The Book Review Club - The Passenger

The Passenger
Alexandra Bracken
YA

I love the books I struggle with. It's all about the challenge. Alexandra Bracken challenged me with The Passenger. And she's still challenging me. So let's hit the ring!

Basic premise: On the night of violinst extraordinaire and lifelong New Yorker, 17 year-old Etta Linden's premiere recital, her teacher is murdered, a hole opens up in time, and Etta is thrust into a centuries-old battle for control of basically all of humanity. Her only friend, Nicholas, is fellow time traveler, and secretly sent to keep Etta in line in her quest for the one object that can tilt the scales of power in favor of the least favorable hegemon, who now holds Etta's mother captive.

Get ready for a ride. Bracken takes readers from 1776 New York to WII London, the jungles of Cambodia, late 1800s Paris, and the deserts surrounding Damascus. There is nary a dull moment. Add to that a fierce romance between Nicholas and Etta, and you've got yourself perhaps the first summer read of the Spring.

What challenged me most about this piece was the balance of romance and action. Etta is no damsel in distress, but Nicholas, a former slave, comes from 1700s America and does have a bit of the hero to him, which is at once a fabulous twist on the hero and yet a hero nonetheless. Etta, however, coming from the present day, sees them as partners. Thus, there is a tension in expectations throughout the story - Nicholas trying to live up to an ideal no human can, and Etta not expecting it and working to redirect, to get him to see relationships in a different light. Again, kudos to Bracken. It's a struggle this generation of women, if not my own, faces with the cultural expectations through which the opposite gender has been raised to see itself.

So, despite all of that, because of the strong male character, this piece does devolve into a somewhat more, seemingly predictable romance novel. Granted, it does not end that way exactly. However, you've got to stick with it to find that out, and that may be hard if you're looking for something that doesn't tiptoe into classic romance lit, complete with swooning and getting swept away. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. It's just a predictable one.

Which makes me question where YA is headed these days. This is just one book of many coming out, but it seems to be that we're falling back into old patterns. There are the realistic YA novels, such as the Fault in Our Stars. They're nothing new to literature (see, Catcher in the Rye). And there are the Twilight sagas, such as The Passenger. The one book I have a hard time categorizing, honestly, is The Hunger Games or Divergent. Dystopian? Sci-Fi? But yet YA?

Categorization is a fun hobby, like collecting stamps, but it doesn't change literature. Nonetheless, stepping back and looking at literature as a categorizer can give a writer an idea of where the tide may be headed. Perhaps Suzanne Collins great contribution has been - aside from a riveting read -  genre mashing, pushing dystopian and YA together. It begs the question, what other unique mashes can we come up with? Writers of the world unite. Let's break some new boundaries!

For more great reads, and less revolutionary calls to arms ;-), skip on over to Barrie Summy's site. She's serving them up fresh and tasty!

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The Book Review Club - Illuminae

Illuminae
The Illuminae Files
By Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
YA

"First, survive. Then, tell the truth." That's one of the better loglines I've read in a while. And this is one of the better novels I've had the good fortune to read in the YA category in a while.

Basic premise: The morning Kady breaks up with Ezra their colony on the outskirts of the populated section of the universe is attacked and destroyed by a corrupt company. The "marines" of the galaxy beat back the attackers and rescue a handful of survivors. Their main ship, however, takes heavy damage, and it's a race against time to make it to the next outpost before they're attacked and destroyed by the same company. What they don't realize, until it's too late, is that the bioweapon used by the company to attack the outpost goes viral, starting a plague on the fleeing ships. The Artificial Intelligence, which runs the battle cruiser, has also taken heavy damage--mentally--and can't be trusted.

Basically, the odds of survival are stacked against not just Kady and Ezra, but everyone on the fleeing ships. Will anyone survive to tell the tale and bring the offenders to justice? Because, hey, we evil authors can and do kill of main characters all of the time.

Cue mad scientist evil laugh: Bwahahahaha.

Tongue and cheek aside, I haven't enjoyed a read this much in a long time. I had begun to despair that the realistic fiction bandwagon had set up shop, and it was going to be a long time before YA fiction came around to be fun and entertaining again. While this is touted as dystopian, don't let the moniker fool you, or put you off. This is sci fi. Fun sci fi. Edge of your pants sci fi. Star wars YA style. In other words, a breath of fresh air within the angsty teen lit of late.

The story is told mainly from Kady's POV, although using different formats for information sharing, i.e. texts, emails, reports, interviews, etc, does allow the authors to introduce different POVs. Again, breath of fresh air. Admittedly, I'm getting a wee bit tired of the female dominated genre.

