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I really enjoyed Cashore's first book, Graceling. Fire is set in the same universe, albeit a few decades before, but it's more a companion story rather than a prequel.

Fire is the last human monster in the Dells. Monsters can be any animal, and they're usually brightly colored (Fire is named after her hair) and supernaturally beautiful. Fire finds all these traits a burden, particularly because her monster father was nearly the ruin of the kingdom.

But soon, she gets entangled in court politics, despite many people's suspicion of her and her background.

The book has many of the same drawbacks that Graceling did; the villains feel rather two-dimensional to me, the prose is very clunky in the beginning, and the names are... not great. However, Cashore is very good with her characters, and some of the same things I loved about Graceling show up here again, particularly Cashore's politics about sex != marriage or true love.

Fire is very different from Katsa; just as unsure in ways, but quieter and more obviously feminine due to her monster beauty. I liked her a great deal, though, and she reminds me a bit of some McKinley heroines. I also really loved the romance in this book, although like Fire, it's more traditional than the one in Graceling.

Cashore still has some rough edges to work out in her books, but I love her people and her point of view. Really looking forward to Bitterblue, whom I loved in Graceling.

Links:
- gwyneira's review

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I am so behind on posting write-ups to 50books_poc that it's not even funny, not to mention how behind I am on posting about books in general.

Maybe I should bite the bullet and create an "a: poc" tag for my own blog?

Anyway, this is a retelling of Cinderella. Ash (Aisling) lives in a world in which people are slowly starting to believe that fairies are only stories. Ever since her mother died, Ash has been drawn to Fairy, believing that she will somehow get to see her mother again through them.

To be honest, I probably would not have picked up this book had I not known that a) Lo was Chinese and b) it was a lesbian romance. I'm pretty bored of Euro-centric fairy tale retellings, and even more so of fairies. I'm not entirely sure the book overcomes my ennui for either of those things, but Lo put enough twists into the Cinderella story to keep my interest. I very much liked Kaisa, the King's Huntress, and the entire history of the Huntresses (always female). Ash herself, her stepmother, and her sisters aren't very different from the fairy tale, and I was a little disappointed, because I always want the evil step mother and step sisters to be rewritten somehow.

The book is also oddly structured in that the prince basically gets no page time, replaced instead by Ash's not-quite-friendship with the fairy prince Sidhean. I thought Lo set up some plot elements that didn't pay off, and the final resolution of the conflict went much too quickly. However, Ash and Kaisa's romance is extremely cute and sweet, and I particularly loved a few of the scenes concentrating on Kaisa's slightly open shirt and the glimpses of her neck.

( Spoilers )

Still, this is cute, and some of the awkward interactions between Ash and Kaisa remind me of Robin McKinley. Definitely looking forward to what Lo does next.

Links:
- meganbmoore's review

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This is the second book in the Twelve Kingdoms series, and although you don't have to read the first book to follow the plot of this one, which stands alone, this book does build on some of the worldbuilding of the first book.

A young boy is swept away from his unhappy family life in Japan, and when he reaches the world of the twelve kingdoms, he is renamed "Taiki" and told he is the kirin of Tai. As such, he has the duty of selecting the rightful king. Unfortunately, because he did not grow up in this world, he has no idea how to shapeshift or do other things that most kirin can do.

As with the first book, the prose translation feels rather flat, and I seriously question the decision to use words like "lamia" and "faerie" to describe some of the mythological creatures. I'm particularly puzzled by "lamia," which is used to describe the kirin's guardian figure, who seems to be more of a chimera. Also, although I know the original lamia story is not a vampire one, I still associate the word with vampire. Also also, I know there are fairy-like creatures in Chinese mythology (仙女), but why use the "faerie" spelling? It has connotations that do not fit the book! And from what I remember, the faeries in this book don't particularly resemble anything I am familiar with. Instead, it feels like the translator picked random terms that kind off maybe not really fit the creatures in the book and slapped them on, completely disregarding any sort of cultural background.

At least they stayed with "kirin" instead of going for "unicorn."

Anyway! Back to the plot. As with book one, the protagonist may not be likable to everyone, but I actually liked him a great deal. And because I know now that Ono tends to go for a slow build up, I was much less impatient than I was with the first book. I did manage to guess most of what would happen, but for me, the plot was less important than Taiki's character journey, which was carried off well.

Like Rachel (link below), I do wish there had been more examining of how the kirin system of choosing a king is better than a different system. On the other hand, it was good getting a look at the other kirin who was not that successful with his king.

Also, I hope Risai shows up again! She was awesome.

Links:
- rachelmanija's review

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Laura Amores is kicked out of Catholic school when a nun finds a note sent to her from her girlfriend, Marlena. She's then kicked out of the house by her mother. She manages to find shelter with her best friend Soli, and she spends most of the book trying to figure out her sexuality and what communities she wants to belong to.

