UnWholly by Neal Shusterman

If you read Unwind, you might've thought that was enough. It was open-ended, but, somehow, closed. If you're like me, you have a complicated relationship with series, especially unfinished series. So, when I heard UnWholly by Neal Shusterman (Simon and Schuster - Books for Young Readers) was out, I didn't go right for it. Unwind--no pun intended--took me apart.

If you need a refresher--and I went into this reading without one--there's been a war, presented as being over abortion. It is proposed that peace come over an unreasonable, twisted compromise: no abortions, but children can be "storked," or forced upon other families, and once a child is thirteen, a child's guardians can reverse the child's life, essentially splitting the child and its consciousness into spare parts. Understandably, though some kids are tithed--born to be Unwound--others aren't so happy when they get the news that they're unwanted, due to circumstance or relationships, and scheduled to, in essence, die.

Unwind is about getting away from the first, horrific situation. UnWholly is about the after. What if you escaped? What if you were safe? What if your friends weren't? What do you owe for your freedom? And what if people aren't really on your side? What's the deepest, darkest place from which you can return?

That's vague, of course, but I wouldn't want to give anything away. UnWholly is as intriguing and complex as Unwind, and every bit as harrowing.

UnWholly is nominated in the YA SF/F category for the 2012 Cybils. I reviewed a copy provided by the publisher, with no explicit or implied strings.

More Cybils Panic

When I've been a panelist in the past, a deluge of books (e- and print) has hit my doorstep in early November. This year, probably mostly due to Sandy, that deluge came last week. So, in the interest of giving everything a look, I will have to just give you blurbs. Ready?

Mothership by Martin Leicht and Isla Neal (Simon and Schuster - Books for Young Readers) reminds me, oddly of Libba Bray's Beauty Queens. It's also a very good read for those who enjoyed the nose-tweaking of Bumped and Thumped. At any rate, if the many teen fertility dystopians have gotten to you, you might try this one. Elvie is pregnant, so she'll be spending the next months in space at the Hanover School for Expecting Teen Mothers. You didn't think it was that simple, did you? Nope. It's all fun(ny) and games until the aliens show up. And the dad.

The Unnaturalists by Tiffany Trent (Simon and Schuster - Books for Young Readers) is the first in a series that's a little bit steampunk, a little bit, uh, museumpunk, let's call it, a little bit paranormal. Tesla, one of my favorite dudes ever, has opened up a portal between worlds to let the myths and legends in--only it seems like both our world and that can't co-exist.

Flesh and Bone by Jonathan Maberry (Simon and Schuster - Books for Young Readers) is the third in the series that started with Rot and Ruin and cataloged the adventures of one Benny Imura, who gets sucked out of his safe, gated compound in California and into the outside, where zombies roam. Just as much fun as the others, and just as many heart-stopping moments. Which is all well and good until something eats your brains.

The Blessed by Tonya Hurley (Simon and Schuster - Books for Young Readers) is a quirky little...okay, big book. Several girls who tried to commit suicide end up in the same emergency room, and several girls get caught up in a world of martyrs and saints. The quirky thing, however, is that it reads like Heathers and Mean Girls came out to play. Also, check out the fancy reversible cover on the hardback edition.

Shadows on the Moon by Zoë Marriott (Walker) is a pretty retelling of Cinderella set in Japan, but with a chunk of initiative, adventure, and darkness. This Cinderella, Suzume, has shape-shifting abilities, and in the beginning--spoiler--she hides from invading soldiers in the fireplace. And maybe she doesn't want to kiss the prince so much as kill him...






These books are nominated in the YA SF/F category for the 2012 Cybils. All of these books were provided by their publishers, with no explicit or implied strings.

The Chaos by Nalo Hopkinson

The Chaos by Nalo Hopkinson  (Simon & Schuster - Margaret K. McElderry) might not be on your radar; I haven't seen much talk about it, and only a few reviews, which have tended to be mixed. Maybe that shouldn't surprise me so much; it's very different from what's on the YA SF/F shelves right now. It's possible that I missed the buzz, of course, but either way, I'd like to start some back up again.

In short summary, Scotch (a short form of Scotch Bonnet, nickname for Sojourner) has started feeling stable again. Her brother's out of jail, and they're going to get an apartment together as soon as they save up enough money to move out of their parents' house. She's on the dance team, and smokin' at it. She has two close friends, and doesn't have to go to the school where she was attacked and called a slut. She changes her clothes when she leaves the house--there's good-girl wear, and there's Scotch wear--but most teenagers lead a bit of a double life, don't they?