While studies may show that mostly women and female teens read YA, that doesn't mean we'd only like to read female POV. Yes, it's AMAZING to have a female heroine. Love it. Love it like chocolate cake. But, if that's all you get, after a while, even chocolate cake gets boring. Please, please, please, if the world of publishing is listening, can we have a few more male POV stories? By that, I don't mean heroes who rescue the damsel in distress, just male POV. That's all. Let's get inside the mind of the male teen. What I wouldn't have given at that age to understand this mysterious anomaly.

For more warm winter brain food, stomp on over to Barrie Summy's website. She's serving them up with a healthy does of California sun!

The Book Review Club - Ancillary Justice

Ancillary Justice
Ann Leckie
science fiction

I am no longer a closet-case sci-fi fan. This is my third sci-fi review this year. I think it's time to face facts. I am a sci-fi junkie!

I looked forward to reading Ancillary Justice when I'd seen it won the Hugo and Nebula awards. I cut my sci-fi teeth on the likes of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles and Frank Herbert's Dune in between installments of Little House on the Prairie. That is the seventies in a nutshell. And I figured, if Leckie could beat Andy Weir's The Martian, which I love, in the awards category, I was about to fall in love again.

Let's just say Ancillary Justice and I got off to a rocky start. It was not love at first sight. In fact, the novel frustrated me  (incidentally, it was the same when I first met my husband).

Basic plot - a space ship decides to take revenge on the leader of the culture that made - and ultimately attempts to destroy - it (Ancillary Justice, not my marriage; it's still happily intact).

It's fascinating stuff. AI taken to a whole new level. However, the AI can't decipher female from male and so refers to everyone as "she". Sometimes, gender is specified, but then the ship reverts to calling said characters "she". For me, it made connecting with characters really hard. And that made me wonder, why does gender matters in story? Or rather, does gender matter in story? Should it matter? What does Leckie gain by making her story more or less gender neutral?

I haven't finished figuring all of this out, but I have come to the conclusion that for the story, by making everyone gender neutral, characters become sentient beings. That's it. They have flaws and quirks, but in remaining gender neutral, they never became much deeper than that. This may, in part, have to do with the boundaries of my hermeneutics. I live in a world in which, for the most part, the gender of any person I interact with, is clear. With that comes mounds of unspoken data.  Without that, I have to rethink my world. That is what Leckie forced me, as a reader, to do in her novel. I had to see it through a different lens, a new lens, one I haven't completely finished sanding down yet, and won't, without further interaction.

The absence of gender imploded my hermeneutic structure of interpretation. It made me feel uneasy. And it's kept me feeling uneasy. And thinking. In other words, it's genius.

For more great reads, visit Barrie Summy's website. She's got a bushelful!

The Book Review Club - The Martian

The Martian
Andy Weir
Science Fiction - Adult

Pop quiz:
1) Do you ever stare at the night sky wondering if there is life out there?
2) Ever tried to levitate something with your mind?
3) Have you ever secretly (or not so secretly) watch Star Trek?

Houston, we have lift off. You like science fiction!

Science fiction has been fascinating readers from the moment Mary Shelley brought Frankenstein's monster to life. And writers of science fiction have been working to keep their edge ever since that first breath of life into their genre. Today, they're getting a little help from actual, real life physicists. Science fiction has become your basic rocket science.

How can this be? Some brilliant people at Tor had the great idea to pair up science fiction writers with NASA scientists. The result is a new list of science fiction titles, headed up by Andy Weir's, The Martian.

Basic premise: Robinson Crusoe on Mars.

More details: Mark Watney, a member of the Ares 3 Mars crew, accidentally gets left on Mars during the middle of a sandstorm. He has a habitat. He has oxygen and water. He has some food. But he doesn't have enough to last until the next Ares mission arrives. Cue creativity. How will Mark survive? Will NASA be able to help?

Weir's characters are wonderfully diverse and wickedly smart without being so smart they become inaccessible. The plot is scary believable. Accidents can happen, especially on a mission to a place as far away and foreign as Mars. The scientific does not way down the story, but rather, enhance it. Admittedly, there were moments when I did zone a little. Then again, that could have been the elliptical machine getting the better of me. I have books I "save" for work outs only. This was one. But I found myself sneaking more of The Martian whenever I could, like a secret stash of chocolate. And more than once that I had to remind myself this is NOT REAL. It's "just" a story (so stop crying!).