Like much of coming-of-age YA, the storyline is not the most original, but Lauri's voice is very lively, and I love how Dole populates her book with Latin@s of all kinds. And I really love that there is an important POC/POC interracial friendship (Soli is black)! Dole also includes genderqueer characters, a few mentions of drag queens, and transgendered characters, although the central conflict still revolves around Laura identifying as a lesbian or not.

Some of the conflicts are rather obvious for the genre—there's the encounter with the homophobe, the boyfriend, the non-accepting family—and Dole doesn't always deal with them in ways that make them more than their outlines. Lauri's voice also doesn't always work for me, but I suspect that's because I'm pretty far from being a Latina lesbian teen in Miami. Still, the book feels very now and very alive, and I really love the communities Dole portrays in the book.

I'm looking forward to what Dole does next; I think she has a good voice and would love to see her tackle less common storylines.

Copy won from Color Online. Many thanks!

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Scirye is accompanying her mother (an ambassador) and sister (female warrior) as they help protect and manage a museum exhibit of important Kushan artifacts when evil dragon Badik attacks and steals one. In the meantime, Bayang the dragon is attempting to stalk and kill the young boy Leech, who has no idea what's going on and happens to be in the museum at the wrong time with his friend Koko. They all end up meeting and questing after the stolen artifact.

This is the first book in Yep's new trilogy set in 1941, but a 1941 populated with dragons, goddesses, water sprites, and all sorts of other supernatural creatures. Although the story begins in San Francisco, it moves on to Hawaii, and by the end of the book, the gang is off to even more locales.

I'm sad I didn't get to read this as a kid; I would have loved it! Even so, I love it now as well. The entire main cast is POC; it has an awesome girl in the form of Scirye and an awesome older woman in Bayang; the plot is fast-moving and exciting; and there are miniature griffins, volcano adventures, Asian mythology, flying carpets, shapeshifting, reincarnation, old vendettas, weary assassins, and much more! If you haven't figured out yet, it was a ton of fun to read.

It does read slightly young in that it handles fairly weighty topics rather quickly, but I like that they're there, and I particularly love the character of Bayang and how she develops throughout the book.

In conclusion: really fun, and Yep creates a retro, magical setting with actual diversity. I wish I could give this to all the people who seem to think that you can only have one or the other.

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This is the first of a series of books set in the twelve kingdoms universe, although from what I've heard, all the books are only loosely connected and don't need to be read in order.

Nakajima Yoko is an average girl, save for her naturally brown-red hair (I see anime and manga influences!). Until one day, a strange man appears, gives her a sword, and transports her to the land of the twelve kingdoms. Yoko doesn't want to be there, but there's not much she can do.

Unlike almost all the other person-from-our-world-transported-to-another books I've read, the introduction of the new world is miserable. Yoko hates it and hates it and hates it, and had I not been warned that it gets better, I might have given up reading. Also, I'd seen the first five episodes of the anime prior to reading the book and really disliked it. I didn't hate Yoko as much as I did in the anime, possibly because I knew more what to expect, possibly because the book gives more of a look at Yoko's thoughts, possibly because Yoko learning to fight in the book only takes a chapter or so instead of several episodes.

The book often feels slow and episodic, which isn't helped by the occasional giant infodump. However, things really start to fall into place in the final quarter, and although the final bit is extremely infodumpy, it is infodumpy in that kind of "Ohhhh, so that's what all that meant!" way, which I kind of miss from all the fantasy series I read as a teen. Plus, the big reveal was surprising and really cool, and I ended up loving Yoko by the end.

The prose frequently felt flat to me. I'm not sure if it's the style of the original or the fault of the translator. That said, I'm really glad the publishers kept the illustrations, which I love, and I am so happy they kept all the Chinese characters in the book! I don't know how confusing they were to other people, but it helped me a lot when it came to keeping track of stuff.

I also loved the worldbuilding, which, as previously mentioned, is explained in infodumpy ways, but is cool enough that I was looking forward to the infodumps. It's extremely Chinese, and I kind of love that a ton of it is about government and ruling correctly. Well, that and people growing from trees!

In conclusion: a little clunky at times and somewhat slow to start, but the ending really made all the build-up worth it.

Also, there is a cute rat!

Question: Is the anime just an adaptation of this book? Or does it include other volumes as well?

Links:
- rachelmanija's review

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(review courtesy of an ARC from a friend, details on how to get it below)

Jace Witherspoon has just been kicked out of the house for daring to hit his abusive father, and he lands on the doorstep of his brother Christian, who got out years ago and never looked back. Christian's not too happy to have his past in his present again, and the two of them have a lot to work through, especially since their mother is still with their father.

Warning: given the subject matter, there are some scenes in the book that may be extremely triggery in terms of emotional mindfucks and physical abuse.

