The Elite by Kiera Cass

The Elite
by Kiera Cass
2013

I had enjoyed The Selection enough that when I returned it to the library, I picked up the sequel, The Elite. And just: urg. I will try to get through this review without swearing at the main character.

So this actually made me kind of mad. While I was expecting light and fluffy again like the first book, I would have been fine if this book had decided to just be darker and more complex than the last one. However, the way in which it did so pisses me off: it’s written the same way but our main character is revealed to be an unreliable narrator due to her immense stupidity. She just doesn’t see what’s happening around her unless she has her nose rubbed in it, and thus, as the reader I have my nose rubbed in it.

Admittedly she’s a 16-year-old with little to no education outside of the performing arts, but as a member of a highly caste-structured society, she should have a basic understanding of how power inequalities work in practice. At the very least, she should be capable of noticing oddities that she thinks nothing of but that allow the reader to get a deeper understanding of the world.

Instead, she complains about how awful the caste structure is but she acts like a teenager from modern U.S. society who has simply been transplanted to this new society rather than growing up in it and yet, at the same time, taking it all for granted and not questioning it. And she takes the reader along with her, seeing and thus showing only the most obvious events.

It’s not a poorly written book, per se, it’s just super frustrating and all the things that I’m supposed to like about the main character mostly make me dislike and disrespect her. She is amazingly naive and completely incapable of subtlety. There are uneducated 16-year-olds and then there is America Singer who has managed to avoid both book learning and street smarts or even the ability to observe without leaping to conclusions.

At the end of this book, I mostly just wanted to re-read Poison Study, which follows a young woman in a similarly rigid society who finds herself physically near the center of power and realizes that there are things happening here that aren’t always obvious.

I do not expect to read the third book in this series whenever it eventually emerges.

Between Shades of Gray

Feb17 by Anna

By Ruta Sepetys

I enjoyed Out of the Easy so much that I quickly checked out Sepetys’ first novel, Between Shades of Gray. By a horrible coincidence, it was actually released on the very same day as Fifty Shades of Grey, and so a wonderful and very worthwhile read got buried in the ensuing mania. They couldn’t be more different, either. Seriously.

Between Shades of Gray is a fictional but historically-based story of a Lithuanian family arrested by the Russian police under Stalin’s occupation of the Baltic countries and deported to work camps in the Arctic. Russia’s treatment of these political prisoners (artists and academics charged with “anti-Soviet” activity, among others) was only marginally better than the German’s treatment of theirs, and ultimately resulted in the death of about a third of the populations of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, as well as the disappearance of the countries themselves for decades.

The novel is narrated by Lina, a fifteen-year-old girl, who is arrested, with her mother and younger brother, on the first page of the book. For the rest of the book, and for over a year, they are driven across the entire Asian continent to a work camp in the North Pole. It is a very personal look through the eyes of a single girl, and is both heart-breaking and inspiring all at once, and impossible to put down. Lina and her story feel very real, which is a testament to the amount of research Sepetys put into it.

Sepetys dedicates the book to her father, a Lithuanian refugee who escaped the gulags with his family as a child, but left many family members behind to be imprisoned and deported. She traveled to Lithuania to interview family members and many other survivors and composites their stories in this novel. In the afterward, she writes that she wanted to bring awareness to the horrors that got overshadowed by even worse atrocities committed in World War II, and it just kills me that this book promptly got overshadowed by escapist erotica. (Although, actually, the author herself kind of appreciates the confusion because it is introducing new, initially confused readers to the issues of the Baltic genocides.)

On a brief personal note, this week has been a bit trying. We got 7 inches of snow, and I had to shovel my driveway three different days, and load and unload firewood. I hated every minute of it, and then felt especially spoiled since this was exactly the kind of “lighter” work given to the children in the work camps for days in sub-zero conditions on food rations of 3 grams of stale bread a day.

