This is Life-Dan Rhodes

This is Life
Dan Rhodes

Canongate UK (288 p)
October 10, 2012
ISBN 978 0 85786 245 7

From Rhodes (Little Hands Clapping, 2012) comes a comic tale full of surprisingly apt observations about life and love.

Aurelie Renard is an art student in Paris preparing for her final project. She  comes up with a convoluted plan to throw a stone into a crowd and then follow the stranger that the stone hits around for a whole week. The stone in fact hits a baby, whose mother promptly hands him over to Aurelie. tells her to 'keep him alive for a week' and walks off. Meanwhile, the artist Le Machine will be presenting his seminal work- Life in an old pornographic theater.  At first, it seems that the production is another ridiculous manifestation of modern art, but we ultimately find that the motivations behind Life are deeper than we ever imagined. Rhodes maintains excellent comedic timing while plumbing the depths of the the character's experience on their Parisian adventure.

Heartfelt, funny, with characters that you will fall in love with.

Frozen-Kate Watterson

Frozen 

By Kate Watterson

• Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages

• Publisher: Tor Books (December 24, 2012)

• Language: English

• ISBN-10: 0765369605
• Read it or not: Trashy thriller, not necessary

From the publishers website: 

In Kate Watterson's thrilling suspense novel Frozen, Bryce Grantham wants a quiet vacation at his family’s cabin. On his first night in town, he meets a lovely girl at a bar and gives her a ride home. The next day, he finds her cell phone in his car. When he tries to return it, Bryce discovers that the young woman has vanished, leaving behind only a bloody shoe. 

Suddenly Bryce Grantham is the primary suspect in a murder investigation.

Detective Ellie MacIntosch has a serial killer on her hands, but without a body, she has few leads and the stalled investigation has her on edge. Bryce Grantham seems to be the perfect suspect.

Eighteen months have gone by without a clue, and yet Grantham starts reporting stumbling across the bodies of the missing women with unbelievable frequency. The evidence against him is almost irrefutable…but Ellie’s gut tells her the case is not so cut and dry.

Before Ellie compromises the investigation, her career, and possibly her life in order to prove Bryce’s innocence, she must determine whether he is a manipulative, cold-blooded killer…or the victim of a madman playing a sickening game.

No spoiler review:

An entertaining, formulaic predictable thriller. Easy subway read. 

The Sweetest Dark- Shana Abé

The Sweetest Dark

By: Shana Abé

• Reading level: Ages 14 and up
• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (April 9, 2013) Forthcoming
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345531701

From the publisher's website:

“With every fiber of my being, I yearned to be normal. To glide through my days at Iverson without incident. But I’d have to face the fact that my life was about to unfold in a very, very different way than I’d ever envisioned. Normal would become forever out of reach.” 

Lora Jones has always known that she’s different. On the outside, she appears to be an ordinary sixteen-year-old girl. Yet Lora’s been keeping a heartful of secrets: She hears songs that no one else can hear, dreams vividly of smoke and flight, and lives with a mysterious voice inside her that insists she’s far more than what she seems.
 
England, 1915. Raised in an orphanage in a rough corner of London, Lora quickly learns to hide her unique abilities and avoid attention. Then, much to her surprise, she is selected as the new charity student at Iverson, an elite boarding school on England’s southern coast. Iverson’s eerie, gothic castle is like nothing Lora has ever seen. And the two boys she meets there will open her eyes and forever change her destiny.
 
Jesse is the school’s groundskeeper—a beautiful boy who recognizes Lora for who and what she truly is. Armand is a darkly handsome and arrogant aristocrat who harbors a few closely guarded secrets of his own. Both hold the answers to her past. One is the key to her future. And both will aim to win her heart. As danger descends upon Iverson, Lora must harness the powers she’s only just begun to understand, or else lose everything she dearly loves.

Spoiler free:

There are books that you begin reading and you cannot put down. Books where you know that the characters will stay with you long after you have finished the last page. Books so beautiful you want to share them with the world. This is one of those books. Written for young adults it will appeal to the fantasy lover in all of us. The writing is absolutely spellbinding. 