Scotch and her brother Rick go to a bar, where Rick is worried about his open mic appearance and Scotch can't get caught (at 17, she's two years too young to be in a bar in Toronto). And things get rapidly more worrisome when a giant blob eats Rick and a volcano appears in the middle of the lake...and the strange black marks on her body start to take over.

Scotch has the most authentic teenager voice I have read in ages. In the middle of reading the book, I told a friend that it reads like a contemporary; that's not a good enough shorthand for what I mean (and makes it look like I'm trying to make some sort of value judgment that I'm not). Scotch is just so present, so vibrantly of that liminal late-teens age. So waiting for her mind to catch up with her mouth. Working through being wrong, needing time to think, needing to figure out how to be right again, with herself and with other people. Working through trying to be this person that everyone else wants to claim, without allowing her to choose her path. The Chaos is surprisingly character-driven in a way that a lot of SF/F is not.

There's lots that unexpected here, even for genre enthusiasts. The Chaos doesn't bother to explain its Toronto setting for the reader, and rightly so. There's a sort of old-school, classic urban fantasy feel to the disruption, as if the weird is so weird it must be normal again; combined with the denial of mid-apocalypse, fear can feel a little distant for short stretches, but that's realistic--too much, and the characters would be paralyzed. The weirder things get, the more threads come in from surprising angles. There are duppies and a rolling calf, a bird I think is a phoenix, Baba Yaga and her house (seriously, Baba Yaga should be in everything, and I especially like this one), disembodied voices, Brer Rabbit, Anansi (and oh, the moment of Brer Nancy!). Around every corner is some new amazement. Alice is truly in Wonderland.

The Chaos touches on, or directly confronts, identity, racism, disabilities, sexuality, class, bullying, and more, all as part of the real and unreal landscape in which the characters move, stumble, and eventually negotiate, if sometimes imperfectly. There are some reviews that explain this better than I can here, here, and here.

In about 240 pages, Scotch undergoes a physical and personal transformation, becoming who she wanted to be all along. It's not so much about defeating the chaos or any particular big bad, but about remaking and repairing relationships with herself and others. I think that The Chaos makes a good read for fans of Kristen Cashore's Fire, Dia Reeves's Bleeding Violet, Alaya Dawn Johnson's Racing the Dark, and Justine Larbalestier's Liar, for a start--there's more than a little thread of "being the monster" here, and a certain horrific twist to the whole thing. 

This book is nominated in the YA SF/F category for the 2012 Cybils. I had my own copy to read and review. 

Drive-by Reviews

Two quickies that I've read and that have been languishing in my drafts:

Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord (Small Beer Press; has also been published by Quercus; the top image is the Quercus edition, I believe) is a book that's won or been listed for a nice handful of awards. It's fantasy based on a Senegalese tale by a Caribbean writer--at least, the beginning of it is--and to me, had a lot of the flavor of the SF end of fantasy in the middle, bookended with oral storytelling and a fairy tale feel on both sides.

Paama's husband is so much trouble that she left him behind and returned to her parents. He's traveled to meet her, and his arrival heralds a string of problems: he fills empty places and paranoia in his soul with food, and his first act as a village guest is eating the prize peacock. While a familiar spider man shows up in the story, Paama has a few tricks up her sleeve as well, and this marks her as someone to receive the chaos stick...

While there are madcap bits to this story, Paama wrestles with some pretty big questions, including what she'd do if she could change the future--and what might happen if she did.

Coming in under 200 pages, this is a great plane-length read.

 I have the second version of The Conch Bearer by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (from various publishers over the years, but I'll credit Simon &Schuster - Aladdin), but it stayed on my shelf for a long time. I think that's because this was published in the middle of the Potter years. Drop me in a bookstore sometime between 2002 and 2012, and I can probably tell you the date based on the independent reader/middle grade/YA selections. For a while, the big trend was boys having magical quests; while you could argue that this never really goes out of style, there was sure a deluge in at least a few retailers for a while.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is probably best known for her adult fiction, including Palace of Illusions and Mistress of Spices. In my head, this book is MG, though it may have been marketed as YA. Anand, a young boy who works in a tea shop, is given an opportunity to be charitable, and this is the start of a grand cross-country adventure during which he must battle demons, learn from his wise old mentor, and put up with an annoying girl to protect a magical conch that must be returned to its owners.