—Anna

The Selection by Kiera Cass

Feb13 by Rebecca

The Selection
by Kiera Cass
2012

I stumbled across this book on Pinterest. As you may have noticed, I enjoy fanfiction, but I also enjoy fanpics, ie, fan-created artwork and illustrations. It’s for this that I started following Book Nerd’s Pinterest boards. But s/he also has a Books too read : D board, and in that board was The Selection.

You know how you’re told not to judge a book by it’s cover? I’ve never been particularly good at following that advice–I regularly judge books by their covers. And this one is pretty much exactly what it’s cover lead me to expect. Which is good, because I really needed a bit of frivolous fun with societal angst and fancy settings. The last few weeks have been intense, and a dystopian Cinderella story for young adults was just what I needed, with the right mixture of fluff and emo, and pretty much no tension at all.

The premise reminded me of Sherwood Smith’s A Posse of Princesses, while the over-all feel of the book and the dystopian setting reminded me of Maria V. Snyder’s Poison Study. Those were also some fun relaxing reads, although quite different from each other. Alternately, it’s bit like if The Hunger Games universe featured a show like The Bachelor rather than, well, the hunger games.

The thing is, that I don’t actually have much to say about The Selection. It was enjoyable. I read it in an evening. It’s a nice balance of fairy-tale and individual empowerment, touches on a great many issues of social injustice and inequalities, but doesn’t particularly linger.

I liked it, and I’ll probably check out the second book (The Elite) and possibly even the third book (The One) when it is released. There’s not actually a whole lot of tension, though: the first chapter of the first book explains what the Selection is, at which point the titles of the other two books become spoilers. However, like any fairytale, it’s nice to just relax into a well-recognized story.

Out of the Easy

Jan31 by Anna

By Ruta Sepetys

This book is so good, you guys! You know when you read a string of pretty good books, and you’re happy enough with them, but then you read a really good book and all of a sudden those other books really pale in comparison? That’s how I feel right now: I don’t redact anything I said about Girl of Nightmares and Being Henry David, but I maybe don’t recommend them quite so highly anymore. I definitely recommend Out of the Easy, though.

It starts out fairly light but very engaging, introducing Josie, the daughter of a prostitute in 1950s New Orleans trying to escape the lifestyle she was born into. A wealthy man that she meets in the bookstore she helps run is found dead later than night, and the book is ostensibly about the investigation into the suspicious circumstances. As the book progresses, though, the mystery takes the backseat while it focuses more on Josie’s desperate attempts to improve her circumstances. This is not a criticism at all, though, because Josie, the world around her, the people in her life (including madams, prostitutes, johns, and gangsters) are fascinating, and her struggles are heartbreaking and gripping.

—Anna

Shadows by Robin McKinley

Jan27 by Rebecca

Shadows
by Robin McKinley
2013

I have a complex relationship with Robin McKinley’s books. I love The Blue Sword and Beauty. They were wonderful. I thought she was doing something interesting with Rose Daughter, since it was a second rewrite of the story of Beauty and the Beast, and yet quite different from her first version, Beauty. And then she wrote Sunshine, which is really in contention for being the best book ever, and won her (in my mind) a life time achievement award: she was thereby a favorite author and I loved her writing.

Where it gets problematic is that I don’t actually care for many of her other books. I found Deerskin unpleasant, Chalice seemed more like a semi-written outline for a book rather than a complete book in and of itself, and I never even managed to get past the first chapter of Pegasus due to the extreme level of twee.

So I’d mostly decided that I would love her intensely and pretend that she wasn’t writing anything anymore. And yet, when her newest book came out, I checked it out from the library.

And I liked it a lot.

The first chapter or so made me wince with the over use of made-up slang and general teenage fraughtness but then it settled into the plot and I discovered that I actually really enjoyed it. The characters and the character interactions and the world they live in are all fun. However, much like how, with Rose Daughter, McKinley had apparently decided that she wanted to try a variation on Beauty, Shadows reads a like McKinley decided she wanted to try a variation on Sunshine. (Even the titles parallel each other!)

