What I've been reading lately

In my continuing Kindle excursion through the worlds of Louisa May Alcott, I read Jo's Boys. It is indeed very preachy, and I confess to skimming past a lot of the sermons to find out what happens to everyone. Oh, and if I'd written it, everything would've turned out differently for Dan. I sometimes envy 19th century writers--I'd give a lot to be able to introduce my characters with a nice backstory synopsis like Jane Austen does, for example--but I'm glad I don't have to set up characters for punishment as Moral Examples.

Staying in YA but on a much lighter note, I curled up with The Ex Games (Jennifer Echols, 2009). The heroine, a snowboarder with fear of heights left over from a childhood accident, has to overcome her fears to defeat her ex-boyfriend in a battle of the sexes that engrosses their whole high school, and incidentally to take advantage of a chance to take lessons from a pro.

Refuse to Choose (2007) was my second self-help book by Barbara Sher. In it, she describes "Scanners"--people who have trouble settling on one single direction in life. I recognized myself in almost every page. I've always felt like I should have some grand passion or vocation. And in one sense I do--my love for history and my hunger to write have been with me all my life--but at various points I've wanted to be a reporter, a theologian, a paramedic, a professor, etc., etc. And because I've never been able to make up my mind which one is my One True Vocation, I haven't done any of those things. Sher's book helped me see that it doesn't have to be all or nothing. She suggests that many Scanners search for a "Good Enough Job"--one that will match their interests and work style well enough to give them stability and contentment, while leaving them enough life space and mental energy to pursue other interests at the same time. Somehow that phrase alone was a revelation for me. A day job isn't quite the same thing as a Good Enough Job, you know?

The Chosen One

The Chosen One (Carol Lynch Williams, 2009) is a YA novel about a young girl in a fictional fundamentalist Mormon sect. Her family--father, three wives, multiple siblings--is loving and affectionate, and apparently somewhat on the fringes of the sect despite their devotion to their prophet and his teachings. The 13-year-old heroine, Kyra, is a loner and a rebel even within her family, sneaking out to get a book from the mobile library every week (all books except sacred texts being forbidden) and indulging in what in mainstream society would be an innocent romance with a teen boy from another of the compound's families.

When the Prophet has a vision that Kyra must become an elderly uncle's seventh wife, she has to reconcile her love for her family--and the knowledge that her resistance can put them at risk--with her unwillingness to go through with the marriage. The book is a page-turner, and the ending, though satisfying, leaves a host of realistically unanswered questions.

Silver Phoenix

Silver Phoenix (Cindy Pon, 2009) is YA fantasy set in a land strongly resembling imperial China, but replete with mythical creatures, some benign, some terrifying. It stars a spirited young woman chosen by the gods to defeat an evil force, which gives it a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon meets Buffy feel. It's a fun book, and the food descriptions are guaranteed to make you want to abandon whatever you brought for lunch that day and go out for dim sum. Oh, and minor spoiler alert: if you're a big sappy sap like me, don't expect your romantic side to be satisfied.

The Graveyard Book

It took me just a few hours to read The Graveyard Book (Neil Gaiman, 2008). It's YA, so it's not a long book, and there's a spooky lyricism to both the writing and the story that kept me turning the pages.

It's Jungle Book in a graveyard, basically, with ghosts taking the place of the animals and bringing up a boy who alone of his family survived a gruesome murder. An eerie, wistful coming-of-age story...really, it's hard to describe this book. If the concept appeals to you at all, you should just go read it.

Going Too Far

Jennifer Echols is from more or less the same corner of Alabama as I grew up in, and she writes YA novels set there, so reading her books is always a bit of a trip in the wayback machine. This one is set in my very own home county, maybe about fifteen miles from my hometown. (It would've actually passed for my hometown, only we're near US 280, not the interstate.)

The heroine of Going Too Far (2009) is Meg, a wild child 17-year-old who in the opening scene is stoned, drunk, and planning to have sex with her sorta-boyfriend on a railroad bridge when they're caught by the cops--one of whom she eventually discovers is John, a 19-year-old who graduated her high school the year before, and despite good grades and test scores decided to stay home and go to police academy rather than heading for college. Meg's punishment for the bridge escapade is to forfeit her spring break Florida trip and ride along with John for a week to see what her behavior looks like from the other side. While the set-up is a bit implausible, the characters were so real and fascinating that I didn't really care. We gradually discover just what demons from her past are driving Meg, along with the ghosts that haunt John (though I guessed his before I figured out the exact details of hers), and I was rooting for both of them to let go of their self-destructive behavior (hers obvious, his subtle) and embrace the future.

Forging the Sword

Forging the Sword (Hilari Bell, 2007) is a solid conclusion to the Farsala Trilogy. I like how Bell allows plenty of room for moral gray areas and good and bad people on both sides of her conflict, and manages to come up with an ending that feels just for everyone.

Rise of a Hero

Rise of a Hero (Hilari Bell, 2005) is the second book of the YA fantasy trilogy that began with Fall of a Kingdom. It's the kind of fantasy that isn't exactly alternative history, but that flaunts rather than disguises its similarity to our world (much like Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel series or most of Guy Gavriel Kay's books). The three protagonists are from Farsala, an obvious Persian analogue, which has just been conquered by the Hrum--i.e. the Romans. After the defeat at the end of the first book, aristocratic Soraya, her half-caste half-brother Jiaan, and the peasant Kavi start to figure out how to fight back.

