Posts Tagged ‘YA’
The Spirit Thief, by Rachel Aaron
Posted on: April 30, 2013
The Spirit Thief, by Rachel Aaron
published in 2010
where I got it: the library
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The entire internet has been afire about Rachel Aaron’s Eli Monpress series for a while now, and it’s no secret I’ve a major weakness for thieves in fantasy environments, so how could I resist a story about the greatest thief ever? The first volume wasn’t exactly what I expected, but surprises are always a good thing, right?
The infamous thief (and wizard!) Eli Monpress is certainly the focus of the story, but we learn about the world through Spiritualist Miranda Lyonette. She’s been sent to the Kingdom of Mellinor to keep Eli from stealing an important artifact. Lucky for us, she’s rather unsuccessful in her mission, otherwise this would be a very short and rather un-fun book.
Upon her arrival at Mellinor, Miranda finds that Eli has completely ignored the artifact and has instead kidnapped King Henrith and is holding him for ransom. Out of the woodwork steps the King’s brother, Prince Renaud, who claims the throne for himself and convinces everyone that Miranda is secretly working for Eli and against the kingdom. As Miranda unravels what’s going on, she’ll have to choose which is more important: following the rules, or doing the right thing.
Miranda is a court-trained Spiritualist, which means she’s made binding agreements with the spirits she works with. She offers them physical protection and a portion of her own energy, and in turn she can use their magic upon request. It’s a very formal agreement, and she’d never think of using a spirit against its will, or hurting it in any way. Wizards who go against their training, who take advantage of the strength of spirits, are known as enslavers, and should be destroyed at all costs.
Eli’s relationship with spirits is completely different. He doesn’t offer protective contracts with them, but he doesn’t force them to do anything either. He just talks to them, almost as if they were just other people he was having a conversation with. He’s certainly not a spiritualist, nor is he an enslaver. The Spirit Court isn’t sure what to make of him. And that’s just one reason why there’s a huge bounty on his head. Eli Monpress, the man who steals everything that’s not nailed down, and when he wants something that’s nailed down, he convinces the nails to give him a hand.
thanks so much to Susan over at Dab of Darkness for suggesting we do this read along. I hadn’t read Terry Pratchett in years, and had been rather ho-hum about the Discworld books of his I had read. So when Susan suggested a Discworld related book, I was a smidgen apprehensive. But, she’s my friend, and nearly everytime a friend has said “try this, you’ll like it”, I’ve usually fallen in love with it.
The Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky are by far the best Terry Pratchett books I’ve ever read. I know it sounds hokey, and I don’t care, but I laughed, I cried, I thought about my life and my friends and my relationships and how I treat other people. Sometimes I did all of that in the same paragraph.
It was a tough winter for me. I had some S.A.D. mixed in with some other crappy stuff. I was pretty much checked out of my life for most of January and February. Terry Pratchett is now on my list of things that help the winter end earlier.
Ok, enough with the maudlin, let’s get to the final batch of questions, which everyone else has already answered and discussed, because I’m late!
1) Mistress Weatherwax has a philosophy of her job is to make sure everyone today can get to tomorrow – such as letting people believe in water sprites and goblins if it lets them lead a better life. Do you see yourself somewhere in this philosophy?
If you believe something, then it’s true for you. and she’s right, climbing up all those stairs is going to give that one guy a healthier heart more than his sacrifices to the water sprites. But if she’d told him to walk a lot for a healthier heart, she knows he wouldn’t do it. Put a story behind something, and it gives it more weight. it makes it more important to the person because they see themselves in the story.
Yikes, is that the secret to how to make friends and influence people? tell stories??? I’m a total chatterbox, but I never actually get anything useful said. maybe I better learn how to tell stories.
And hmmm… maybe I need to find some exercise or yoga sprites that need sacrifices from me. I hate exercising and I’m really lazy, but if 20 minutes sacrificed to the exercise sprites will keep them from doing horrible things. . . .
2) Do you think Mr. Weavall will be successful with the Widow Tussy? Do you think Tiffany got off light concerning Mr. Weavall’s stash?
