Midwinter Blood by Marcus Sedgwick YP FIC SEDGWICK

A reporter in 2073 investigates a remote island said to have discovered the secret to immortality, an archeologist in 2011 tries to dig the island's secrets from the ground, a downed pilot in WW II trying to go home, further back a painter, further back a ghost, further still a vampire, and last or first a Viking king.  Throughout it all a love that lives and dies again and again.  Seven stories that all make on tale of Midwinter Blood.

I can see very easily why this won the prestigious Printz Award. It is dark, lyrical, haunting, and stays with you every time you put the book down. It is a sad, beautiful, and frightening look at lives interconnected by love, loss, and violence. This isn't a ghastly and gory look-out-it's-right-behind-you!!! kind of book, it's a much creepier slow building tension. The feeling of inevitable and inescapable doom. The very first chapters introduce you to a strange, seemingly perfect island. Since, we've all seen the movies and read the books about perfect small towns, that alone puts the reader on edge. Sedgwick ratchets up the tension quickly but vaguely. You know something is very wrong, but not what. This will be a recurring theme!  

Sedgwick jumps each story further back in time repeating images, phrases, and similar characters. This can be maddening at first, because you get so little to go on to solve the ever weirder mystery. Even when you finish the book entirely you may feel like you have more questions than answers. I'd like to go on record as calling that a good thing. It's so refreshing to read a book that respects teen readers enough to let them come up with their own answers.

What's so great about this book, is that it's deep and simple.  Sedgwick relies on as few words as necessary making it a stark and spare style that fits his story and themes perfectly. It also makes it so much easier to be swept quickly again and again on the currents of time. This is a rare and unique novel that should be read by anyone that loves a good story, especially a dark and haunting one

You can find Midwinter Blood in our catalog here.

 

Unwritten by Mike Carey art by Peter Gross SF CAREY

Tommy Taylor is a worldwide phenomenon.  The boy wizard that has repeatedly bested the evil Count Ambrosio is beloved by people of all ages across the globe, and even has a almost religious following among his most fanatical fans.  Tom Taylor is just the son of the author and coasting on his celebrity as the 'inspiration' for Tommy.  Then a woman tells him he has it all backwards.  He IS Tommy and fiction is far realer than any of us know.  Happy to write her off as a raving lunatic, Tom changes his tune when he becomes targeted by a secret society dedicated to controlling all human history and destiny by controlling the stories we tell. This starts an amazing adventure beyond truth, fiction, fantasy, or reality.

This series just keeps getting better and better! It starts as a mystery/thriller and the story keeps twisting and turning and adding all sorts of amazing new layers.  The slower start really lets you get to know Tom and watch him grow and falter. It helps build the relationships between Tom and his two companions to something of real substance. What makes the series so great is that Tom isn't just a reluctant hero, he's not necessarily even a hero at all.  He has been written to be a hero by his controlling, reality-altering father for ;the greater good', but he balks at heroism at every turn.  The book's villains are definitely capital E evil, and raise the stakes remarkably well.  However, Carey isn't afraid to upend everything and start anew with Volume 7.  The book feels epic in scope and grandeur, without ever feeling forced or corny.  It has a lot to stay about the power and source of stories and builds a fascinating and ever growing world of fiction that lies underneath our own.  You will find yourself finishing one volume and jumping to the next immediately.  You will also find yourself rereading several pages over and over, or even whole issues to relive a big moment.  This book has serious complexity and depth and challenges the very notions of what is fiction and what is real.  It does it all with a mix of action, adventure, romance, humor, and philosophy that is hard to match in comics today.  

The art took a while for me to really appreciate. Peter Gross isn't the flashiest or most detailed artist, but he really does work for this project.  He helps ground the book in a sense of reality, so when they interact with the world of fiction it feels momentous.  That's hard to do in a comic book, where we are used to impossible things on every page.  This is an absolute must read for fans of serious comics, and I think it will make a lot of fans of comics for anyone that gives it a shot.

SIDENOTE: We have volumes 1-7 and a sort of prequel called Tommy Taylor and the Ship that Sank Twice.  I'd wait to read it until you've finished Volume 6.  That was when it was published and it fits really well there.

You can find the first volume of Unwritten in our catalog here.

Love in the Time of Global Warming by Francesca Lia Block YP FIC BLOCK

Pen has a story to tell.  Stories have power and hers may just save the world. At least what's rest of it.  The Earth Shaker ripped the world apart and the sea reclaimed the land.  all Pen wanted was to find her family, a home, but she'll have to make a journey first. An odyssey.  She'll make a new family, face down giants, and fight the man that destroyed the world. 

