A Certain Slant of Light

by Laura Whitcomb

Story summary: Ghosts fall in love, relationships break and relationships heal, people struggle with death and abuse and Sad Things, the physical world is discovered to be glorious.

Why You Will Like This Book:

• People overcoming issues! I love books like this, that give hope and show dragons can be beaten.
• The visual descriptions! I'm not really one for visual descriptions, but these struck me as quite inspiring.

And Why You Might Not:

• There is definite sexual content. I think it makes sense given the context and type of story it is, but it deserves a warning.
• The practicing Christians are all portrayed in a negative light.

A Tangle of Gold

by Jacqueline Moriarty

Story summary: Don't want to spoil too much from the end of the previous book. So I'll leave it vague: The royal family still has difficulties with forgetting who they are, the colours are still attacking in larger and larger numbers, and there are yet more political factions with their own agenda. How are the Royal Youth Alliance and a girl from Cambridge going to save the whole Kingdom?
Sequel to the other The Colours of Madeleine books: A Corner of White and The Cracks in the Kingdom.¹

Why You Will Like This Book:

• Complicated human relationships
• Dysfunctional but interesting and realistic families
• Unique and beautiful fantasy world
• Strange and unexpected plots twists
• It's the kind of book that makes me want to research all these historical figures (huge plus for me)

And Why You Might Not:

• The writing is somewhat stylized, in a way which usually doesn't work at all for me, so I can see it not working well for someone else
• I liked the plot twists as well, but I did see many of them coming ahead of time.

Catch & Release

by Blythe Woolston

Story summary: Polly gets flesh eating disease and loses her eye. This other victim, a kid aptly named Odd, takes her on a fishing trip to take her mind of things. It turns into a road trip to Portland, with friendship and personal growth and all that.

Why You Will Like This Book:

• Deals with difficult life events like the loss of a limb or eye.
• Has an unusual friendship and complex character relationships.

And Why You Might Not:

• It's strange. The characters are strange, and pretty unhappy.
• And...I can't really criticize more than this, though not because it's necessarily very good. See after the break for more on this.

Gone Girl

by Gillian Flynn

Story Summary: Don't want to give anything away. This is a thriller with definite twists. But to sum up briefly: Nick and Amy are having trouble in their marriage, Amy disappears, media starts to suspect Nick, everything goes wrong, twists happen.

Why You'll Like This Book:

• Unreliable narrators!
• Plot twists!
• Very gripping! (At least the second half.)

And Why You Might Not:

• Two main characters who are both rather unpleasant people.
• And both kind of sexist too. Towards both sexes.
• And most of the other characters are unpleasant too. (Although I liked Go.)

The Cracks in the Kingdom

by Jaclyn Moriarty

Story summary: Sequel to A Corner of White. Elliot and Madeleine write letters to each other through the crack connecting their worlds--Madeleine from England, Elliot from the Kingdom of Cello. There's also adventure, friendships, spell-hunting, turquoise rain, manipulative princesses, and lots of musing about life, love, and physics.

Why You Should Read This:

• Very original fantasy world (living colours!).
• But also contemporary England.
• Great interactions between characters.
• And wonderfully complex characters as well.
• Just lots of fun, while also being thought provoking. You should read it.

And Why You Shouldn't:

• If you don't like even the hint of a love triangle.
• If teenagers and their emotional problems annoy you. (Even though said emotional problems aren't so much "Does he like me?!?!" and more "Why did my dad run away with an enemy agent?!?!")
• If you have such a strong view of your particular philosophy that you don't want to read about a girl musing on life, love, physics, etc.

Blood of My Blood

by Barry Lyga

Story summary: The third in the trilogy, following up from I Hunt Killers and Game, this book sees Jazz finally confronting his serial killer father, as well as the darkness that is growing inside himself.

Thoughts: Starts with Jazz laying bleeding and dying in a locked room, his best friend also bleeding and dying (and a hemophiliac), and his girlfriend captured by his evil, serial killer father, which means imminent bleeding and dying. So that's a good start. And then there's many a bloody twist and turn from there.

1/2 a star off from the grade for the first two, simply because I hardly remember what happened. Which must say something about a book, right? Although really, it probably says more about my memory and the personal things I've been going through this year. It was still greatly enjoyable, though. And I remember a few things that were interesting. Definitely a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy.