Pirate Cinema, by Cory Doctorow
published October, 2012
where I got it: borrowed ARC from a friend
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Cory Doctorow is mean. he likes to hit his readers where it hurts, to show us where our world is going if we’re not careful. If China Mieville’s Railsea is a YA retelling of Moby Dick (complete with similar literary mannerisms), then Pirate Cinema is a YA introduction to political manifestos such as Atlas Shrugged (complete with speeches at the end). This isn’t the first time I’ve compared Doctorow’s fiction to that of Ayn Rand, and if you know my history with Rand’s fiction, you know I mean that comparison as the highest compliment.
The story follows Trent McCauley, a British teen who does all the normal teen things, like hating school, being awkward around girls, and downloading tons and tons of video clips of his favorite actor, and mashing them up into new and funny videos, a la Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, and then uploading his vids for his fans and friends to watch.
Thanks to a new draconian law regarding copyright infringement, Trent’s family loses their internet access for one year due to his constant downloading of films and clips. His little sister can’t do her homework at home anymore and her grades plummet. His mother can’t get her prescriptions refilled online. His father loses his phone-bank job. Trent’s family is ostracized by their being kicked off internet access. Full of shame, Trent runs away to London.
This may sound like it’s a story for an about people who remix videos and remix music, and if you’re not one of those folks it’s easy to think this politically charged story doesn’t apply to you. Ever recaptioned a photo or submitted something to Lolcats? Ever shared a deviantart image on Facebook simply because you liked it? ever taken a photo you found online and photoshopped it into something you liked better, if only to show off your photoshop skills? If you’ve ever done any of those things, you’re in the same boat as Trent – you’ve shared someone else’s intellectual property, changed it, made it into something new, and claimed that new thing as your own unique creation. And you’ve broken the law. We’re all just as guilty as Trent, we just haven’t been caught yet.
Orbital Resonance, by John Barnes
Posted on: August 9, 2012
Orbital Resonance, by John Barnes
published in 1991
where I got it: the library
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Melpomene Murray sees herself as a completely normal twelve year old. She looks up to her older brother, argues with her Mom, has plenty of friends at school, has just discovered boys, and enjoys math and low-g sports. And like all the kids in her class on the asteroid-turned-space colony known as The Flying Dutchman, Melpomene is fluent in five languages, and studies physics, cybernetics, and calculus during her ten hour schoolday. Yup, she’s a completely normal kid, right?
One of the brighter students in her class, Mel has been asked to write a book about life on The Flying Dutchman, something to help the people on Earth realize that the spacers are regular people, just like them. Orbital Resonance is in effect, her first draft. Mel might be forced to watch news from Earth with her classmates, but it’s the sanitized version. She has no idea of the disasters of post-collapse Earth, of the horror of life outside the domed cities, of the different pressures that children raised on Earth face. And she has no idea that she’s been conditioned to specifically play well with others. She has no idea of anything, until a boy from Earth transfers into her class and opens everyone eyes.
You see, the scientists of the The Flying Dutchman had a plan. They needed a fully operational and successful colony in the Earth / Mars orbit in the shortest possible time. The social plan for the colony was to raise the children in such a manner that they would be conditioned to love the colony, to want to work for the colony, and to be educated at a young age in fields that the colony needed. Most citizens take their “full adult” exam at fourteen or fifteen, and are expected to work full time and begin a family shortly after that. There’s a creepy dissonance happening here – Melpomene is a supremely likeable kid, but how much of that likeability is brainwashing?
Dust Girl, by Sarah Zettel
Posted on: August 6, 2012
Dust Girl (American Fairy Trilogy, book 1), by Sarah Zettel
published June 2012
Where I got it: purchased new
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In a small town in Kansas, in the dustbowl of the 1930’s, young Callie lives with her mother in the hotel her family owns. As the dust storms intensify, more and more families move out of the town, and Callie’s dust pneumonia gets worse. Callie’s mother refuses to leave town, insisting that Callie’s father will return to save them. But it’s someone, or rather, some thing, else that comes to town with the next storm, and soon Callie is all by herself. She needs to find her mother, and the father she’s never known.