This is the best posy-apocalyptic reimagining of the Odyssey I've ever read! Sure, it's the ONLY one I've ever read, but that's just another point in it's favor.  Francesca Lia Block always writes beautiful stories with amazing descriptive prose that can pull you into any world or person she imagines, so it is no surprise she can make something as odd as a post-apocalypse Odyssey come to life. Like the Odyssey before it this book is really about the power of stories and storytellers.  It also goes deeper into what gives the stories power.  Things like hope, faith, loyalty, love, hate, death, and more.  It is also about how we make our own family's but are also tied forever by the family that made us.  If this all sounds pretty philosophical and heady, well, yes it is.  It's also beautiful and magical and filled with an unashamed wonder of words and magic.  It's a love letter to the power of belief and fantasy.  It's also a look at what happens when the good things in life are betrayed and twisted.  This won't be a story for everyone. It tosses and turns and gets twisted inside and out before it all comes back together.  For me that was a frustrating, but ultimately rewarding experience.  I realized I was taken on a journey, too.  Like Pen it was not the one I wanted, but it was the right journey.  If you want a very strange trip, I can't recommend this book enough.

You can find Love in the Time of Global Warming in our catalog here.

Dust City by Robert Paul Weston YP FIC WESTON

Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?  Unfortunately, everyone in Dust City is, which means Henry Whelp is one marked canid.  His dad is doing hard time for the double murder of Little Red Riding Hood and her Granny, and everyone assumes murder is just in his blood.  When there's a murder at the St. Remus for Wayward Youth, Henry is the first and only suspect. He hightails it away to the dark alleys of Dust City, a place where fairy dust is real and addictive.  He'll have to find the real killer, find out the truth about what happened to Little Red, and solve the mystery of the missing fairies before he gets the axe.  

Fresh off our Fractured Fairy Tales display, Dust City is a supremely clever mix of magic, gritty hard boiled mystery, and fairy tale.  Henry like most the inhabitants of dust city is an evolved animal.  Wolves, foxes, ravens, and all the animals of Dust City have evolved to walk upright, have hands,and  talk, but they're still second class citizens to hominids. everyone in Dust City uses synthesized fairy dust called Dust that can heal wounds and alter minds. So this is a story about drug addicted animals and murder!  If you've ever read the Non-Disneyfied version of fairy tales, you'd know they're filled with plenty of grisly murder, so a hardboiled fairy tale is actually a perfect fit. A big part of the fun is finding the cleverly re-imagined characters from famous fairy tales. Weston does a great job of laying down a thick level of atmosphere.  He brings the wholly improbable to life and grounds it in a grimy and corrupt city.  Like the teller of tales of old, this book has dark morals, a wicked sense of humor, and is a way to use the fantastic to look at everyday life.  It did take me a couple of chapters to get the hang of how the world worked, but I ended up being glad that Weston revealed things a bit of a time.  It made the story feel more 'real' somehow to not spell out how the animals and magic worked as one big info-dump in the first few pages.  Dust City feels like a real place filled with fascinating, dangerous, and offbeat characters.  Anyone that enjoys fairy tales or new twists on fairy tales will find a lot to love in Dust City.

You can find Dust City in our catalog here.

The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson YP FIC SANDERSON

Joel has always wanted to be a Rithmatist, but Rithmatists are born and not made.  Joel, undaumnted, pured his life into knowing everything about Rithmatics he could and won a coveted scholarship to Armedius Academy.  there he secretly sneaks into classes and learns as much as he can about the magical skill he can never use.  When a new professor shows up and upsets the order of the academy, Joel learns there is more at stake than academic standing. Now he and a young Rithmatist named Melody are on the case and must find the secrets that will change their world forever.

FINALLY!!! A fantasy book that avoids the C.O.D. (Child of Destiny, foretold since the before times that will come to save the world from darkness and blah blah blah) trap.  Joel gets where he is from intelligence and extremely hard work, not birthright!  Also the magic in  this world is super well thought out, excellently described, and very exciting.  Rithmatists draw specific chalk lines that protect or attack the two dimensional monsters known as chalklings. There are excellent schematics explaining the magic at the start of each chapter and they really give the reader something to look forward to.  I really loved how driven Joel is.  It not only makes him someone you want to root for, but also keeps the plot moving very well. I liked Melody a lot and felt she really complemented Joel, but she wasn't given a lot of time to expand as a character.  Fortunately this is a series, so there is time for expansion on all fronts.  For instance, the world is very different with America a series of islands under various nation's control, but a lot of this is background and not fully explored.  However, it is very interesting background and givers the reader something to look forward to seeing more of in the sequels.  This is a unique new series with a wonderful magic system and a sparking plot.  If you are a fantasy fan then you just might have a new favorite series!