It's a page-turner, and if I have a little trouble believing teens like Jiaan and Kavi could become rebel leaders, well, I know it's YA. (I find Soraya's role more plausible, since I can see a 16-year-old girl having such a dogged and single-minded focus on saving what's left of her family.) I've already put the last book in the series on hold, and I recommend it for anyone who likes a good epic adventure.

Susan lies on couch, reads YA novels

I've been home with a cold for the past two days, with little energy for anything beyond reading. It seemed a perfect time to indulge my taste for the occasional YA novel, like the two I've read over the past two days.

Perfect Chemistry (Simone Elkeles, 2008) is basically an updated take on Romeo & Juliet or West Side Story, only with a lower body count and a more optimistic ending. Rich girl Brittany Ellis and gang member Alex Fuentes are forced to work together after their chemistry teacher assigns partners in alphabetical order. It's a compelling read, and I enjoyed it with the caveats that Brittany and Alex both sounded a bit too adult for their age, and maybe the epilogue was a bit too tidy an ending.

Forever Princess (Meg Cabot, 2009) is the tenth and final volume in the Princess Diaries series. Cabot again performs the neat trick of combining pure wish fulfillment fantasy (e.g. Mia's 18th birthday party on the Genovian royal yacht with the Obamas and the Clintons, among famous others, in attendance) with an emotionally realistic coming-of-age story. The ending can't be called surprising, but it was satisfying, which is far more important, IMHO.

Fall of a Kingdom

Fall of a Kingdom (Hilari Bell, 2006) is the first volume of a YA fantasy trilogy set in Farsala, a Persia analogue awaiting an invasion from the Hrum (Rome). It's told through the eyes of three Farsalan teenagers--Soraya, the proud daughter of the high commander, her bastard half-brother Jiaan, who's inherited his father's military acumen but isn't fully accepted among the warrior elite because of his peasant mother, and Kavi, a peddler and con artist. The shared POV works, though I liked Jiaan best of the lot. He reminded me a bit of Jack in my own WIP, actually--I have a soft spot for bright, earnest young warriors.

I like how Bell contrasts the warring cultures. I've always enjoyed fantasies like this with recognizable real-world analogues (think Guy Gavriel Kay or Jacqueline Carey) where the magic is light to nonexistent, and this is a great example of the type. She also did a great job with the battle tactics, IMHO, and I'm getting pickier about that sort of thing.

I'm looking forward to reading the second book.

Life As We Knew It

For some reason I've always had a soft spot for YA apocalyptic novels--the end of the world as viewed through the eyes of a teenager. Maybe it's because I was that age in the 80's, when at some points nuclear war seemed entirely possible, so I'd regularly imagine what it would be like to survive, which I figured I'd have a decent chance of doing, what with living in the country and far from any obvious target.

So I snapped up Life As We Knew It (Susan Beth Pfeffer, 2006), which is the story of a 16-year-old Pennsylvania girl trying to survive the aftermath of a natural catastrophe along with her family. An asteroid strikes the moon, knocking it into a closer orbit and triggering tsunamis and greater seismic and volcanic activity. At first I wondered what I was doing reading a disaster novel in the middle of an actual crisis, but in the end it was kind of comforting. I may wonder what's going to happen to the economy, whether either of our jobs are vulnerable to state budget cuts, etc., but unlike Miranda I have light, heat, running water, and a house full of food, none of which is canned mixed vegetables.

Breathe My Name (Book #35)

Breathe My Name (RA Nelson, 2007) is another of my occasional forays into YA fiction. The narrator/heroine Frances comes from as traumatic a past as one could imagine--her mentally unbalanced mother murdered her younger sisters and tried to kill her too. Frances was adopted by normal, if overprotective parents, and almost a decade later is trying to live a normal, anonymous life as a high school junior in a small town. But then she learns her mother has been released to a lower-security mental institution and may be looking for Frances so she can finish what she started. There's the requisite strong-willed best friend and sensitive, quirky boyfriend to help Frances sort out her past and stay safe in the present. It's well-written and kept me turning the pages, though I thought the resolution was possibly a little too tidy.

Princess Mia (Book #12)

I never like to call a book a guilty pleasure. I save that for my unholy love of fried potato products of all kinds and for my habit of reading celebrity gossip magazines while in line at the grocery store. But the Princess Diaries series comes close to being a guilty pleasure. Not because they're bad (she says hastily). They're very good, IMHO. But they're very good light reading, designed for girls half my age or younger, with a title character who'd be celebrity gossip magazine fodder if she was real (and one of the trials she endures in the series is seeing her life misrepresented in the tabloids). They're pure fun, and that's all.

Princess Mia (Meg Cabot, 2008) is the ninth outing in a projected ten-book series, and the 16-year-old heroine has to stand on her own feet and display greater maturity than in previous volumes after breaking up with her boyfriend and having a major falling-out with her best friend.

The Ever-After Bird (Book #10)

The Ever-After Bird (Ann Rinaldi, 2007) is an older kids'/YA book about a Pennsylvania girl in 1851 who, when her neglectful abolitionist father dies, is taken in by her uncle, an abolitionist ornithologist who travels the South sketching birds and telling slaves about the Underground Railroad. Cecilia, the heroine, has her doubts about the cause at first, since she resented her father's neglect, and he was murdered while trying to protect runaway slaves. She comes around after seeing the horrors of slavery firsthand--and this is a Message book, designed to educate kids about the evils in our history. But it's well-executed and readable.