This is the American Fairy Trilogy, so it’s no spoiler to say that Callie discovers she is half fairy. Her mother had told anyone who would listen that Callie’s father was a traveling salesman. But the truth is that he was a black jazz musician. And even more of that truth was that he is a Fairy Prince. Callie may be royalty in the fae world, but in the plains of the 1930s, she’s now just one more biracial orphan, dependent on keeping her skin as light as possible so as to pass as caucasian for as long as possible.
With her new friend Jack, Callie begins a journey across the country to find her parents, and to find her destiny. And when she does meet her fairy relatives, will they be happy to see her? That’s the thing with fairies. Their goals are not human goals. Their promises are not human promises. They have something very different in mind for naive Callie.
Interview with Sarah Zettel
Posted on: May 21, 2012
She writes space opera, she writes fantasy, she writes young adult and even paranormal mystery. Even better, she’s a fellow mid-westerner. In the last year or so, Sarah Zettel has quickly become one of my favorite science fiction writers. Her space opera is phenomenal, with characters that leap off the page and show you they are real people with real challenges. I don’t envy any of her characters, but I feel like I can relate to them. I’ve recently enjoyed Zettel’s Fool’s War and Bitter Angels (written as C.L. Anderson), and her new paranormal Vampire Chef series is getting rave reviews as well. I was beyond thrilled when Sarah agreed to do an interview on my blog.
So let’s get to the fun stuff, the interview!
L.R.R.: Your debut novel, Reclamation, won a Locus award for best first novel in 1996, and more recently Bitter Angels (2010) won the Philip K Dick award for best paperback original novel. Between 1996 and now, how have you seen the writing industry change? As a writer have you felt pressured to change with it?
S.Z.: The big change, of course, has been e-books. There’s now, unquestionably an audience for e-books, and a whole infrastructure to bring readers what they want. That’s opened up a lot of new avenues for writers and publishers to get their work to those readers. Is there pressure to change and adapt? Always. But that can be a good thing. I’m been part of a professional writer’s co-operative (Book View Cafe) where we as authors got together to help each other get our backlists out in e-book form. It’s been a lot of work, but a tremendous experience.
L.R.R.: There’s been a lot of attention, recently, on strong female lead characters in Speculative fiction, something you’ve been doing for years. Can you speak to any barriers you’ve experienced (or broken!), being a woman who writes speculative fiction with strong female characters?
S.Z.: When my 2nd novel Fool’s War came out, I had so many women come up to me and say “Thank you!” for writing protagonist who is a married woman. I think traditional literary science fiction is perceived as a male-oriented genre, and men are perceived as not being interested in reading about women or “women’s issues” read: relationships. There has always, always been SF by strong women, about strong women. Ursula K. Le Guin, Vonda McIntyre, Julie Cznerda, Octavia Butler, are just a few of the authors. But that’s not the perception of the genre, and so they don’t get talked about a whole lot. However, what has happened and what’s been interested is how speculative fiction that features strong women and relationships moved beyond the SF genre. It’s on the romance shelves, on the mainstream shelves, on the manga shelves, and, hurray, hurray, on the Young Adult shelves.
L.R.R.: One of the many things I loved about Fool’s War is that one of the two main characters is a devout Muslim woman. I don’t claim to be well read, but come on, how often do you run into science fiction that stars a Muslim woman? When you were working on that novel, how did her character come to be, and what type of research did you do get all those cultural details just right?
S.Z.: Fool’s War came from a short story I wrote for Analog Science Fiction & Fact called “Fool’s Errand.” I wrote that story during the first Gulf War. At that time, some, well, idiots, beat up a Sikh man because they couldn’t tell the difference between a Muslim and a Sikh. And this wasn’t a lone incident. I was angry, but what could I do to help combat the prejudice? It occured to me I could show competent, strong Islamic characters in the future, and so I made the ship’s engineer a Muslim woman. When I started out on Fool’s War, I realized it made sense for the person who maintained the ship to also be the person who owned the ship, so Al Shei became one of the major protagonists.
L.R.R.: You write in multiple genres – science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, and more urban fantasy (American Fairy trilogy) and paranormal mystery (Vampire Chef series). Does it ever get confusing to be working on different projects in different genres at the same time? Are different genres more fun to write in than others?