You can check our catalog for The Rithmatist here.

Crap Kingdom by D.C. Pierson YP FIC PIERSON

Tom Parking has a boring normal life.  Nothing horrible or tragic had ever happened to him and that's part of the problem.  Chosen Ones always have tragic lives!  Tom knows thinking about being plucked from his world and brought to another is a ridiculous dorky fantasy and has the good sense not to mention it to his one friend or the girl he likes and is terrified of, but then he is magically transported to another world after all!  Okay, so the messenger, Gark seems weird and it is kind of lame that the portal is a donation box in a Kmart parking lot, but he's the Chosen One, this is going to be awesome, right?  Unfortunately, he's the chosen one of a kingdom so lame they didn't even bother naming it.  Their philosophy is based around the idea that being miserable and expecting more misery to come is the best thing, because you'll never be disappointed, the King despises Tom, and every one lives in filth.  Tom decides ruining and risking his life is not worth being Chosen One and chooses not to be Chosen.  However, when they choose his best friend to be Chosen One, Tom is torn.  He's really great at it and Tom is left feeling like more of a loser than ever.  Tom has to find a way to reclaim his stolen destiny, but in doing so he may doom Grrjhrhh (they just use any random noise) and Earth and a bunch of worlds he doesn't even know about!

This is a very good book that frustratingly shies away from greatness.  On the very good side the book is funny and has an amazing premise.  It skewers the Chosen One cliche incredibly well and the first visit to Ghhghast is hilarious.  Unfortunately the book sort of lags between visits to Frhasaghafs and Earth.  Also, the book introduces very few characters overall and misses an opportunity by using the characters it has pretty sparingly.  Basically it's a real Tomfest.  Fortunately, Tom is funny and Pierson really draws on his inner nerd to really nail the feelings of resentment, awkwardness, and confusion that come with high school nerdom (So I've been told. I mean, I wasn't a big huge nerdo. REALLY!). The central arc of Tom becoming a better person and facing his insecurities works pretty darn well, but the final third of the book is rushed and there isn't enough world building of the world Tom travels to or the enemy that wants to control it.  This sounds like it would be a pretty serious dealbreaker, but Pierson really nails the humor and brings a lot of heart and feeling to the book, so much like Tom it succeeds in the end. If you like fantasy, but enjoy a good satire of it OR if you hate fantasy and wish to see it mocked OR if you're on the fence about fantasy and just like laughing in general, give this one a chance.

You can look in our catalog for Crap Kingdom here.

Josie Griffin is Not a Vampire by Heather Swain YP FIC SWAIN

Josie Griffin isn't sorry. Her scumbag ex-boyfriend totally deserved to have his windshield bashed in (he's just lucky it wasn't his cheating-on-her-with-her-best-friend-face!). Now she has to have mandatory community service AND anger management classes.  Like being angry at all her back stabbing ex-friends isn't normal?  Besides her group is about as far from normal you can get.  Avis thinks he's a were-something-or-other, Johan vants to suck her blooood, Tarren believes she has magic powers, and Helios thinks he's a Greek god (at least he looks it-swoon).  It isn't long before the crazy starts rubbing off on Josie and she starts wondering if maybe they aren't crazy and she's just joined a Supernatural Support Group. And worse yet Josie is about to find out that some creatures of the night are darker than others and one out there is preying on defenseless girls.

This is a fun and silly trifle that could be some great beach reading.  Josie has a seriously tart tongue and attitude to spare, but it never gets to be whiny or annoying.  Swain's look at the paranormal world that lives just under our nose isn't terribly original, but her witty take and flair for clever (if woefully dated. i mean do Kids These Days really know The Lost Boys?) pop culture references make the book very fun reading.  As much as I liked Heather and her Nancy Drew with bite attempt to solve mysteries, save the day, and get to the truth I'd say most the books supporting characters are a little flat.  The support group provides lots of humor but no real depth. Also, the central mystery isn't very hard to solve and the books eventual Big Bad doesn't have much of a character or menace.  You'd think that would make this a bad review, but for some reason I read this book in a single go.  It was just that perfect mix of humor and frothy fun with the perfect length.