Tor has more books in the line up. One is about an elevator from earth to the international space station. Finally, a true fix for my science fiction addiction. I can't wait to see what they imagine up next. And...um...if it's not too much to ask, does anyone know how to get in the super secret society of writers who get to work with these amazing scientists?

For more April fling reads, check out Barrie Summy's website!

The Book Review Club - Ender's Game

Ender's Game
Orson Scott Card
Age Group: ?

With the movie quickly approaching, I got my hands on a copy of this almost cultish book. As a kid, I gobbled up science fiction - Dune, anything by Mary Stewart, Martian Chronicles, every Stars Wars book ever written. But Ender's Game came out way after my science fiction phase. I was well into battling my way through such wonders as the far more scientific (than fictional) Charles Monod's Chance and Necessity. Sigh. Hours of my life I'll never get back. 

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure yet, Ender's Game is a battle heavy book about a boy who has to save humankind from the perceived threat of an alien race, much like the Borg for all you trekkie fans, that have attacked earth twice. There will be no third invasion. Instead, we're taking the battle to their home world and Ender must lead the attack.

Despite a zillion fight scenes and at times unsettling brutality, I enjoyed Ender's Game. The premise was intriguing and the characters all Byronic heroes in their own way, but more than anything what kept me coming back for more was that the writing perplexed me. Card defies boxes.

Ender is a child who writes, speaks and acts like an adult. Entirely. There is nothing childlike about him. Either this is genius on Card's part, a particularity of the genre science fiction (there are no childlike characters) or an inability to create a child protagonist. Either way, unchildlike child protagonists are definitely Card's calling card, which has led me to theorize as to what good they do. I've come up with three: 1) this kind of character holds up a mirror up to the way we treat children in war zones; 2) this character portrays the way children view themselves, and 3) these characters create stories that defy categorization.

Three intrigues me most because Card's protagonist appeals to a young audience and well as older ones, and has created a cultish following among none other than teen readers. How's that for defying/embracing all categories at once? Seems like  genius on Card's part. His work defies the neat boxes publishing has attempted to erect and divide books into. In getting rid of the boxes and making a jederman character, Card's stories unsettle me, and in unsettling me, challenge me as a reader to think, reassess, reenvision the world around me, and as a writer to challenge boundaries too. Yep, definitely genius.

For more great reads check out Barrie Summy's website. It's brimming with temptation!

The Book Review Club - Aliens on Vacation

Aliens on Vacation
by Clete Barrett Smith
middle grade

Perhaps it's the alien state of my house under demolition/renovation that made me identify so completely with the shock David experiences when his grandma's B&B turns out to be a hotel for aliens. Others might argue it's that I have a teenager in the house, a veritable alien in our midst. Could be both.

Not to mention the excellent writing.

Basic premise: Twelve year old David, a.k.a. Scrub, spends the summer with his fraternal grandmother in the Pacific Northwest, far from his home in Florida. His grandmother lives in a sleepy little town well of the beaten track and David is sure summer is going to be majorly boring...until he discovers his grandma runs a hotel for aliens vacationing on planet Earth.

Let the fun begin!

Every dressed up an alien to "go native" on planet Earth?
How about bought groceries for them?
Or played a game of b-ball?

Scrub's life isn't all fun and games. Sheriff Tate suspects more goes on in the Intergalactic B & B than meets the eye. Seven foot guests and Scrub's ginormous squid "pet" he takes for walks have gotten his attention. They've gotten Amy, his daughter's, attention, too. She hides in the bushes to catch the truth on film. Scrub does his best to keep Amy from the B&B to protect his grandma's secret, but Amy isn't so easily put off. She's a space buff. Plus, she's friendly. And, well, Scrub kinda likes her.

This is a fun science fiction romp bursting with creativity and imagination. My daughter would NOT let me stop reading at night. And when we finished, the first words out of her mouth were, "When's the next book coming out?" She is in love with this series. She wants to email the author every other day as if he were her buddy.

What's really great for the adult in me is that there is meat to the grammar and word choice of this story. It's a great transitional book for kids who do chapter books but are ready for more demanding novels. The story keeps them entertained while challenging their linguistic and comprehension skills.

From an author's perspective, I really enjoyed the close third POV. At times, I forgot the book was in third person. It felt that much like first person. Which is really another reason it works so well as a transitional, tweenish book for kids graduating on to harder reads.