Sunshine is so fabulously good that it can definitely support a knock off. In fact, a knock off of Sunshine is a whole lot better than many originals. But, it does add an odd quality of double vision to reading it, see how the characters, plots, and descriptions in the two books map to each other.

One useful distinction, though, is that Sunshine is intended for an adult audience, while Shadows is a teen reader. By this, I mean that the romantic relationships in the two books as well as the level of gore are variably age-appropriate. But they both look at magic and reality and perspective and hope and determination and making due with what you have.

Anyway, I definitely recommend this book, but it doesn’t do much to resolve my issues with McKinley, since now I can’t even rely on her writing books that I don’t want to read. (I also find it somewhat irritating that she really doesn’t like fanfiction and is one of those authors who has their attorneys send cease-and-desist letters. Which is particularly questionable of her given that she apparently writes AUs of her own stories.) Also, just as with Sunshine, I would love to see a sequel of Shadows, or a prequel, or anything else further exploring the world contained within.

Being Henry David

Jan25 by Anna

By Cal Armistead

I ran across BuzzFeed’s list of The 21 Best YA Books of 2013, and had only read two (both courtesy of Kinsey). So, I read through all of the descriptions and a bunch of them held no interest for me (there is nothing for me in a story about an outcast teenage girl who finds herself through DJ-ing), but several promptly got added to my to-read list. Being Henry David was the only one immediately available at my library, so it has come first.

The premise is extremely basic, which I like: a teenaged boy wakes up in New York City’s Penn Station with no knowledge of who he is or how he got there or anything about his past. His only possession is a copy of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, and for lack of any better clues, he decides to go to Walden Pond and see if anything there can bring back his memories. Since he doesn’t know his real name, he gives his name as Henry David whenever asked. “Hank” is very engaging, and the various characters he meets are equally interesting.

The mystery is quite enthralling and kept me guessing for the majority of the book: Is he a government super-soldier a la Bourne? Is he running away from the massacre of his family a la Dark Places? Could he possibly be Thoreau himself brought forward in time?! The ending wasn’t quite as interesting as some of my admittedly farfetched imaginings, but was still quite satisfying. It occasionally got a little too teenage-angst for me, but I have a lower-than-average tolerance for that, so that criticism is more due to that I am not really the intended audience for this type of book than any sort of flaw in the story. I was overall quite pleased.

I additionally enjoyed the occasional discussions about Thoreau and Walden Pond because I read Walden in high school and did not relate to it at all (I am really very much not an outdoorsy person). So, I liked reading about how other people, even fictional characters, took inspiration from it. (I had also initially thought that that I was getting a somewhat unusual, for me, story about a male character by a male author, since I primarily read female characters and authors, but then I double-checked and author Cal Armistead is a woman, so not too off the beaten path – haha, Walden!)

Can I also indulge in a quick graphic design exercise? I thought the cover to the book sucked – it was generic, discordant, and missed several different opportunities. I mulled over this throughout the several days of reading it, and so threw together a quick fan-art cover instead, courtesy of the great M.C. Escher.

The other books I’m waiting on from the list are Mermaid in Chelsea Creek by Michelle Tea (#9), Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell (#15), and Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys (#21), so hopefully those reviews will be coming up, too, though I’m interspersing my YA reading with graphic novels, so those will be sprinkled throughout, as well.

—Anna

Girl of Nightmares

Jan21 by Anna

By Kendare Blake

Girl of Nightmares is the sequel to Anna Dressed in Blood, which I enjoyed as my palette cleanser after a brutal few months with Atlas Shrugged. Anna Dressed in Blood was an awesome way to recover from Ayn Rand, but wasn’t so engaging that I was intending to read the sequel. However, I was looking for casual reading over the holidays, so I picked it up on a whim at the library, figuring it would be a fun distraction.