S.Z.: Actually, I find writing in mulitple genres not only helps keep me fresh, it keeps me learning. Each genre has a different focus and a different set of expectations, and each focus teaches you something new about the craft of writing. All genres are fun. I will say that of them all, science fiction is probably the most work, because of the nature and the level of the world building you have to do to create a solid, complete SF story.
L.R.R.: Speaking of The American Fairy Trilogy, can you tell us a little about the first book in the series, Dust Girl, which is scheduled to hit bookstore shelves this summer?
S.Z.: June 26, to be exact (VBG). Sure. It’s my first Young Adult series, and I’m very excited about it. It’s about a girl named Callie who lives in the heart of Kansas during the Dust Bowl. Callie’s father disappeared before she was born, and she always suspected he was African American. He was. It turns out he’s also a fairy prince. Callie’s inherited his magic, and a world of trouble as a result, especially when the fairies come calling to her dust bowl home.
L.R.R.: Do you have any plans to be at any upcoming conventions (WorldCon perhaps?) or bookstore signings? Where and how can your fans connect with you?
S.Z.: I am going to be at McLean & Eakin in Petosky Michigan on July 13. I’ll also be at Nicola’s Books in Ann Arbor July 25. I’m not going to make WorldCon this year, but I will be at BoucherCon in Cinncinati, OH.
L.R.R.: Hear that midwesterners? I don’t know about you, but I’m planning a field trip to Ann Arbor! Thank you so much Sarah, for spending some time on this blog. I’ve enjoyed everything of yours that I’ve read, and I can’t wait to read more!
Everyone likes a give away!
Posted on: March 20, 2012
- In: Ari Marmell | give away
- 2 Comments
everyone loves a give away, right?
and everyone wants a chance to win something really really cool, right?
of course I’m right!
Good thing my very good friend Bryce over at My Awful Reviews (twitter @myawfulreviews) is giving away a copy of Thief’s Covenant by Ari Marmell. Click HERE for more info, and to sign up!
blurb ganked from Amazon:
Once she was Adrienne Satti. An orphan of Davillon, she had somehow escaped destitution and climbed to the ranks of the city’s aristocracy in a rags-to-riches story straight from an ancient fairy tale. Until one horrid night, when a conspiracy of forces—human and other—stole it all away in a flurry of blood and murder.
Today she is Widdershins, a thief making her way through Davillon’s underbelly with a sharp blade, a sharper wit, and the mystical aid of Olgun, a foreign god with no other worshippers but Widdershins herself. It’s not a great life, certainly nothing compared to the one she once had, but it’s hers.
But now, in the midst of Davillon’s political turmoil, an array of hands are once again rising up against her, prepared to tear down all that she’s built. The City Guard wants her in prison. Members of her own Guild want her dead. And something horrid, something dark, something ancient is reaching out for her, a past that refuses to let her go. Widdershins and Olgun are going to find answers, and justice, for what happened to her—but only if those who almost destroyed her in those years gone by don’t finish the job first.
Sounds pretty sweet, right? well, get your rear end over to My Awful Reviews and sign up for the giveaway, before he sends you some creepy Locke Lamora read along questions. 
might brilliant cover art as well.
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The Fuzzy Papers (includes Little Fuzzy and The Other Human Race) by H. Beam Piper
originally published in 1962 and 1964
where I got it: off the bookshelf
When my husband and I got our first apartment, one of our first purchases was a bookcase, for we both showed up with boxes and boxes of books. I had a lot of Heinlein and Herbert and Asimov and random chick lit, he had a lot of McCaffrey and Herbert and Heinlein and Tolkien, and lots and lots of H. Beam Piper, who at the time, I’d never heard of.
I’m embarrassed to say it’s taken me this long to pick up a Piper. The volume we own is called The Fuzzy Papers, and it includes the first two Fuzzy novels – Little Fuzzy (originally published 1962) and The Other Human Race (originally published in 1964 and later titled Fuzzy Sapiens). No one should have to wait this long to read Little Fuzzy, one of the cutest books ever written. I suppose it should be considered Young Adult, as there is no overt violence or sex or danger. Unless you’ve been living under a rock and never, and never go to the movies, you’re sure to recognize some themes here.