This is a YA book about domestic violence and child abuse that goes way beyond problem novel; it reminded me a lot of Fruits Basket in how Avasthi looks at how the consequences of abuse and the way silence can be a prison. Nothing is easy. Jace is resentful that his brother was able to cut him and his mother off, Christian almost cannot bear to talk about the past he left behind, Jace is afraid of being around the girl he's attracted to for fear he'll turn into his father, Christian is afraid the new information about his past will hurt his relationship to his current girlfriend. And through it all, Jace still loves his father despite the abuse, and although he is trying his best to get his mother out of the situation, he also resents her for not protecting him.

The book's center is the relationship between the brothers, but I loved the female characters as well. The boys are white, but Jace's girlfriend Mirriam is Asian, and I was trying to figure out if Dakota is Native or Latina (she is described as having blue-black hair, they're in New Mexico, and at one point she feeds Jace fry bread). There's also Jace's ex-girlfriend Lauren; Caitlyn, a stereotypical slutty cheerleader who is less stereotypical than she seems; and of course, Jace and Christian's mother. In a book like this, they could very easily become props for the boys' emotional development, but I think Avasthi manages to avoid that. Sometimes Mirriam felt a little too much like a healer character for me—she's a teacher and a social worker—but I very much liked how she had her own relationship with Jace independent of Christian, albeit not uninfluenced by him.

Despite deepad's comments, I was originally wary that the book was about two white guys, but after reading the book, I think the author made the right choice. Making them POC gets a little too close to all the POC problem novels I've read, and it would feel too much like all the media stories about POC broken families. Also, because the book does a lot of questioning of masculinity and abuse, having the guys and their father as POC could have read as "dangerous, scary, and/or misogynistic POC guy."

ETA (this paragraph): Also! I forgot to say that the one thing I did find missing because the family was "normative" was an acknowledgment of the way the legal system and the system of shelters don't work and are frequently dangerous for trans people, PWD, lower-class people, gay and lesbian people, POC, etc. I was thinking specifically of Andrea Smith's discussion of overturning the "shelter" idea in Conquest and the essays on South Asian women's grassroots movements against domestic violence and looking for a different kind of solution in Dragon Ladies.

Mostly I want to give this to guys for the way it examines masculinity. There was this interesting thing in which I was completely invested in Jace's journey and sympathized with his anger issues and his violence, and yet, when it came to him as a romantic lead, I could totally see why a woman would be afraid of him. Because I was. And the tension in my own head between wanting to forgive him and say it's okay versus being afraid and also saying, "No, never okay," the way it so echoed the way abusers get forgiven, was fascinating and a bit chilling.

( Spoilers flail and squee )

And finally, the book is about silence and giving voice to things, on the way abuse takes place behind closed doors, how it's perpetuated when you don't talk about it, when you make polite little lies, when you've told so many lies that you no longer know what's healthy, so much that your very body reacts differently.

Highly recommended.

---

I got this book from deepad, who's friends with the author. The book's publication date is 2010, but Deepa's currently trying to get word around the blogosphere:

I'm going to send my ARC out into the wild, into the world of book bloggers. There are only two conditions -

1. You have a month to read it, after which you must pass it on.
2. You must, if you read it, blog about it. (Which means at least two paragraphs, in fairness to reviewing standards.)

If you're interested in reading, comment on her post and let her know! I have already been trying to sic this on several people, muhahaha.

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For the IBARW review books by POC challenge! Also, Color Online is running a Color Me Brown book challenge for August.

Kara Martinez died for 11 minutes in the same accident that killed her father, and ever since then, she's seen signs on people that Mean Something. Unfortunately, she has to puzzle out the meaning of the signs herself before she can avert whatever disaster they signify. Even more unfortunate is that she has to hide everything that makes her herself from her mother to stave off the threat of hospitalization for mental illness. Meanwhile, she finds herself falling for Anthony, a guy from the wrong side of the tracks who may or may not be connected to all the signs she's been seeing.

I really enjoyed this! First, I love having an entire book populated by POC when the plot is not about being POC. Yes, part of Kara's angst is that her half-Irish half-Mexican mother tries to deny all her Mexican heritage because she hurts to much from the death of Kara's very Mexican father, but the majority of the book is about Kara piecing together the puzzle of the gun signs and trying to figure out what to do about it. I was a little more hesitant about the inclusion of gang violence because I am tired of POC books being all about "the street," but overall, I liked how Parra treated it and her emphasis on Anthony showing Kara that his neighborhood isn't just gang violence. It's where he grew up and has playgrounds he played at and schools and hangouts and etc.

I do have a quibble with the book's portrayal of the treatment of mental illness, which seemed a bit unreal from what I know. The therapist and Kara's mother team up to try to put her in a hospital because she's still having nightmares, she's given drugs without her consent, and her therapist shows strong tendencies to listen to her mother instead of to Kara. I mean, I have no doubt that this happens with sucky therapists, but I kind of wish it weren't perpetuating the whole "people who are basically fine get stuck in hospitals and have drugs shoved down their mouths OMG we are so overmedicated!" thing. (eta: more here on "consent" forced onto people and abuses in the mental health system)

I also thought the ending was not as strong as it could have been; there were a few too many plot points crammed into too small of a space. One in particular seemed to come out of nowhere and could have used much more set up.