 The fantastical element is interwoven with the historical in a seamless tapestry.  The main character Lora is character who refuses to bow beneath societal pressure or her traumatic history. She becomes who she is meant to Be. 

The Nightmare Affair- Mindee Arnett

The Nightmare Affair

By: Mindee Arnett

Hardcove: 367 pages

Expected publication: March 5th 2013 
Publisher: Tor Teen
Language: English
ISBN: 0765333333 
Read it or not: Read it! 

From the publisher's website

Sixteen-year-old Dusty Everhart breaks into houses late at night, but not because she’s a criminal. No, she’s a Nightmare.

Literally.

Being the only Nightmare at Arkwell Academy, a boarding school for magickind, and living in the shadow of her mother’s infamy, is hard enough. But when Dusty sneaks into Eli Booker’s house, things get a whole lot more complicated. He’s hot, which means sitting on his chest and invading his dreams couldn’t get much more embarrassing. But it does. Eli is dreaming of a murder.

Then Eli's dream comes true.

Now Dusty has to follow the clues—both within Eli’s dreams and out of them—to stop the killer before more people turn up dead. And before the killer learns what she’s up to and marks her as the next target.

No Spoilers: 

I found that this was an original, fun young adult fantasy novel. Our heroine, Dusty, is a spunky oddball.  She can't seem to keep her mouth from getting her in trouble. Despite living at a magical school she struggles with typical adolescent concerns.  Fast, fun, easy read. Do not expect too much depth. Reminded me of the earlier Harry Potter books. 

Yummy analysis with spoilers: 

Dusty is the child of a nightmare and a mortal and did not come into her powers until adolescence. So in addition to all the normal trials she has to transfer to a magical school and adapt to a new life. In the opening scene she is feeding on the dreams or fictus of this hot boy who she used to go to high school with. Turns out he is dreaming about a murder at her school and then that murder comes true. He also can see her and her magic did not have the intended effect on him. They are a dream-seer pair, and can predict the future. The non magical boy who is the son of a cop is forced to transfer to Arkwell Academy.  The school uses them to try and ferret out the killer, who is going after 'keepers'. The keepers are bound with their life-force to protect a magical object. Turns out this object is Merlin's sword which holds a powerful protection spell in place. Merlin is actually evil and has a pet phoenix that allows him to be resurrected. He is after the sword to get all of his old powers back. 

 One of the story lines that caught my attention was that of Dusty and her mother, Moira. Moira abandoned Dusty to live with her father when Dusty was very young. Dusty believes that this may be in part due to her half mortal heritage. To make things worse, Moira has a reputation as a trouble maker. Dusty constantly has to prove she is not her mother at school. When Moira becomes involved she is secretive and Dusty at one point is convinced that Moira is the killer. She's not. Moira is betrayed by the boy she's sorta seeing and her teacher. At the end of it all Dusty and her mother have a heartwarming apology fest and begin the process of healing their relationship. In the end, Merlin gets away. I imagine we will be seeing him as a villain in the follow up novels. It was kinda strange to see Merlin cast as a villain, but also interesting to have traditional archetypes shaken up. At the end of the book Dusty and Eli semi found a supernatural detective agency. I look forward to seeing what they get up to in the future novels. 

Magic Street- Orson Scott Card

Magic Street
By: Orson Scott Card
Hardcover: 416 pages
Publisher: Del Rey ( June 28, 2005) 
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0345416899
ISBN-13: 978-0345416896
Read it or not: Read it!

From the publishers website: 

(Abbreviated due to spoilers) 

In a peaceful, prosperous African American neighborhood in Los Angeles, Mack Street is a mystery child who has somehow found a home. Discovered abandoned in an overgrown park, raised by a blunt-speaking single woman, Mack comes and goes from family to family–a boy who is at once surrounded by boisterous characters and deeply alone. But while Mack senses that he is different from most, and knows that he has strange powers, he cannot possibly understand how unusual he is until the day he sees, in a thin slice of space, a narrow house. Beyond it is a backyard–and an entryway into an extraordinary world stretching off into an exotic distance of geography, history, and magic.