That doesn't necessarily sound so different, I know, but the choice made at the end of the book (it's got a sequel, which I haven't read) was something I found very surprising, and not something I think gets considered in most books marketed for children.

Deadly by Julie Chibbaro

A friend gave me Deadlyby Julie Chibbaro (Simon & Schuster - Atheneum) because she knows I like Robin Cook's books--medical, scientific, almost impossible thrillery books. Deadly isn't quite that, but it's worth a read anyway.

In 1906-1907, Prudence Galewski leaves school to take a job with the New York City Department of Health and Sanitation. It's not quite the upscale nanny or shopgirl job her schooling has been preparing her for, but since Prudence's mother is a midwife, typing notes for a sanitary engineer is something that Prudence is a little more interested in than she might otherwise have been.

Once at the Department, Prudence's interest in science blossoms; she has had no real resources on the topic other than a copy of Gray's Anatomy, but now, she's putting together the pieces for an investigation into the woman known as Typhoid Mary, getting her first look through a microscope, and meeting a doctor who happens to be a woman.

All of this is intertwined with a coming of age story. Prudence has a lot going on: a missing dad, an inability to fit in with most other girls her age, an arm's length relationship with Judaism, weird feelings (and weird advice about) some men in her life, a struggle with the ethics of quarantining Mary. But she's really thoughtful, even in her confusion. She's the sort of girl Bella Swan thinks she is, if that makes any sense.

I think this would make a really interesting classroom read in a middle school or high school setting. Despite all of the issues in the book, it's not preachy, and it's surprisingly open-ended, which I think would lead to great discussion.

Weird: My copy has a purply, maybe Jack the Ripper's around the corner sort of cover, like the one at left. I don't know which one you might get if you buy a copy.

The American Way of Eating by Tracie McMillan

A while ago, I read The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table by Tracie McMillan (Simon & Schuster - Scribner). I have a love for the undercover journalism books by Barbara Ehrenreicht and The Omnivore's Dilemma, and this is sort of a cross between the two: McMillan works in the fields where food is grown, and it doesn't look anything like your Fisher-Price playhouse set. Applebee's is a wasteland of reheated food, but also a relief for poor families. And Walmart--well, we already knew that Walmart talks a big game and does everything it can to shut down local commerce and pay its people as little as possible.

In blurb format: we're kind of a mess.

The Girl with the Silver Eyes by Willo Davis Roberts

The Girl with the Silver Eyes (Simon & Schuster - Alladin, which I just read, but the version I owned as a kid was the Scholastic version, pictured right and I see that there was an Atheneum edition as well) was a book that I owned, and somewhere, in a dusty box in an attic far away, still do.

Katie can make things move. With her mind. It scares the people around her, and she doesn't have many friends. Her parents are divorced and she's been living with her grandmother--and some people suspect that she might have pushed her down the stairs to her death. So, when she goes to live with her mother in the city, and a strange man starts asking questions, Katie decides to track down the kids born to women her mother worked with at a laboratory. Maybe they're all...different.

I loved this book as...probably a kindergartener, but I reread it lots of times. I wished and wished for some special power to go along with being different, and it never appeared. Before there were Hogwarts letters, we still wanted them, I guess. My adult reread came with a sense of bemusement; I see why I liked this then, but now, I find the story kind of unsatisfying. Just when the special kids find each other, and just when they think they're in the worst trouble ever, they decide to go ask their parents what's going on. Not a bad strategy in real life, but not so adventurous in book form!

In my head, this book goes with No Flying in the House, Baby Island, Pippi Longstocking, and Cherry Ames--all books that might appeal at about the same time. And it makes me wish fervently that the library of my youth might reappear, just for an hour, so I could look through it and get the titles of all the books that I remember only a snippet of, and not enough to find them via a search. I can still tell you which shelves I'd want to tear apart--just not the authors I want to (re)read.

The Shadow Spinner by Susan Fletcher

I read The Shadow Spinner  by Susan Fletcher (Simon and Schuster - Aladdin) as part of my reading for Sirens; specifically, looking at retellings this year.  