Also, a really pretty cover, no? I love the covers for this series--grey and red makes an awesome combination. (Still like the second one's cover the best, though.)

Grade: 3 stars

The View From Saturday

by E. L. Konigsburg

Grade: 3 1/2 stars
Story summary: Four Grade 6 children are making history by beating the Grade 7 and 8 groups in the Academic Bowl. This is the story of how four individual children become a best man, save baby turtles, buy heart-shaped puzzles, and invite the others for tea, and how they came together to form "The Souls".

Thoughts: I'm not surprised this won a Newberry Medal. The themes of the story were woven through beautifully, and the structure was unusual and intriguing.

In general, I love stories like this, where learning (especially academic learning) is a primary focus. I also love smart kids, academic contests, and unique adult mentors who help smart kids with academic contests. So this was definitely up my alley.

The treatment of race did seem slightly strange to me. Everybody was commenting on the Indian (from India) characters, and how they were different and strange. This was a fairly long time ago, and in the States (which can definitely be different than Canada in that regard), so perhaps it's accurate. I don't know, and I don't really feel qualified to comment, but it did stick out to me, so I thought I'd mention it.

But it was a very good book, filled with interesting observations like: "The fact was that Mrs. Olinski did not know how she had chosen her team, and the further fact was that she didn't know that she didn't know until she did know. Of course, that is true of most things: you do not know up to and including the very last second before you do." I'm looking forward to trying more books by E. L. Konigsburg.

Game

by Barry Lyga

Grade: 3 1/2 stars
Story Summary: Sequel to I Hunt Killers. Jazz goes to New York to help the police with a new serial killer, struggles intensely with his inner demons some more, and unwittingly joins in a game of life and death.

Thoughts: Another great one in this series. Definitely dark and gruesome (this is a book about the son of a serial killer), but not as horrible and dark and weird as, say, Slice of Cherry. I liked the way the "game" was incorporated into the story-line.

Also, side benefit, I love the dust jacket cover, and there's a special bonus of a beautiful, blood-splattered inside cover as well.

Travel Reading Part 4

For the last two months, I've been gone on a backpacking trip to Europe. My cell phone was the only internet access I had, and the reception was often spotty. Plus I was just super busy. So TONS of reading, but no posts. There were too many books, and I read them too long ago to make individual posts for each one. So I'm dividing them up into a couple posts, and just writing a couple sentences for each. Here goes the fourth and last set:

"Goose Chase" by Patrice Kindl
Grade: 4 stars
Retelling of the fairy tale "The Goose Girl". The goose girl is stuck in a tower for her own safety, courted by two men she highly dislikes. She plans a daring escape, and that's when her adventures start. A light read, but I loved it. It was pretty much the perfect comfort read for this particular time. The geese were hilarious, the goose girl was bad-tempered and awesome, and the romance was unusual.



"Shards of Honour" by Lois McMaster Bujold
Grade: 4 1/2 stars
The first book in the Vorkosigan saga. Cordelia is the captain of a scientific expedition, and she gets captured by the captain of a military ship from another planet. She has to survive for 5 days on an alien planet with him, and then there's politics and  battles and more survival and stuff. Faaabulous book (my description SO does not do it justice), which I'm guessing is the start to an amazing and unforgettable series. Where has this been my whole life? One of my favourites parts of this book is a little difficult to describe in so few words, but suffice it to say: it's titled perfectly. I loved the way the theme of honour was dealt with. This book and then next (Barrayar, discussed a bit below) are contained in an omnibus called Cordelia's Honour; this is very aptly named, for truthfully, Cordelia "pour[s] out honour all around [her], like a fountain". Also--Bothari. He is...quite something. There's not enough room to describe it all here, but his story was one of my favourite parts of the book.

"Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities" by Mike Jung
Grade: 2 stars
A couple of fanboys of the superhero Captain Stupendous have to help him out when all of a sudden he's not acting as stupendous as usual. This books subverts some common tropes (girl power, non-white characters, and more), which I always like, however it didn't really manage to keep my interest very well. Maybe my time of loving Middle Grade fiction more than most other kinds is slowly coming to an end, because it seems that the complaint "this book is too young for me" has come up a lot recently. (There are of course important exceptions, like Ordinary Magic, books by Frances Hardinge, and by Stephanie Burgis, and more.) Or maybe the book is simply a bit too simplistic. Not sure.