Review, spoiler free!

Mack Street is a black boy born in a unusual nature who posses magical powers. He lives on Magic Street with his adoptive mother profoundly affecting the lives of his entire neighborhood. He embodies the concept of 'be careful what you wish for'. 

 I found the overarching theme of the story to be somewhat formulaic: abandoned boy of magical nature must undertake a quest and he succeeds in an unlikely manner. That being said, it is an formula for a reason and Card makes use of it as a scaffolding in order to create a beautiful, unusual building. Card has done what few SF/Fantasy authors dare to do- he has created a novel entirely populated by black characters. The protagonist is a black male that was abandoned and is now being raised by a single mother. ** ( I'm not going to get into the racial stereotypes that this is touching on yet). The neighborhood that he lives in is prosperous. Most of the people that live there are nuclear families and he is basically adopted by the whole neighborhood.  But he is black and I can't emphasize that enough. Neither can Orson Scott Card. He makes it very obvious that the culture that he is describing is 'black culture' *see spoiler 1 *. I must admit, that I got this book and didn't read it for a while- I have read other 'urban fantasy novels' that focus on the fact that the characters are black and forget to develop them as characters. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this was not the case with Magic Street. Mack Street was a character that I could relate to. He struggled with feelings of loneliness, abandonment, of not knowing his place. These feelings  transcend culture and race. 


The rest of the preview- with spoilers! 

Passing through the skinny house that no one else can see, Mack is plunged into a realm where time and reality are skewed, a place where what Mack does and sees seem to have strange affects in the “real world” of concrete, cars, commerce, and conflict. Growing into a tall, powerful young man, pursuing a forbidden relationship, and using Shakespeare’s Midsummer’s Night Dream as a guide into the vast, timeless fantasy world, Mack becomes a player in an epic drama. Understanding this drama is Mack’s challenge. His reward, if he can survive the trip, is discovering not only who he really is . . . but why he exists.

Both a novel of constantly surprising entertainment and a tale of breathtaking literary power, Magic Street is a masterwork from a supremely gifted, utterly original American writer–a novel that uses realism and fantasy to delight, challenge, and satisfy on the most profound levels.


Review chock full of spoilers- delicious!

*spoiler 1* In the author's note Card reveals that the neighborhood described is based on an actual neighborhood in L.A. and that he spoke to both neighborhood residents and his black friends. He says this in a much more politically correct manner than I do. 

We first meet Mack Street when he is found abandoned in a plastic bag near an old sewer pipe. He is found by Cecee who in turns brings him to a single nurse Ura Lee Smitcher. Together Cecee and Ura raise Mack. Or attempt to. Mack takes to wandering the streets. He begins to have dreams about the wishes of his neighbors - and through him they come true. Although not in the way that he would like. One of his neighbors loves to swim and dreams of being a fish. She is found within her parents water bed, half drowned.

The book then turns into A Midsummer Night's Dream. Puck enters, and Mack street learns that he is actually a part of the faery realm and must free the Queen of faery Tatiana. Freeing her leads to a colossal battle with her estranged spouse - Oberon. In the end it turns out that  Mack Street is really all of the good parts of Oberon, his conscience that Oberon got rid of in order to get more power. That part got a little weird. 

Mack Street is in some sense the stereotypical black youth- abandoned, raised by a single mother, a wanderer. But at the same time, Card moves away from this stereotype. Mack Street is a beloved member of his community, he is a crusader in the fight against evil, he is rooted in his neighborhood though he may wander within it. . I'm not sure Card was thinking about these stereotypes as he was writing but I couldn't help thinking about them while reading. Card very clearly made the protagonist black, but he did not make his blackness the entire focus of the novel. I think that overall he struck a good balance between illuminating racial issues and weaving a fantasy tale. 

A raft of ducks

An army of ants