ones that I track down later on to see if they're competitive with what I've already read. Sadly, there's only room for a short list of finalists, and there are more great books than can make the cut.

A Last Round of Cybils Panic

The end of the year is upon us, the Cybils are winding down, and I'm turning pages as fast as I can. I just found a few minutes to schedule one last post blurbing a sample of the fantastic nominations in YA SF/F for 2012.


Vessel by Sarah Beth Durst (Simon and Schuster - Margaret K. McElderry) was a nice surprise, especially since her books haven't quite clicked with me in the past. Normally I wouldn't mention that, but I think it's a good thing to share--the idea that you might not be in love with this book, but you open every book hoping that that one will be the one. In this one, Liyana is ready to die so that her tribe's goddess will come into her and bring prosperity. She is prepared, practiced, and ready for the ceremonial dance--but her goddess never comes. She's cast out, because her people would never believe her goddess just couldn't get there to take over her human vessel, and Liyana has to decide how to reconcile her wish to live with her wish to serve her people.

In The Hunt by Andrew Fukuda (St. Martin's Griffin), Gene is alive. He doesn't hang from the ceiling. He doesn't stay up all night. He doesn't die in the sun. See where I'm going with this? Gene wins a dubious lottery: a chance to hunt down some real, live humans. Mmm. With some of his peers. Can he hide his true self and survive in this dangerous game?

Ismae is a handmaiden of death in Grave Mercy by R.L. LaFevers (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). She's impervious to poison, she can see who St. Mortain has marked for death, and she's a fantastic assassin, which leads to an assignment filled with court intrigue, secret identities, political maneuvering, and the choice between kissing and killing.






The Kairos Mechanism by Kate Milford (The Clockwork Foundry) has an interesting story outside of the story; it was a Kickstarter project by the author, and bridges the gap between The Boneshaker and The Broken Lands. Only a few hard copies were printed, and I think you should consider getting your hands on one if you can. Natalie Minks notices two boys coming from--well, nowhere, if you pay attention to where the roads go, and they're carrying the corpse of a man who either died yesterday or fifty years ago. Natalie could let it go, but she's not that kind of girl.

And so, then, you probably want to know about The Broken Lands, also by Kate Milford (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt - Clarion). In 1870s Brooklyn, when the under-construction Brooklyn bridge looms over a grittier, but no less vibrant NYC, a card sharp and a fireworks expert have to battle the forces of evil. Real history is braided masterfully with the supernatural in this book.







 All of these books are nominated in the YA SF/F category for the 2012 Cybils awards. These reviews are based on copies provided by their respective publishers, except for Grave Mercy, as I owned a copy.

Still More Cybils Panic

Can I mention all of the books I've read? All of the books I really liked this season? No, but I can blurb a few more...

Insignia by S.J. Kincaid  (Harper Collins - Katherine Tegen Books) is fast-paced military SF for fans of Ender's Game and Brain Jack. Tom is nobody, really, and neither is his no-good gambler of a dad. However, Tom is pretty good at video games, and at bluffing, which gets him a spot on an elite team of teenagers whose brains are, let's say, wired. In a future where countries fight for corporations, Tom has to fight the forces of evil that come with an executive washroom and an expense account, but he also has to figure out what's left when your brain is no longer your own.

Ashen Winter  by Mike Mullin (Tanglewood) is just as personally frightening as Ashfall was for me. Sure, it's been a while since Yellowstone blew up, covering the rest of the country with ash and sending temperatures dropping. Sure, we could just keep eating kale, one of the few things that will grow. But Alex's parents are still out there, looking for him, and he can't just wait for them to come home.

When I picked up The Infects by Sean Beaudoin (Candlewick), I knew I'd be in for a ride. See, I don't always know exactly what is going on in Beudoin's books. They're so weird. But I am so glad they're out there. In The Infects, a kid is on his way to camp for juvenile delinquents. And then there are zombies. And it's weird, okay? If you like things a little absurd, The Infects is one to pick up.

In What's Left of Me by Kat Zhang (HarperCollins), the souls of sisters Addie and Eve share one body. Children start out as hybrids, and eventually, one of the souls slips away. It's part of growing up--and it's part of being a good, non-criminal person. Addie and Eve haven't settled, though, which makes them suspicious, different, and ill. When Addie and Eve are sent away to get better, the fight for both of their lives gets dire. This makes an interesting contrast to Every Day, by the way.

Shadowfell by Juliet Marillier (Knopf) completely charmed me. Neryn's not supposed to be magical; it's prohibited. She can see the fairies, though, and that means she has to run. To be straightforward: I've read so many books-with-fairies in the past five or so years that few stand out, but Neryn's journey had something Frodo-esque and pure about it. And there were some very clever moments that stole my heart. If you've read this one: Go small!





All of these books are nominated in the YA SF/F category for the 2012 Cybils awards. These reviews are based on copies provided by their respective publishers, either through the Cybils program or when I requested them from NetGalley and completely forgot to read them earlier in the year. So it goes.