Check our catalog for Josie Griffin is Not a Vampire here.

The Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula K. Le Guin YP FIC LEGUIN

Welcome to Earthsea, where words have power and magic lives.  

A Wizard of Earthsea: A young boy is born with a special affinity for magic and dangerous ambition. Ged could change the balance of magic forever when his arrogance awakens a darkness from beyond.  

The Tombs of Atun: Tenar serves the nameless ones, ancient gods that require sacrifices of the living.  When she captures a powerful wizards with stories of the world outside will she be a faithful servant or risk everything to taste freedom?

The Farthest Shore: Magic is dying in Earthsea and there is only one wizard that can restore the balance, but it will be at a great price.

This is among the best fantasy writing I have ever read and I am literally kicking myself (ow!) for not reading it waaaaaaay (ow!) sooner! Le Guin has a deceptively simple prose style.  I say deceptive, because she squeezes so much out of her short almost stark sentences.  It reads like an oral history passed down through generations and then finally put to paper.  This makes it feel like a document discovered about an ancient world and feel timeless.  Also, the simple style allows for her to leave a lot between the lines.  Words and knowledge are the keys to magic in Earthsea and also in art.  Le Guin uses these masterfully to weave her own spells. So these books work as rousing adventures filled with larger than life characters at the same time as being examinations of much deeper themes. She looks at the nature of power, faith, honor, duty, and most of all the idea of balance.  She does this without ever having to use long diatribes or give explicit answers.  You'll just read wonderful adventures and find yourself asking the questions almost unconsciously.  This is a series that should be read and reread over a lifetime, so like the wizard Ged you change along with the story and find new wonders as you grow.  If and when you love these tales, continue with Tehanu also Tales from Earthsea also found in YP FIC LEGUIN.

You can check our catalog for The Earthsea Trilogy here.

Cursed Pirate Girl by Jeremy A. Bastian YP FIC BASTIAN

Cursed Pirate Girl is her name and adventure and calamity follow her in equal measure.  Tired of being scoffed at and looked down upon, she and the physical embodiment of her curse (a parrot named Pepper Die) head off to find her Pirate Captain father in the legendary Omerta Seas. First she must travel through the Obscurium per Obscurious, a door of fire on the ocean floor.  And what dangers and wonders await her beyond the portal shall shock and astound.  

This is a true treasure.  It begs for very, very close reading, because the illustrations are so finely detailed. Each beautifully illustrated page is chock filled with wonderful humor, hidden gags, and intricate details.  This is a book that is meant to be reread many times to spot all the little hidden touches as well as enjoy the hilarious and whimsical main storyline.  It’s a weird and hilarious mix of Alice in Wonderland , Little Nemo, and classic pirate dime store novels. It feels both classic and timeless the first time you read it.  CPG is a great heroine, because she’s strong, resourceful, and almost insanely fearless. There’s also a lot more to this book besides whimsy and swashbuckling.  Bastian skewers classism, empire, and all other manners of pettiness and hypocrisy.  Another great touch is the books design. It has rough-hewn edges for every page and thick paper to make it feel like a very old book. It is absolutely the best graphic novel I have read all year and it is going to be incredibly hard to top.

You can check our catalog for Cursed Pirate Girl here.

Curses! Foiled Again by Jane Yolen Illustrated by Mike Cavallaro YP FIC YOLEN

Aliera Carstair was happy enough with her life.  She fenced, she had her cousin and best friend Caroline to think up awesome magical adventures with, and she was even more or less used to the nightmare that is high school. Then one of the most popular boys in school just HAD to ask her out.  Then he just had to be a troll! Her cheap practice epee just HAS to really be a mystical sword and she just HAS to be a defender of the faeire realm against the Dark Lord.  Now that all that nonsense has been revealed she doesn’t know who to trust and who the real enemy is.  

I love this series (read my review of Foiled!) and hope the next volume comes out far quicker than the gap between the last two books.  Jane excels at writing young female characters and Cavallaro’s art complements it so perfectly Yolen (if you haven’t already you MUST check out her excellent novels and her breathtakingly beautiful graphic novel The Last Dragon in YP FIC YOLEN).  His art feels loose and fun, but with a lot of expression to really sell the humor and the emotions.  I really loved Aliera, because she handles the insanity with a fun mix of acceptance and annoyance.  She reminds me of any sort of dreamy maybe a wee bit nerdy kid that enters the teen years and isn’t sure what to do with that left over sense of magic. We’re taught to leave that with childhood, but it’s definitely something lost without much gained in return.  Yolen really understands this transitional period and uses the theme to great effect.