Still, I enjoyed reading about Kara, especially because her issues with her mother resonated with me on a personal level. I also liked the romance between her and Anthony, which is quiet and sweet and has the two of them actually talking to each other. And overall, it's a book about psychic kids with angst, starring POC, yay!

ETA: Oh, Kelly Parra also blogs with other people about Latina YA here.

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Justine Larbalestier, whose books all feature protagonists of color, posts about the white washing of her latest book:

The notion that “black books” don’t sell is pervasive at every level of publishing. Yet I have found few examples of books with a person of colour on the cover that have had the full weight of a publishing house behind them Until that happens more often we can’t know if it’s true that white people won’t buy books about people of colour. All we can say is that poorly publicised books with “black covers” don’t sell. The same is usually true of poorly publicised books with “white covers.”

Susan from Color Online (good blog on YA books by and about POC) also adds:

Very few have responded to my comment about the absence of color among book bloggers. Those marketing folks didn't come to that conclusion without some basis in what they see. Something shaped their perception.

What is important has already been said: this is not a new issue; it is a self-perpetuating cycle contributed by bookstore shelving, marketing expectations, and aversive racism from readers and reviewers; it is symptomatic of the larger issues of racism; and it hurts readers of color.

( Book list )


Color Online is also running a book giveaway to promote YA authors of color.

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(consists of The Initiation, The Captive, and The Power)

For some reason, I never read these when I was in high school going through my L.J. Smith stage, so you get my first impressions now!

Cassie is a supposedly shy and dreamy California girl who moves to the spooky New England town of New Salem so that her mother can take care of her grandmother. Her high school is run by a mysterious Club, and Cassie soon finds out that it's a coven of witches. However, she's soon entangled in coven politics. She's in love with the coven leader Diana's boyfriend Adam, whom she met previously, but she idolizes Diana and doesn't want to hurt her. Bad witch Faye is also taking advantage of this to blackmail her. And to top everything off, something or someone is killing off people in New Salem, and it might have to do with the crystal skull (!!) the coven has unearthed.

I say "supposedly" about "shy and dreamy" because in actuality, Cassie has zero personality of which to speak. You can tell because L.J. Smith has various other people describing her for us!

Back home, Clover had said once that Cassie was like a unicorn herself: blue eyed, shy, and different from everyone else.

Then we have a fellow coven member telling us how gorgeous Cassie was at the homecoming dance:

Don't be silly. It's you. You're a perfect little—gazelle. No, a little white unicorn, one of a kind. I think even Adam has noticed.

And even her rivals talk about how gorgeous she is! Conveniently, Cassie is positioned to overhear them.

She looks ordinary at first, maybe, but there are all sorts of colors in her hair; it changes depending on the light. [...] And she's got eyes to kill for [...] Not the color, so much—they're sort of grayish blue—but they're so big and sincere it's disgustinig. They always look like they're full of tears just ready to spill. Drives the guys crazy.

A unicorn, people! She is a shy, dreamy, TOTALLY UNIQUE UNICORN!

We get similar unsubtlety when it comes to other people's hair and eye descriptions, from Adam's red hair that's really got shades of every color imaginable to Diana's hair, which is apparently a combination of moonlight and sunlight. I mistakenly read the latter as "night and day" at first and pictured black hair streaked with white, which really would have been way more interesting.

However, what makes these books attractive even now is the focus on female homosocial (and barely subtextually homosexual) relationships. It's not only Cassie's relationship with the two rival head witches, Diana and Faye, but also her growing friendship with the other female witches in the coven and the shifting dynamics among all the female witches. There are five male witches as well, but the only ones who really stand out are chivalrous Adam and mysterious bad boy Nick ("He wasn't an iguana"). Even though most of the women are only briefly sketched out with fairly stereotypical traits—wise Melanie, nature-loving Laurel, sexpot Suzan, motorcycle-riding Deborah—some of them grow into more three-dimensional characters, particularly Deborah and Suzan.

I also enjoyed Faye in the end, although L.J. Smith very unsubtly characterizes her as wild, sexual, and on the dark side because... she has black hair! And wears black and red! You can also tell Diana is the source of all things good because she's blonde (or has hair the color of sunlight and moonlight, which I think maps to blonde) and wears white. Still, Smith tries not to demonize Faye. It doesn't always work, but she goes farther with it than I thought she would, and the resolution with Faye, Diana and Cassie pleasantly surprised me.

The heterosexual romance between Adam and Cassie is so boring. SO BORING. This is what happens when you take two characters who have no personality of which to speak and them put them together!

