bookshelves of doom

Across the Universe -- Beth Revis

It took me a long time to get to Across the Universe. Not because I wasn't interested—HELLO, SPACE OPERA MURDER MYSTERY—but because over a year ago, I started listening to the audiobook, and I HAD ISSUES.

Not with the story or the writing, but with something entirely out of the author's control: I had issues with the reader. Or, well, with one of them, since the audiobook actually has two narrators.

Lauren Ambrose—you may know her from Six Feet Under, Diggers, or Psycho Beach Party—went in a really... THROBBY direction, interpretation-wise, and while it actually made sense in terms of the character and situation, her habit of putting a mini-sob into every other word was a tad grating. (The only person who gets a free pass in that department is Dwight Yoakam.)

So, anyway, it's taken me this long to get over myself and actually read the book. And DAMN, now that I've actually read the whole thing, I'm totally glad I have the sequel on deck.

Across the Universe is narrated by two characters: the first is Amy, who is cryogenically frozen along with her parents and loaded onto a spaceship headed to colonize a new planet. Since the trip is expected to last three hundred years—hence the freezing—all of the colonists (mostly a mix of military personnel and scientists) will be woken upon arrival, while those who run the ship will live out their entire lives on it, passing their responsibilities down to the next generation, the next, and the next. Elder, our second narrator, was born some 250 years after Amy, has lived his entire life on the ship, and is next in line to lead it.

Something goes wrong, though—well, more than just 'goes wrong', as it was done deliberately—and Amy wakes up decades early. Even discounting the fact that she's on a spaceship, the world she wakes into is nothing like the world she fell asleep in—the rules, the technology, the culture, even human behavior seems to have completely changed—and her looks and speech and behavior seem just as bizarre to the ship's populace. And none of that even takes into account the man currently in charge of the ship: Eldest, a man who believes that Adolf Hitler was a 'wise, cultured leader'. 

Even without Lauren Ambrose's throbby delivery, Amy isn't an immediately likable heroine: she's more of a runner-awayer than a go-getter, and more of a moaner and complainer than an argumentative debater. HOWEVER. That doesn't mean that she's not believable—just the opposite, in fact, she's extremely believable. She's far more realistic than any number of badass, quippy, special snowflake protagonists, because she really does read like an Regular Girl in an Extraordinary Situation.

AND, when push comes to shove, she does take action, and she does make sacrifices for the greater good. She cries a lot while she does it, but she does it. Which, for me, actually makes her a stronger, more interesting character than any of those BQSSs—because none of this comes easily to her. It always feels like she has to overcome not only the situations she's in, not only the prejudice of the people she's surrounded by, but also her own fear.

I had one part of the mystery figured out pretty early on, but that turned out not to matter... because OH MY GOD, THE PLOT TWISTS. As I learned more and more about the truth of life on the ship Godspeed, I started getting vocal. Vocal as in, "WHAT. OH MY GOD, THAT JUST HAPPENED. THAT IS SO MESSED UP. WHAAAAAAAAT. WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT." In a GOOD way. Surprise after surprise after surprise, and I am so very much looking forward to A Million Suns.

Bonus points: I assume (?) that the number of Amy's freezer compartment—42—was a nod to Douglas Adams. Which is awesome. Actually, even if it's a coincidence, it's awesome. BECAUSE WHAT A COINCIDENCE THAT WOULD BE. There's also a character named Luthe, which I'm inclined to think is a reference to Robin McKinley's Luthe, but as Revis' character is d-bag wannabe rapist asshat, I could be mistaken.

Full disclosure: Although we've never met in person, Beth Revis and I have interacted quite a bit online over the years. (Also, she's purchased stuff from my Etsy shop.)

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Book source: Finished copy from the publisher.

Broken -- A.E. Rought

It's been four months since her beloved boyfriend Daniel fell to his death, and 17-year-old Emma Gentry is still in mourning. She spends much of her free time at the local cemetery: not because Daniel's buried there—his parents chose to cremate his remains—but because it was Their Spot.

In late October, a new boy transfers to her high school. From the moment Emma locks eyes with Alex Franks, she knows that nothing will ever be the same. Despite aggressive overtures from every single girl at Shelley High—he is, of course, drop-dead gorgeous with a dangerous reputation—he only has eyes for Emma.

But while Emma certainly can't deny that there's a connection, there are things about Alex that are... disquieting. For one thing, how did he get the scars that cover his body? For another, how is it that, at moments, he reminds Emma so clearly of Daniel? And perhaps most worrisome, there's his father the doctor, whom she first meets at the local clinic when she goes in with a broken hand... and when she mentions that she knows his son, HE DELIBERATELY BREAKS HER HAND IN A DIFFERENT SPOT*.