I think Yolen really does a great job of giving a feeling of a huge magical world that we are just barely seeing and only having revealed a little at a time. This kept me interested to always know more, but not get bogged down by loads of exposition. She is very dubious of all this magic and fights to at every turn, which makes for some great humor.  I also love all the trolls.  They are dumb in the best possible way.  They are classic comic bumblers and their antics amuse without seeming superfluously silly.  Just the right amount of silly.  So if you want a wonderful comic that is just the right amount of silly, check this one out.

You can check our catalog for Curses! Foiled Again here.

Cardboard by Doug TenNapel YP FIC TENNAPEL

Mike’s out of work, out of money, and fast becoming out of hope.  With his wife gone and life seeming to slip out of control he’s forced to give the World’s Worst Birthday Present to his son Cam: a cardboard box.  When they realize that the cardboard is magic and anything they make with it comes to life, they break the cardboard magic rules and make a magic cardboard maker out of cardboard to make endless cardboard creations.  Mike learns the folly of disobeying Cardboard Rules when the snooty rich kid Marcus steals the cardboard maker and begins making an evil cardboard army.  

This is a very close to great (and often great) graphic novel form TenNapel.  I quite enjoyed his previous book Bad Island but complained that it was too short (right here).  Cardboard feels much bigger both in its page count, but also in scope.  It has amazing designs, loads of twists, suspense, action, laughs, and pitch perfect cartoony style art.  Then why would I say it isn’t a capital ‘G’ Great Graphic Novel?  Unfortunately in several important scenes TenNapel commits the sin of telling us exactly what the characters think through a speech.  Mike does it. Cam does it. Marcus does it.  Even the evil cardboard monster does it.  I often look to Jeff Smith’s magnum opus Bone when I read TenNapel’s work.  Both are fantasy/humor hybrids with a cartoony style, but Smith allows much more subtlety in the dialogue and lets his excellent facial work tell a lot of the story.  What is a bit galling is that TenNapel’s drawing skills exceeds Smith’s in many ways.  He really doesn’t need clunky speeches for us to get emotion or spell out the book’s themes.  However, with all the wit in ingenuity in this title readers will truly enjoy the book anyways.  It’s just that this book is so close to being a perfect graphic novel gem, the (very) minor flaws do standout. 

Fortunately, the strengths standout too.  The book keeps new ideas and developments coming fast and is endlessly visually inventive.  The huge array of cardboard creatures keeps getting better and better, and the final action packed chapters have loads of grisly cardboard carnage.  The humor is really strong throughout as well.  It’s really the best book of its kind since the Bone series and is a must read for any graphic novel fan.

You can check our catalog for Cardboard here.

Blood Ninja III: The Betrayal of the Living by Nick Lake YP FIC LAKE

The evil Lord Oda is dead (after already being dead, then undead, and now totally dead), but Taro’s greatest challenge is still ahead.  He must vanquish a dragon in order to get permission to marry the girl he loves.  Wait fighting dragons to win the heart of a fair lady is supposed to be for knights, nit vampire ninjas!?  Taro is doomed!  As if that wasn’t enough to worry about the dead are rising.  No, not vampires, ZOMBIES!  The super, evil and very creepy Kenji has crawled back from the dead and is raising an army of corpses to destroy all he sees.  OH!  Also, Taro’s very own flesh and blood family plans to betray him!  Being a vampire ninja in feudal Japan is ROUGH!

Vampire ninjas VS Dragons and Zombies!  What’s not to love!? This is a great finale to a wonderful action series.  This book, like the two before it (read my reviews here and here), have loads of fast paced action and ultra-violence, perfectly evil villains to root for, and enough plot twists to keep things interesting.  Also, Nick Lake does a nice amount of research to make the Japanese setting feel real and authentic.  Basically the Blood Ninja series is like a super awesome manga series without the pictures.  It doesn’t have the most realistic characters, but they aren’t boring or entirely one note either.  The heroes are almost always outmatched and that makes for tense and exciting action sequences.  The romantic plot does get a little sparkly when Taro learns that he can’t be with Hana without turning her into a vampire, but that never drags the plot down to a soap opera.  This is a must read for fans of action, manga, or historical-fiction-fantasy-horror.

You can check our catalog for Blood Ninja III here.