( Spoilers have undescribable green eyes! )

In conclusion: vampire kittens!

Links:
- rachelmanija's review
- coffeeandink's review

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(I'm sorry for spamming! I have a bazillion book posts to catch up on, and I should probably write up Wiscon some time as well...)

Mirasol has recently been appointed Chalice of the Willowlands after the previous Master and Chalice died unexpectedly. As Chalice, her job to connect the new Master to the land is made more difficult given that the new Master was to be a Priest of Fire, and is now not entirely human. Although it sounds like epic fantasy, McKinley adds her usual every day touches, focusing just as much on Mirasol's bees and honey as well as the "who will rule the land" plot.

I've missed reading Robin McKinley. I didn't read Sunshine or Dragonhaven when they came out, due to poor or conflicting reviews, so it's been almost a decade since I've read new McKinley. I am also desperately compartmentalizing her white guy with a tan comment about Obama because I am so tired of having writers I like flash their ignorance online.

Chalice is very standard McKinley, which is to say it is comforting, homey, and focused on small acts of niceness amidst larger epic going-ons. I have no idea how this would read to people new to McKinley; she's been a favorite author of mine since I was in middle school, so I have absolutely no distance. That said, I find her focus on ordinariness and niceness a little less comforting than I did as a kid; I keep remembering some of deepad's comments at Wiscon about how niceness is small, how it is used to limit people, how you can be nice to people and hope for change, but you cannot use niceness as a way to battle systems of oppression. None of this directly has to do with the book, save that I wonder how much of McKinley's focus on niceness and humility and being ordinary I swallowed unthinkingly as a teen and continue to retain today. It is a narrative I am extremely familiar with and used to, and ... I am not sure how comfortable I am with that anymore.

I also have issues with the notion of citizenship and rulership in the book; the focus on bloodlines and blood relationships to the land works in this fantasy but begins to fall apart when you poke at it. And one element in the ending really didn't work for me.

All this said, I loved the book and the characters, even though sometimes they were too accomodating and polite and humble for me. I love the tentativeness of their interactions, I love the story of someone rediscovering his humanity, I love the plotline of trying to figure out what you're doing while you're doing it. I especially love the bees and the honey. I am very glad I had a bottle of farmers' market honey with me as I was reading, otherwise I would have had horrible cravings.

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This is set in the same world as Smith's Tantalize.

Miranda has always been a shy girl, but once she's turned into a vampire (or as she prefers, an eternal), she's suddenly the princess of the eternal world. Zachary's not so happy, given that he was the guardian angel who failed to prevent her transformation and subsequently lost his wings, but soon, he gets a chance to make amends while Miranda tries to hold down fort when her vampire father is away.

This has the same funny-yet-dark tone of Tantalize, albeit without all the food (woe). As with Tantalize, I am left somewhat baffled about how to react. A large part of this is the overall pacing of the book. The beginning felt slow to leap into the plot, although it contains elements that are necessary to the ending; I either wanted more romance or less so that what romance there was didn't feel as unexplained; I wanted more of Miranda's moral dilemmas and the development of them; and I wanted more of the secondary characters' development. Overall, I think the book just felt too short for me. There are a lot of interesting things going on in there, or there could be, if there were more room for Smith to breathe. And the odd thing is, I can't even highlight that many of the interesting things, since many of them are fairly standard to vampire books, from the vampire dilemma of drinking blood to human chattel to secret vampire alliances. But the way Smith writes them makes them feel different, and I especially like Miranda, who wavers between wanting to be the high school girl she used to be and the vampire princess she now is.

The guardian-angel-falls-for-ward is apparently another button of mine, despite my overall not understanding why immortal creatures would fall for high school girls. I think Smith does a fairly good job as to showing Zachary's awareness of the problems inherent in the relationship, although I flinched a few times about the watching her naked thing. For me, Smith manages to get away with not fleshing out the relationship between Zachary and Miranda because Zachary's POV and how he knows her is so strong that I could ignore that for Miranda, she's only known him for a few days.

I also had problems with the angel thing, which is par for the course. Smith takes the route in which angels and therefore Heaven and Hell are for everyone; "we believe in you even if you don't believe in us" (paraphrased). It gets around the issue of Buddhist angels and etc, but I'm not sure it's a solution that sits well with me; it feels too co-opting. Then again, I haven't quite come across a good solution to the angel-demon problem, except the manga version in which you take the names and the mythology and handwave the actual religious elements (or go for broke if you are Yuki Kaori). And that solution has its own set of problems.

All this said, these are really interesting books that make me want to poke at them. I do think Smith is still juggling pacing, tone, and character, but I enjoy how her vampire/shapeshifter/angel world feels different from others, even if I can't quite figure out how.

Plus, I liked the way she ended this. I am not sure most people will, but that is why I liked it so much.