"Barrayar" by Louis McMaster Bujold
Grade: 3 1/2 stars
Begins right after Shards of Honour, so I don't want to discuss it too much because of spoilers. But there's a lot of Cordelia acclimatizing to a different culture, having lots of trouble with the horrific Barrayarian politics, and trying to save her unborn son. I liked it less than Shards of Honour, but it was still really good. My main issue might have been that it seemed to have less of a main theme and be less self-contained than Shards of Honour, but then I've read other reviews which have thought pretty much the opposite. So I don't know. What matters is that it has confirmed in my mind that this series is definitely worth reading. I am now going to go out and read as many Vorkosigan books as I can get my hands on.

Travel Reading Part 1

For the last two months, I've been gone on a backpacking trip to Europe. My cell phone was the only internet access I had, and the reception was often spotty. Plus I was just super busy. So TONS of reading, but no posts. There were too many books, and I read them too long ago to make individual posts for each one. So I'm dividing them up into a couple posts, and just writing a couple sentences for each.
Here goes:

"Burning Blue" by Paul Griffin
Grade: 3 stars
Girl gets her face burned by acid and she and this hacker guy try to find out who did it. Kind of cool. I like the romance and the plot line. But my expectations were a bit too high going into this one. (It's about a hacker. It could have been really cool and computery.)





"Guy Langman: Crime Scene Procrastinator" by Josh Berk
Grade: 3 stars
Again, I liked this one less than the expectations I had. Maybe it was something to do with starting off a huge trip as opposed the actual books I was reading? (Mr. Was below had the same issue, and even Ender's World was a little less interesting than I expected.) This one is mostly recommended because it's quite funny--I can't actually remember the mystery story line anymore.




"The Spark" by Susan J. Bigelow
Grade: 3 stars
Good sequel to Broken and Fly into Fire, with Deirdre as the main character this time. The plot and the world were as detailed and interesting as the first two books. Bigelow's characters often don't appeal to me a lot, and this one was slightly less good in that regard than even the first two. But there is also a level of realism,  I think, in both the characters and the world-building, that makes this series decidedly worth reading.



"Mr. Was" by Pete Hautman
Grade: 1 star
I suspect the right person would really love it, and I don't think it was badly written, but I didn't like it at all. Partly, like Burning Blue and Guy Langman, it was my previous expectations. I heard it was a weird time travel story--which it was... But it was also mostly the story of a boy whose father beat his mother, and then eventually killed her.




"Ender's World: Fresh Perspectives on the SF Classic Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card
Grade: 4 stars
Really interesting collection of essays all about Ender's Game. One of my favourite essays was "Ender Wiggin, USMC" by an actual marine named John F. Schmitt. Quite fascinating look at how Ender's Game was used and loved by group of US Marines. Lots of other cool essays too.

Wonderstruck

by Brian Selznick

Grade: 3 stars
Story summary: After Ben is struck by lightning and goes deaf in his good ear as well, the subsequent trip to the hospital gives him a chance to run away and look for his father. Meanwhile in the past, a girl also runs away to find a parent.

Thoughts: Written in the same unique style as The Invention of Hugo Cabret, with half the story being told through pictures. In this case, however, the pictures tell a separate story than the text--but related plot-wise and thematically

And just like Hugo Cabret, this book has a lovely soft--and slightly sad--storyline (how's that for alliteration?) and the pictures tie in perfectly.

Another thing both Selznick books have going for them (besides the gorgeous pictures and prose) is unusual areas of research. In this case, the resource list at the back included books on lightning, deafness, and museums. I was especially interested in the stuff about Deaf culture (apparently, "deaf" refers to the condition and "Deaf" refers to the culture, which I didn't know).

I Hunt Killers

by Barry Lyga

Grade: 3 1/2 stars
Story summary: Jasper ("Jazz") is the son of a notorious serial killer. So yeah. He's messed up a bit. And then a body is found in his small town (which has already seen one serial killer), and he's sure it's not simply an ordinary death.

Thoughts: This is what I was looking for with Ripper. A kid who's actually affected by his serial killer father, and obviously has an unusual and clever insight into what makes a murderer tick. And also an introspective mind with which he actually thinks about stuff.

Lots of angst, lots of blood, and a somewhat open-ended ending, leaving the awesome possibility for more angst! and more blood!

Edit: Now here is part of that possibility realized, with the sequel Game.