Shelley High? Lots of scars? His father is a doctor? Alex FRANKS? Are you with me?

Anyway. If you're a Twilight fan who doesn't mind a bit of gore (there are moments here that make the birth scene in Breaking Dawn look totally low-key), you'll very likely enjoy Broken. It's more in the horror realm, but the character archetypes are very similar. (He's dangerous, mysterious, brooding, and very protective; she's... clumsy.) Also, there's no swearing, though they do ultimately [SPOILER] have The Sex. So, if you're into it, I'd say to go ahead and hunt it down without reading the rest of this post, which is about to devolve into a complain-fest.

If you are a Twilight detractor, I wouldn't recommend this one. Period. No equivocating, done and done. My reasons are as follows (but do keep in mind, of course, that I read an advanced copy, so the finished copy could read differently):

1. Emma. Clumsy like Bella Swan; the object of desire pretty much wherever she goes; someone who (sometimes) sticks up for herself when confronted by bullies, but is a pushover with friends and love interests; she's had the same locker for two years, yet still hasn't mastered opening it; she's disingenuous about her feelings for Alex, EVEN IN HER OWN MIND; she is guilt-ridden about everything from Daniel's death to the fact that her mother doesn't own a diner. Oh, and the truth behind Daniel's death? She has all of the necessary information to solve the mystery, but never does put the pieces together. She only learns the truth when she's TOLD.
2. Alex. Pulls Edward Cullen's run-of-the-mill I-Know-What's-Best-For-You crap on a semi-regular basis. While Emma does call him on it on occasion, she usually goes along with him anyway.
3. Their relationship. This kind of says it all: whenever Emma has her hair up in a bun or a ponytail or a braid, he takes the elastic out because he likes her hair down. SERIOUSLY, DUDE. That is not sweet or cool or remotely acceptable. If she has her hair up, she probably wants it up. Also? Like Bella Swan, Emma is often afraid of Alex, and she regularly gets injured while in his presence. Her mother is often unreasonable, but she has a point with this line: "He, he, he. Where were you in all this Emma? Willing to do whatever he said?"
4. Tiny. The dude at the coffee-shop who is one of the many dudes who has a thing for Emma. Yes, descriptions of the grotesque are a hallmark of Gothic fiction, and what with the acne and the sweat and the creeper behavior, I felt that that was what Rought was going for with him. But ultimately, those scenes made me really uncomfortable because they smacked of fat-shaming.
5. The repetition: "I pull my bare legs from the tangle of sheets and blankets shackling them and immediately regret it." "I agree and push to sitting with my left hand pressed to the snarl of blankets shackling my legs." "My cell phone vibrates in my backpack, a chaotic buzz and clatter, like bees and chicken bones." "My cell phone buzzes, sounding like bees and chicken bones as it rattles against the pencils in the front pocket of my backpack." "The sky chooses now to open and hemorrhage water like a slit vein." "...the power cord to my cell phone like a thick black vein..." "...vein of people bleeding into obscurity..." "Also, there are one million references to Alex's 'hazel eyes'.
6. The similes. Oh god, the similes. To be fair, flowery prose is to be expected in a Gothic. But much of it still made me twitch. "Standing, I feel the same heavy stare wash across my face like a warm damp cloth." "He exudes mystery where he stands, drawing female gazes like an electromagnet." You get the idea.
7. The wink-wink-nudge-nudges about Frankenstein. Lots of Gothics get nods in Broken—Emma's cat is named Renfield and her high school team is the Ravens, etc.**—and Emma's English class is in the middle of a unit on the Gothics. Which is all well and good. What drove me bananas, though, is that Emma is clearly reading Frankenstein ("Then, she sat by my bed, reading aloud from my library book about the product of man's hubris coming back to haunt him."), but that she never A) names it, or B) you know, makes any sort of connection between it and Alex, even when it's abundantly clear that there are parallels. The obfuscation just didn't make any sort of sense to me.

Sooooo... yeah. Sadly, this book and I? Were not a good match. But, as I said, Twilight fans are likely to eat it up.

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*Seriously, if that isn't enough to make a heroine run away screaming, WELL. Needless to say, Emma does not run away screaming. And, oddly enough, when she has other physical mishaps, SHE ALWAYS GOES BACK TO THE SAME CLINIC. Which seems unwise, but, hey. That's just my opinion.

**Though why a school would be named for Shelley, yet have a Poe icon as a team name, I dunno.

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Author page.