The Shadow Spinner works backward from how you might expect: rather than retelling any of the more fantastic and magical tales from One Thousand and One Nights, this is about some unmagical people supporting the efforts of Scheherazade's frame story. This isn't about djinn or ghouls, but about a lot of other things, and perhaps most significantly, about the power of story. Stories, and their retellings, is a major theme woven through this book on many levels.

Marjan's mother abandoned her many years ago, around the same time that the sultan started murdering his wives. There's a complicated backstory about how this happened, including some abuse, fear, and pain. She goes to the sultan's harem with an "aunt" to sell jewelry, and while there, she tells some of the harem children a story. Scheherazade asks her to join the harem, because she's desperate--almost out of stories to tell, and she needs Marjan's story to spin out at least a few more nights of life for all of them. The problem is, Marjan doesn't know the whole thing, and they're going to have to smuggle her back out of the harem to put the pieces together. The sultan's mother is suspicious, Marjan's got a smashed foot that pains her, and they're all in danger--but only Marjan has the skills needed to keep Scheherazade safe.

I liked this a lot more than I thought I would. It's middle grade, and simple, but thoughtful.

Snow by Tracy Lynn

I am super, super picky about familiar fairy tales and their retellings. I'd rather have a dry and outdated "original" than a modern one that does nothing more than update setting--or, worse, imagines the story in a generic time past and loses all but the bones of the plot. I'm not going to name names, and truly, at the moment, I can't even think of any, but it's easy to retell a tale and lose the trimmings: the class differences, the all-too-real dangers of abuse and crime, the chill of winter with stores running low. Lose the trimmings, and maybe all you've got left is a turkey. (Or, maybe, really go wild with the trimmings, and you might get something innovative, like White Cat et al.)

That's not to say that a more traditional retelling can't be interesting, or at least comforting and familiar. Snow by Tracy Lynn (Simon Pulse), for me, is more of the latter.

Note, I suppose, that I'm not particularly fond of this Simon Pulse line of retellings; note also that I'm being particularly harsh on them. I say this because they generally date from the early 2000s, when the young adult shelves in bookstores, if they were even separated from middle grade and younger books, were much smaller places than they are now. Mostly, you could read Harry Potter, Eragon, books by Tamora Pierce, a handful of great contemporaries, and the first wave of "if you liked Harry Potter," which was mostly books about witches, loosely modeled on what people think Wiccans do, and which turned out to miss the mark on getting a piece of the Potter craze. So, if I'd found these retellings at that time, I'd have been thrilled to bits, having already read the other offerings.

Snow doesn't go as far afield from the story you might know in the first three-quarters of the book. Jessica, a duchess, loses her mother in childbirth and finds herself distanced from her father, who remarries. The new duchess arrives to their home in Wales, and takes Jessica under her wing, at first in a motherly, if arm's length, way. Duchess Anne becomes the patron of a Scottish violinist, Alan, but he is mostly used as her errand-boy for what might be magic or what might be mere scientific experiments. I really liked the awkward relationship between Jessica and her new mother Anne, and wished for more time on that and Victorian-duchess-as-scientist.

My reading of the next part was that Anne, already older than the average bride, has a series of miscarriages, and eventually, in her ever-declining mental state, decides to kill Jessica and use Jessica's heart in an iteration of the ritual to have a child. Jessica is in a sort-of confinement during this period, not quite locked up. Alan tips Jessica off to the plot, and she runs away. A lot of this happens off the page or in summary.

Of course, in the Victorian era, where could one run away but to London? Instead of ending up with dwarves, Jessica, now Snow, is maid to a rag-tag bunch of Lonely Ones, people who are part animal and who live by thievery. After establishing herself in this household, Jessica meets her stepmother again, who showers her with new things and her full attention, as--she's been told--her stepmother has been cured of her mental instability. And she's really, really sorry she tried to have Jessica killed, and that was partly about her anger at the male establishment and the place of women (not as scientists, but heir factories).

The final quarter of the book is packed with interesting details and plot that I wished for more of--a Frankenstein-ish and clockwork twist on Snow's dreaming suspension, a family-oriented plot that I caught, but that wasn't outrageously telegraphed--and again, I should note that word count then was not as flexible as word count now, and I'm sure there was a desire to have the books in the retellings series look to be somewhat the same size and shape. The nicest bit here is that the ending is happy, but unexpected, giving the denouement a non-traditional oomph.