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Joyce is dying to catch the eye of cute multiracial kid John Ford Kang, though he can't even tell her apart from her lab partner. Then Joyce's aunt sweeps into their family's life and offers to pay for eyelid surgery for her. Her older sister Helen disapproves, but what does she know? Helen's always been smarter and prettier and cooler. Her best friend Gina thinks she should totally go with it.

I read this right after I read Good Enough, which was an interesting comparison. Both stories about Korean-American girls, but Joyce's family owns a Korean restaurant and she's not much concerned with academic achievement. Clearly the theme here is about beauty, which I theoretically find more interesting than Yoo's book. However, Na's prose is extremely flat, and I felt her characters never came to life. Although she explains Joyce's dilemma, as well as problems going on with her family, they felt like explanations, not explorations.

I am also far more radical than Na when it comes to beauty myths. Na compares eyelid surgery with braces or dieting I think to kill the particular stigma eyelid surgery has in the eyes of well-meaning white people and to normalize it as a modifying-appearance thing, but she doesn't tackle the larger question of the beauty myth, societal pressure to be beautiful, and the ever-changing definitions of beauty, much less how that myth perpetrates racism and sexism for Asian women. I'd much rather have a more in-depth examination of the problems of eyelid surgery coupled with a takedown of the extremely problematic way white people use eyelid surgery as a means to reinforce their impression of the need to "save" Asian women from their patriarchal society, as well as proof of Asians being less politically forward.

So... the book tackles some interesting questions, and I especially liked what Na did with Joyce's sister Helen, but overall, not a very fun read.

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Patti Yoon is trying to be the Perfect Korean Daughter by getting the concertmaster position for the All-State Orchestra, getting into HarvardYalePrinceton, scoring above 2300 on her SATs, and volunteering at her church. But she's still trying to figure out what parts of it she wants, and what parts of it she only wants because her parents do. And then there's the cute trumpet player in the orchestra, who is definitely not part of The Plan.

The story itself is not extraordinary, although Yoo throws in a few curves at the end that I hadn't been expecting. What makes the book more than your average "Asian kid faces academic pressure, must learn what she wants" is the writing, which is sprinkled with lists ("How to Make Your Korean Parents Happy, Part 1") and recipes for assorted Korean dishes with Spam.

It was extremely odd reading this book. In some ways, it's very close to my own experience (outside of the fact that I was in Taiwan). In others, it's very not. I wasn't a good daughter like Patti; I quit piano and refused to take AP Physics and pushed as hard as I could to not do "practical" stuff and hated being first, even as I did take the SATs and practice who knows how much. Because of that, I kept wanting to reach in and shake Patti and tell her not to just do whatever she wanted, as I understand parental pressure and the desire to make your parents' sacrifices worth something, but to... think more. To question. And she does in the end, but I think I wanted more. That said, I do like that even though her parents are a big part of the plot conflict, they do not drive the plot conflict.

My other problem is the way the book posits rebellion and freedom as a white male thing. Patti does come into her own later, but I very much resent that one of the big factors in her doing so is falling for a white guy and hanging out with him more. Even before that, one of the signs of her desire to not conform is her love of a white male pop band. The unintended message is then made worse when, influenced by a white guy, Patti brings the idea of rebellion back to her Korean church group and the group also begins to rebel in order to get her a date with the white guy. I do think Yoo complicates things further by having Patti later realize that the other church group members also wanted to do their own thing and that she was projecting conformity on to them, but it would have worked much better for me had most of the characterization been of the other church group members, as opposed to the hot white guy.

That said, one of my favorite parts of the book was Patti and her relationship with the violin and with music. It's a nice counterpoint to the joke "Violin or piano?" and you can just tell how Yoo loves music as well, from classical to informal jamming.

- rilina's review

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Ai Ling has had a fairly good life: her father and mother love each other and her, her father has taught her to read and write, and it looks as though she will have some say in who she will marry. But then, her father goes to the capital, her mother's mood drops, and a skanky older guy tries to coerce her into marrying him. Ai Ling decides she has to find her father again, but at every turn, she's beset upon by strange creatures, from a three-breasted woman to a soul sucker to assorted other demons.

I am stubbornly annoyed that a publisher had told Cindy Pon that "Asian fantasy doesn't sell," and I sincerely hope the book's sales are phenomenal. Also, I've heard one of the big chains didn't order it... if someone tells me which one, I will go place an order at my local one. I have also gotten one of my public libraries to buy it and am going to suggest it to my other two.

The book itself is extremely fun, although it suffers a little from flat prose. Ai Ling didn't stand out for me as a heroine, but she's your fairly average YA heroine: spunky, can-do, and nursing a secret crush. What made the book for me was the sheer exuberance of it. Not a chapter goes by without another monster or a lovingly described meal, and I love that Ai Ling's appetite is as voracious as mine. Clearly she notices the important things in life! I particularly liked the climax, which has Ai Ling figuring out how to rescue herself.

