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 Rising: A Department 19 novel by Will Hill YP FIC HILL

Jamie is now an official member of Department 19, the secret monster hunting wing of the government, and is starting to settle into the non-stop grind of hunting monsters.  Paired with his vampire-turned-vampire-hunter girlfriend Larissa and friend Kate, they’ve been given the toughest assignment imaginable: find and destroy the resurrected Dracula before he regains his strength and takes over the world.

This is one of my favorite action series on the shelves.  Will Hill is a maestro of hard hitting action scenes.  He does a great job of making his purer than pure evil villains fun to hate and root against and is great at switching POV and timelines.  We get chapters form the viewpoint of Dracula, Kate, Larissa (she's my favorite because she's tormented), our hero Jamie, and a couple of others thrown in.  This keeps twists and turns coming aplenty and the book moving relatively briskly (parts of the middle section gets a tad slow, but picks up again with a vengeance).  It’s crazy how fast I tore through this brick of a book.  It’s nearly 600 pages but reads so quickly with a just-one-more-chapter-and-then-I’ll-sleep appeal that’s hard to resist.  My only gripe is that the characters aren’t all that interesting when they aren’t killing bad guys and that our hero is way too perfect. When the bullets and stakes start flying and the blood is pouring I oddly seem to forget all about it.  A must read for any fan of action, fast paced horror thrillers, or action horror.  Darren Shan fans might even have a new favorite author. I would read the first book before grabbing this one though, but that's just TWO awesome books you get to read.

You can check our catalog for The Rising here.

Werewolves of Montpellier by Jason YP FIC JASON

Sven is an émigré in Paris living as a daring jewel thief, but mainly just hanging around with fellow expatriates and pining after his neighbor Audrey, but she already has a girlfriend. He travels the French rooftops dressed as a werewolf, because werewolves scare people even more than burglars, but when his picture gets taken after a crime the real werewolves try to hunt him down. Mainly he’s still just worried about Audrey though, in this totally unique, thoroughly weird comic about animal people trying to make sense of their lives.

This is a weird and wacky gem. It is filled with quirky humor and a quiet sadness. Jason uses a lot of very 2D and flat images that work well with the understated delivery the characters have. It reminds me a lot of Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, because the animals spend most of their times dealing with coming to terms with the day to day challenges of life. It is sort of odd that everyone in the comic are animal people. It doesn’t seem to be a metaphor like in the brilliant Holocaust graphic novel Maus (940.5318 SPIEGELM); it just seems like Jason likes cartooning with animals. This is like a quirky indie movie but in comic form. It is also my new favorite werewolf comic.

Linger by Maggie Stiefvater YP FIC STIEFVAT

Can a cure be worse than the disease? That’s what Sam wonders now that he’s no longer cursed to travel as a wolf every winter. Sure, now he’s free to be with Grace, the girl he loves, but restarting his life has been harder than he thought. Now there’s a new wolf in town and his secrets could bring Sam and Grace’s new life to a halt just as its beginning.

While it does suffer a bit from Middle Book in a Trilogyitis, Linger will stay with you of you give it a chance. The first book, Shiver had less main characters (this book has FOUR narrators) and Sam and Grace’s Impossible Love (I’ve decided that since Impossible Love has become so popular in teen fiction it deserves to be capitalized and bolded) was just beginning, so things seemed more immediate. However, even though Linger is a slower starting book, the writing is so good, you may not mind at all. Stiefvater has such great descriptions and really set scenes so well that you’ll really feel like you are there. If you want another story of paranormal love against all odds, then this is one of the better written series out there. Definitely check out Shiver if you haven’t and if you like it you will more than likely enjoy Linger too.

Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins YP FIC HAWKINS

Sophie Mercer is a real witch. No, a for serious real life witch. However, since no one ever told her about witches her spells tend to go really bad. And when a disastrous love spell makes a very memorable prom, she's shipped off to Hecate Hall(Hex Hall for short) to learn to control her powers. There she's taking classes with other witches, fairies, werewolves, shape shifters, and her roommate is a vampire. Between trying to learn how to use her powers, dodging the scary mean girls, and trying not to crush on her enemy's hot boyfriend her life is less than magical. To make things even more complicated she finds that one day she could be one of the most powerful magic users in the world. When people are attacked and Sophie's only friend is the suspect Sophie decides to investigate, but when she uncovers the mystery she finds may make her realize that there are worse things to be than a witch.

This is a funny, exciting book with a great lead character, a fun mystery, and a good romance hook. I was a little skeptical about reading another magical Child of Destiny book, but the well rounded characters and humor throughout the book won me over. The book has a real Harry Potter feel with the whole new magic user in a magic school and destined to be the most powerful thing going on, but manages to be original in its own way. If you like paranormal romances and paranormal with a good sense of humor, then you should grab Hex Hall.

Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce YP FIC PEARCE

Scarlett and Rosie March have a deep bond forged in pain and sacrifice. Scarlett saved both their lives at the cost of her eye when a Fenris (werewolf) killed their grandmother and attempted to kill them. Ever since Scarlett has donned a red cloak and lured the Fenris to their deaths under her axe. Rosie has fought alongside her sister but is tired of death and killing. And when she finds herself falling for Scarlett’s fellow hunter, the woodsman Silas, she’ll find that any bond can be broken.

Modernized fairy tale retellings are pretty popular right now and Sisters Red really hits the mark better than most. It takes all the danger of Little Red Riding Hood and looks at its message of the dangers of romance in a totally new way. This is a great action packed read with a really strong romance. Silas and Rosie’s growing attraction then love is really well told and makes the book more than just an awesome werewolf killing story (which it also is). I think fans of Twilight and other supernatural romances will really enjoy this one, but Team Jacob fans may not like all the dead werewolves.