And it was! It was actually even better than the first book! My one complaint about Anna Dressed in Blood was awfully vague, just that the pace of the plotting seemed odd to me in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Well, I’ve figured out what the plotting issue was because Girl of Nightmares doesn’t have it at all. So, here’s the thing, I like a very linear storyline: protagonist has a problem, works towards a solutions, and finally succeeds. It is a little simple, perhaps, but that’s how I like it. Anna Dressed in Blood had a lot of red herrings as the protagonist and supporting characters tried to figure out what challenge they were facing and then how to solve it, but this book is more straight-forward.

Girl of Nightmares starts just a couple of months after the end of Anna Dressed in Blood, and picks up the same story, so is definitely not a standalone. I can’t really describe the plot at all without spoiling Anna Dressed in Blood, so I’m not going to do that, beyond saying that the other thing I really like is that this book is sort of the flipside of the first book. The first book follows the protagonist Cas as he hunts murderous ghosts and sends them to the afterlife; in Girl of Nightmares, Cas is trying to bring a ghost back from the afterlife. I just love that kind of mirror-image reversal treatment in sequels!

Cas also travels to London to meet with a group that sounds very similar to the Watcher Council, and any similarity to Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a-okay with me!

—Anna

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Dec12 by Kinsey

About this time last year, Anna reviewed a series of YA fantasy books by Holly Black that started out with White Cat. We both finished that trilogy this year, and really enjoyed them. So imagine how happy I was to see that Black released a new book this fall! It’s a YA book about a teenage girl who gets swept up into a whole adventure with vampires. Yes, another one of those. But this one is awesome, and rather than try to explain why by describing the plot, I’m going to list just a few of the ways this book is better than Twilight:

1) First and foremost, the main character, Tana, is the totally kickass opposite of Bella Swan. She takes care of herself and others and doesn’t particularly need saving. And it’s not that she’s a superhero–she’s terrified most of the time–but she sees things that need doing, so she just does them.

2) There is a bit of romance, which I like in my books, but it not the main point of the story. Also, it isn’t a love triangle. Why do books and movies so often involve love triangles, when my experience is that they are just not that common in real life?3) In this book, the public is aware of vampires, because although the old vampires had managed to keep themselves secret for years, they eventually lost control and it all came out and vampires ended up being celebrities. You know that if vampires were real they would be all over YouTube and People.

4) Being a vampire isn’t particularly romanticized here. There are characters that do glamorize it, but it’s actually presented a lot like fame: it might seem exciting, but the reality is not that much fun. The main character spends most of her time trying very hard to not become a vampire, which I found refreshing.

So, overall, a little gory, but very entertaining and way way way better than a lot of vampire stuff out there.

Kinsey’s (Approximately) Three Word Review: A fun, dark ride.

You might also like: Sunshine by Robin McKinley, which Anna already told you to read.

Melting Stone

Nov10 by Rebecca

Melting Stone
By Tamora Pierce
Full cast audio
2007

This was interesting.

Tamora Pierce was a guest speaker at the National Book Festival this year and I was delighted. I was also somewhat shocked that the line to get a book signed by her started forming in front of the signing tent at least an hour before she gave her talk at a completely different tent, and several hours before she would start signing anything.

I’m pleased that she’s popular, but I think the kids in that line made a mistake in going for a signature rather than listening to her speak. She’s a wonderful and witty speaker, with a certain acerbic quality that I enjoy. Seeing her at the festival was also my first notice that her next book has come out: Battle Magic.

I put a hold on it at my local library and checked out Melting Stone.

I grew up reading Tamora Pierce and I still love her books, but I hadn’t gotten around to reading Melting Stone, in large part because it was a born-audio book. While it also came out in traditional book format, that was only after it was published as a full-cast audio-book: meaning each character was voiced by a different voice actor and some sound effects were included, too.