My favorite parts are probably when Ai Ling and hot guy Chen Yong go beyond the Kingdom of Xia and encounter increasingly odd and interesting beings and lands. Well, that and the food descriptions, of course!

When I began reading this book, I could not get into it. I had thought it was the prose, but halfway through, I came to the horrified realization that I had been steeling myself for exoticism and foreignness, despite the fact that I very much knew that the book was written by a Chinese person who knew something about Chinese culture. There had been no exoticism that I could pick up on in the book, but the mere mention of Chinese names and ideas in English was enough to raise my guard, thanks to years and years of reading books by non-Chinese people that frequently rubbed me the wrong way, if not outright offended me.

It's never fun realizing that despite the massive effort you've spent decolonizing your reading practices, there are still (and may always be) parts of your brain that remain whitewashed.

Anyway. This is fun and frothy, and a welcome addition to the vampire- and faery-saturated landscape of YA fantasy. Also, although this book is standalone, Pon is working on a sequel/prequal. Also also, minor quibble, but every time the book used "Xian" to refer to denizens of the kingdom of Xia, I kept thinking it referred to the city of Xian/Xi'an.

Links:
- rachelmanija's review

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(Dragon of the Lost Sea, Dragon Steel, Dragon Cauldron, and Dragon War)

I read the third book a very long time ago as a kid and still remember being affected by its ending. It's nice to finally read the entire thing!

Shimmer is a dragon princess of the Lost Sea, so called because the evil witch Civet boiled it away. She's on a quest to reclaim her home, although she's not particularly in the good graces of her uncle, the king of the dragons. On her way, she meets the poor boy Thorn, and together, they look for the cauldron. But unfortunately for them, they do as much wrong on their quest as they do right.

This reads a little young for me now: it's probably aimed toward 8-12 year old readers, not the high school YA I usually read. Because of that, some of the difficulties are solved faster than I would have liked, and some problems are less in depth than they would be. However, as noted before, I remember reading the third one as a kid and loving it. Part of it was because books 3 and 4 are narrated by the irrepressible Monkey, who is as mischievous as always and having fun while his master the Old Boy (kind of like Xuanzang/Tripitaka but not quite? hard to tell).

Still, I love the relationship between Shimmer and Thorn the most. She's arrogant and prickly and not inclined to accept help, and he's always there for her, but underappreciated. The group dynamic also changes when they add people later, although for me, the Shimmer/Thorn friendship is at the heart of the series.

Yep uses a lot of Chinese mythology in this, from the dragons to Monkey and possible the Snail Woman and the Lord of the Flowers. I don't think the last two are from mythology, though I could be wrong, but I do think the Snail Woman's fan is out of Journey to the West. There's war and betrayal and sacrifice and sibling rivalry and lots of shapeshifting, and I would very much give this to lots of kids, particularly if they're looking for non-Western fantasy.

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Tiffany Hunter is a fairly normal teenager: she's delighted to be going out with her boyfriend, although her father's not too happy he's white; school is the suck; her dad is super mean; and she really just wants to do exciting stuff and everyone is keeping her from it. And then her father takes on a mysterious lodger who keeps strange hours and never eats anything.

Everything makes this sound like your standard vampire story, except it's not. There's no over-the-top forbidden romance, Tiffany is very much a teenage brat at times, and I want to give it to everyone reading up on MammothFail as an example of SF/F with Native people done well, where there is a sense of history and loss and there are also Native people with phones and sneakers and aren't savage or stoic but just people.

Pierre is an especially great look at vampires done right (says she who is rather tired of vampires); he's creepy and dangerous and not human and very, very, very old. I miss the last part in many vampire books and am always skeptical as to why a several-hundred-year-old entity would want to date a high schooler, and Taylor nicely avoids that. In fact, this reminds me a great deal of Annette Curtis Klause's The Silver Kiss in how it deals with a vampire and a teenaged girl, although making both of them Native changes the story.

And then there's the final chapter, and it has elders teaching the younger generation and the loss of language and culture and history and the past come to life again and finding your roots after you thought you had lost them, and I love it.

Very much recommended, and thanks so much to maerhys for giving it to me!

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Nobody Owens' family was killed was he was an infant, and to protect him from the killer, the denizens of the local graveyard adopt him, give him the Freedom of the Graveyard, and raise him. Bod learns important things like Fading and inflicting Night Terrors, he is protected by the mysterious Silas, and he grows into a rather odd, pale boy.

Gaiman says he modeled this after The Jungle Book; having never read it, I don't have much comment. The book itself is relatively episodic, detailing Bod's encounters with assorted graveyard denizens and with those outside of the graveyard. It concludes with Bod finally encountering the killer and venturing outside the graveyard (I don't think this is a spoiler, given that the book is a bildungsroman), and that is when we discover that all the episodic pieces are not so episodic after all.