Little Fuzzy
Taking place on the planet Zarathustra, in a future where humanity has colonized the stars, Jack Holloway is a freelance sunstone miner. The planet is fully owned by the Chartered Zarathustra Company, whose chief export is the highly valued sunstones – the fossilized remains of ancient bioluminescent sea creatures who went extinct eons ago.
Holloway gets the surprise of his life when he returns home to his cabin one day to find a small, fuzzy, golden creature sitting on his bed. Naming the creature Little Fuzzy, Holloway immediately adopts it, and treats it like a treasured pet. It’s not long before Little Fuzzy brings his entire family to live with Holloway. It quickly becomes obvious that the fuzzies are more than just animals. They communicate with each other and build tools and hunt. They know what foods they like, and what to avoid because it will make them sick. They might be adorable and cuddly and playful and have the mind of a child, but they are smarter than they look. Holloway introduces his Fuzzies to anyone he knows who might be interested in them – Ben Rainsford and Gerd van Riebeek, xenobiologists; Ruth Ortheris a psychologist, and a handful of local constables.
And thus we get to the crux of the matter: are the Fuzzies sapient people, or just really smart animals? Even more complicated, what is the definition of sapience? By the time Holloway and his mining friends realize what a native sapience race will do to the company’s charter (void it), the company has already started campaigning against the sapience of the Fuzzies. During an altercation with The Company, a Fuzzy is killed. The story culminates in a large trial to determine their sapience, and further, if killing one is considered murder.
The Doctor and The Kid by Mike Resnick (sequel to The Buntline Special)
Published Dec 2011
where I got it: received review copy from Pyr
why I read it: enjoyed The Buntline Special, the first book in the series.
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A fun, easy read, The Doctor and The Kid should probably be categorized as Young Adult. There is some mild swearing, and references to sex, but there is nothing in this book your teen hasn’t read before. With a fairly simple plot and fun characters, it’s a good foil to all the heavy dense doorstopper melt-your-brain books that have been floating around lately.
It’s known, that I’ve a major weakness for tragic characters. And do they come any more tragic than Doc Holliday? Wracked with consumption, as unflinchingly honest as he was bitter, he knew death was right around the corner, so why fear anything in life?
Resnick’s The Doctor and the Kid most certainly is not the true story of Doc Holliday, but it is a fun one. Advertised as a steampunk western, The Doctor and the Kid doesn’t have a lot of action in it, Doc simply hasn’t got that kind of energy. More a character study of Holliday and how he’s forced to realize that people don’t care that he’s classically educated or coughing up blood all the time – all they want to know is how many people he’s killed. He’s not at all the person people think he is, and that was my favorite aspect of this book.
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making, by Catherynne Valente
Published May 2011
Where I got it: the library
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What can I say, I love everything Catherynne Valente writes. Every story, every myth, every character, every metaphor she touches, they all turn to golden quicksilver – slippery words that swim towards each other to create something so very true and very magicial. If you still haven’t read her – if Deathless looks a little too heavy or dark, if The Habitation of the Blessed looks a bit too intense, if you’re simply not quite sure about this strange woman that I refuse to stop talking about, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her own Making is a perfect place to start. Why? Because this is a young adult book. Although adults will joyously zip through it, smiling at the adventures found by a girl named September, and wiping away a tear when she finds what she’s looking for. It’s part Alice in Wonderland, part Wizard of Oz, part hero’s quest story and part growing up story, part losing something and finding something, it’s all the pieces that grow up to become the person we’d all like to be.
Young September has the kind of childhood many of us will recognize – a boring one. She craves adventure and gets to wash dishes instead. She misses her father, and he’s a continent away, fighting a war she doesn’t understand. When the Green Wind appears at her window and asks if she’d like to accompany him to Fairyland, September doesn’t even think about it. She just goes. Fairyland is as wonderful and as amazing as she’d always hoped. But it’s also frightening, confusing, and slightly feral.
Very lucky younger children will have parents who read this book to them, one delicious chapter at a time, at bedtime. Those children will dream the most magnificent dreams, and their school teachers may bring up their strange school drawings at parent-teacher conferences. Even luckier children will read this book back to their parents, not understanding why their parents are laughing their heads off at the oddest moments. Those parents will dream the most magnificent dreams, waking wistful, yet satisfied in a rather kaleidoscopic way.
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