The one thing I wasn't completely sold on was the ending. I like them short and sweet. The last chapter ends that way, but then there's an epilogue. I think the story stands well without it, but I'm hashing literary hairs. It certainly doesn't make the piece any less fun to read. And given the fact that my daughter never wanted me to stop, it was helpful for her to fade away, rather than cut.

For more Spring flings, hop over to Barrie Summy's site!

The Book Review Club - Bad Island

Bad Island
Doug TenNapel
Graphic Novel

This one goes out to the one I love, Sophia. Sophia is my reluctant reader; although I say that with a big grain of salt. She has a hereditary convergence problem with her eyes, so small text is killer on her. Reading a book like, say, A Wrinkle in Time, is pure torture because the text is so small.

Not too long ago, however, we discovered graphic novels. [Cue chorus] It was as if the heavens opened and the gods of reading finally threw us a bone (along with a nice rendition of Handel's Messiah). Sophia loves graphic novels. LOVES them. She'd read TenNapel's Ghostopolis, so when I saw he had a new book out, I ordered it right away, along with a couple of others. She devoured three graphic novels in one afternoon - music to a writer mom's heart.

But are graphic novels, well, good? you ask. Are they, dare we use the word, literature?

Oh, baby.

There is some good stuff out there. Really good stuff. Bad Island is decent fair. Persepolis is more hard-hitting and memorable. Smile is a graphic novel Sophia reads over and over. But Bad Island may just become a regular in her reading diet. It has science fiction, family problems, flying stone robots, a dead snake that comes back to life, an annoying little sister, a brother who finally gets to prove himself, a ship wreck. Good, riveting stuff. The story line is solid, interweaving two believable plots. This is not pure cotton candy for the reluctant reader. It's got meat to it. And flying pink birds. What more could you ask for? Plus, it's not as unnerving as say a Neil Gaimon graphic novel, but not as gentle as Raina Telgemaier's Smile. It will capture the boy crowd and hold their attention with things like stomach acid and invisibility stones. While girls will love the pet animals that have BIG moms to protect them when older brother drop kick the cute, but deadly babies. In other words, it's got a healthy does of humor too.

Basic plot line: father takes family on boat outing. Boat sinks in mysterious storm. Family lands on strange island with all kinds of life found nowhere else on earth. Family tries to figure out what the island is, almost gets killed a few times, but finally discovers the island is a sleeping stone robot that they save and which, in turn, saves them.

If you've got an hour for a waltz on the graphic side of life, pick this one up. If you've got a reluctant boy reader, ORDER IT. They will read it again and again. And if you're thrilled to find your child reading, check out a few other graphic novels. Peppered through nonillustrated reads, such as Tiger Rising, or Holes, graphic novels can actually make reading fun.

For more an abundant supply of winter reads this blustery November, scamper over to Barrie Summy's website. She's got a treeful.

The Book Review Club - Across the Universe

Across the Universe
Beth Revis
YA

Yum. Scrumpdiliicious yum. It's been a while since a book capitivated me the way this one has. I gladly bought into the fictional dream on the first page and felt as if I'd finished the best peanut buster parfait after it was over.

I know. I know. I don't usually gush about books, but this one was that enjoyable a read for me. The basic science fiction premise admittedly had me hooked from the start. I am a closet case trekkie. The kind who used to watch the original episodes before going to church each Sunday as a kid. I was looking for balance in my philosophical diet early on.

So when I saw a modern day scifi with a mystery twist, I was in hook, line and sinker. Girl gives up life on earth to be frozen for three hundred years as a spaceship, Godspeed, travels across the universe from Sol Earth to Centauri Earth. She is awoken early while the ship is still en route and almost dies. Others frozens are murdered. She tries to find the killer together with the help of the leader to be, Elder, who is the same age as she is, sixteen.

The science part of the story was just enough to make the ship believable without becoming so overwhelming that I felt as if I was sitting back in physics class. The characters were well-developed. The mystery was believable. And the darkness was an artistic kind of darkness. Not the usual sturm and angst that is so prevalent in so many dystopian YA novels these days.

The book is also told in alternating first first POV between Amy and Elder. It works well to give the reader a sense of the earth left, the ship now, and how foreign that ship would seem to an outside, i.e. Amy (the reader as well). Even the ending was believable in the sense that not everything ends happily but realistically both emotionally and plotwise.

I realize I should say something critical, some point Revis missed or didn't quite hit the mark on. After all, this is a review. So....maybe it's that I wish they wouldn't make the book into a movie because movies are never as good as the books.

For more great reads, hop over to Barrie Summy's site. She's dishing them out with whipped cream and cherries on top!