I haven't read Gaiman for a while, largely for fear that a favorite author would become a former favorite author thanks to my own politics becoming more defined over the years. Graveyard Book wouldn't win the Tiptree or the Carl Brandon awards, but it also isn't offensive, which is really all I ask for sometimes. My standards have been so beaten down by all types of fail that currently, I just don't want to be slapped in the face.

I do wish the women in the book were more active; I liked all of them, especially Liza and Mrs. Lupesco, but I did feel as though they were more side characters when compared to Bod, Silas, and the man Jack. And, as usual, I wish there were more POC. I want a kind of book like this for kids of color, full of spookiness, drawing upon older genres and ghost stories.

I'm really impressed with how Gaiman manages to integrate the timeless graveyard with the modern world; ther's a mention of cell phones and computers, but it never feels jarring (as opposed to McKillip's Solstice Wood, frex).

All in all, this is a wonderfully spooky, mythic-feeling story, and I left feeling as though I had read an old classic rather than a book published last year. It feels ineffably large and has stayed with me for days.

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And once again, I pick up a book that is the first of a trilogy, although it is never mentioned on the cover. Argh!

The really sad thing is that I am fairly certain people online made note of this, so I made note of it in my head, but it took so long for me to get my hands on the book that I forgot. My memory = sieve.

It's sometime in the future, and the United States (the book says North America, but there is no mention of Canada and Mexico, boo) has torn itself apart and reformed itself as Panem. There's the Capitol and twelve Districts, and when the then thirteen Districts once rebelled, the Capitol put them down, eradicted District Thirteen, and instituted the Hunger Games. Each District must send 2 teenagers, one boy and one girl, to the Games, in which they battle each other to death in several weeks, all televised. Katniss Everdeen is from District Twelve, the poorest District located in what once was Appalachia. When her twelve-year-old sister is picked, Katniss volunteers in her place.

I haven't read other books in the genre of teenagers-battle-to-death-while-televised, especially Battle Royale, so I can't compare this to any of them. That said, I'm not wowed by the social critique of dictatorship or conquering people via media, but that is because I have seen enough of the use of TV in dictators' hands. Still, I very much like the portrayal of political oppression in the book, particularly how Katniss and her friend Gale as so much more aware of some forms of oppression than her slightly-better-off teammate Peeta from District 12, simply because Peeta is the son of a baker and has a few more resources to draw on. My favorite thing about the book is Katniss, who is strong and brave and cunning and the exact opposite of spunky. I love that she will do nearly anything to survive, that she coldly calculates how to manipulate the viewers' emotions, and I very much like how the love story in the book ended up going.

The weaknesses of the book lie largely in the plot or how characters must act because of the plot. The other contestants in the Games are not fleshed out very well, and I was particularly bored by the final battle. I thought Collins was going to go a different route, but she settled on a more familiar and standard resolution instead. That said, the unresolved bits of story make me really anticipate the next two books.

( Spoilers )

This can be read without having the next books in hand; a few things are left hanging, but the book comes to a very satisfactory conclusion by itself.

Definitely recommended. How is Battle Royale, especially in terms of heroines? I may look it up once my nerves recover from this book. (I spent the day I was reading it convinced I was living in a media dystopia where everyone was going to kill me. Not particularly comfortable, but it says something about the power of the book!)

Links:
- buymeaclue's review

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Finally I get my grubby paws on Sherri L. Smith's new book! (The worst part about finding a new author and blazing through her backlist is when you finish and must wait months for a new book.) I am planning on being every bit as annoying to my new public library as I was to the old one and am already sending in tons of suggestions on books to buy.

Ida Mae Jones wants to fly. She learned with her dad on his crop duster, but there are two strikes against her when it comes to getting her pilot's license: she's black, and she's female. Soon, the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, and Ida Mae finds out about the WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots), who deliver airplanes for the Army, test-fly planes, or any other non-combative flying jobs the Army needs done. But even though the WASP is for women, it's for white women. So Ida Mae decides to pass.

Like Smith's Lucy the Giant, I loved the details about the work, from Ida Mae and her friends' flight training to missions they went on for the Army. I also liked how central her friendships with other women were, from her friend Jolene back in New Orleans to newly-made friendships with Patsy the ex-circus girl and Lily the upper-class Jewish girl (it was also nice reading about a Jewish girl in the 1940s not set in a concentration camp). But what really made the book stand out for me was how Smith dealt with Ida Mae passing.

I like that it is not an easy decision, that it makes Ida Mae afraid all the time. I like that Smith shows how much easier it is being white, even as a woman, and how Ida Mae is constantly tempted by remaining white even as the costs keep rising. I like that Smith doesn't resolve everything easily and tie a bow on top, that the decision to pass is one that will have long and hard consequences for Ida Mae no matter what she does.

Overall, a good read.

Links:
- gwyneira's review
- sanguinity's review (mild spoilers)