This is not the only thing that’s unusual about this book. The main character, Evvy, was first introduced in a different book, Street Magic. Street Magic, in turn, in the second book that focuses on the character of Briar Moss. Both of those books focused on Briar Moss are single parts in four-book series. Melting Stone also references a lot of events that happen in Battle Magic, a book that was only just published recently in 2013, some six years later. It’s hard for me to tell exactly, given that I know this book series quite well and for some time, but I think this book was intended to be able to stand alone and even introduce the universe to a new generation of readers, who can then go back, if they’d like, and read the backstory of the original books, but don’t have to if they don’t want to, and can continue to read future books as they come out.

Anyway, it was fun, even though it was also intended for a younger audience even than most of Pierce’s books. As Kinsey noted in her last post, we all like reading YA fiction, but generally the audience of those books are teens or the particularly precocious, and the intended audience for this book was more elementary school.

One of the things I love about well-written fiction is that it’s often also well-researched and you can learn a fair bit of non-fiction facts along with enjoying a story with characters and plot-arch. This book, in particular, I thought did a good job of including some basic geology for kids.

So while I enjoyed the story and the characters, I was mostly interested in my own meta analysis of this book. Are audiobooks really becoming more mainstream and standard? Regardless of format, it’s rather brilliant of Pierce to break up the continuity a bit in order to bring in a new generation of kids. I wonder: are there people out there who grew up reading her books who are now introducing them to their own kids?

YA Book Battles and Sad Holiday Movies

Nov7 by Kinsey

It’s pretty clear that all of us here on Biblio-therapy are big YA fans–we may read and review other things, but we always come back to YA. Which is why we were so excited when Friend of the Blog Hannah pointed out Entertainment Weekly’s “What is the Best Young Novel of All Time” bracket game! You can see the complete bracket here. (And boy, do I love a good bracket–the bracket episode of How I Met Your Mother is one of my favorites. “I was there! Trust me! It’s Dead Baby!”) Voting started Monday so we’ve missed Round 1, which is probably all for the best because there were a few choices that seemed impossible. Anne of Green Gables or The Hobbit? I Capture the Castle or The Catcher in the Rye? Harry Potter or Holes? The Fault in Our Stars or Code Name Verity? I’m not sure what I would have done! (Okay, actually, most of those decisions are pretty easy: Anne, Castle, and Harry. But I am torn on the last one. Verity, I think, but I might have to read them both again before I felt truly comfortable with that decision.)

I’m going to keep an eye on the EW website for a while now, because I am looking forward to voting in the next rounds. But I do have one complaint (aside from the whole how-can-one-possibly-vote-on-art thing): some of these books are not YA. I understand that the lines can be a bit blurry, but in some cases, there is no blur involved. Dune is not and never was a young adult book. The Princess Bride? The House on Mango Street? Not young adult. And Prep? Just because a book is about teenagers does not mean it was written for teenagers. Plus it goes the other way, too–The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a straight-up kids book, and seems overmatched in this field.

EW did get it right by including The Book Thief, though, which is one of my favorite YA books ever. And last week I actually had the opportunity to see the new Book Thief movie (officially opening tomorrow). There are so many good things about the movie–all of the actors are just wonderful, especially Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson as the main characters adoptive parents. And the whole thing has a beautiful look. But I wish they had been able to use those same people and sets and costumes and make a six-hour miniseries instead of a two-hour movie. The Book Thief is a long, complicated story, and so many things that had so much meaning in the book were brushed by in the movie because there simply wasn’t time. I am not one to get huffy about film adaptations of books–I tend to like seeing how the shift in format is made–but for me the movie had much less impact than the book. But then, the friend I was with who didn’t know the story, and who is not an overly emotional sort, started sobbing about halfway through the movie and never stopped, so maybe I’m a bad judge. There are a lot of lovely things about the movie, so I hope it does well in theaters. And I hope it inspires more people to go read the book, which is truly stunning.