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Book source: Netgalley.

Interested in a free copy of Lenore Appelhans' Level 2?

Click on through to the FB and throw your hat into the ring.

Finnick or no, real-life Sam Claflin sounds likable and adorbs.

As quoted by EW (where there are a couple more pictures from Catching Fire):

"People are just worried that I'm not going to be as sex god enough as Finnick should be. I've literally had four months of eating nothing but chicken and asparagus. I just want a burger and a beer."

Look! Look! Finnick!

He is not doing it for me. At all:

(Is it just me, btdubs, or does Sam Claflin look a bit like David Tennant? Not that that's a bad thing AT ALL in general, but as Finnick, it doesn't work.)

There's one more picture up at MTV, that suggests to me that the casting might be more about the charisma than the look, so click on through if you're interested.

On the Tenth Day of Christmas... Jumper -- Steven Gould

On the Tenth Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me ten lords-a-leaping...

Despite the fact that both Rachel Bilson and Michael Rooker are in it, I never did see the movie based on this book. Because, you know: Hayden Christiansen.

Anyway, judging by the half-trailers-worth of footage I've seen of said footage, it looks like the filmmakers must have amped up the action part of the storyline. (And maybe added a character? Because, as is, there's no one in the book for Jamie Bell to play.) The first three-quarters of Jumper pretty much consist of Davy dealing with the practical aspects of being a seventeen-year-old runaway with the power of teleportation. It's only in the last hundred pages or so that the action-movie terrorist plot part of the story kicks in.

But let me back up!

After one too many times of being whipped with the buckle end of his drunken father's belt ("Not the buckle, dad! You promised!"), Davy Rice has had it. So he runs—well, accidentally teleports—away, is promptly almost raped by a gang of truckers ("Who brought the Vaseline?"), gets mugged, and ONLY THEN decides to try to work on his teleportation skillz.

He robs a bank, falls in love (but doesn't tell his ladyfriend about the whole jumping thing), tracks down his mother—who'd abandoned him with his abusive father six years previously—and builds a secret hideout... in what I assume is some sort of nature preserve-y place, but folks with superpowers aren't generally known for following the rules, so whatever. Anyway, one thing leads to another, and suddenly the NSA is very, very, VERY interested in him... which is not the sort of attention that he wants.

The storyline is very A to B to C, in that most readers will get from beginning to end without ever really being surprised by anything. OH. Except maybe by the fact that Davy cries more than Jack on Lost. Which is an unusual trait in a hero, regardless of gender, and also a somewhat annoying trait in a hero, also regardless of gender*. The dialogue—especially between Davy and Millie—was really stilted and unrealistically formal, and he gets a bit infodump-y and didactic with speeches along the lines of Here's A Mini-Lecture On Middle East Politics or Let Me Rant About The Ridiculousity Of American Gender Roles.

I enjoyed the first part of the book—the part where he figures out his limits and how to use his power intelligently—quite a lot more than the action-movie part of the book, because it really feels like Gould had mulled over the everyday possibilities of the power as well as the more superhero-esque stuff: the subtleties as well as the flash. That thoughtfulness is, hands down, the strongest aspect of the book.

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*And that, my friends, is a big part of why I didn't make it through the second season of Lost.

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Book source: ILLed through my library.

On the Second Day of Christmas... Gunpowder Empire -- Harry Turtledove

On the Second Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me two turtledoves...

Wow. Turtledoves are apparently few and far between in the YA, which is what prompted me to read my first—and based on this one, last—Harry Turtledove ever. To be fair, he usually writes for the adult audience, so it's possible that his regular fare reads differently.

Anyway, Gunpowder Empire is the first book in the Crosstime Traffic series, which is his series written specifically for younger readers. The series has a great premise: scientists discover alternate timelines, which allows Crosstime employees to, you know, cross time to other worlds to trade, snag new technologies, and take advantage of untapped natural resources. Gunpowder Empire focuses on Jeremy and Amanda Solters, Californian siblings from the late twenty-first century who are in the Roman Empire—a version of the Roman Empire that never fell—with their parents for the summer.

Shortly after they arrive, their mother falls ill and is forced to return to their hometime. With their father. And shortly after that, all communications from the 'real world' cease, and Jeremy and Amanda are stuck in Agrippan Rome... maybe forever.

(Why the father didn't just send his kids home with his wife—after all, if they're responsible enough to leave alone in an entirely different timeline, they're probably responsible enough to get their mother on a trans-timeline shuttlecraft and then to a hospital—I don't know.)

It's quite possible that Gunpowder Empire will go over especially well with fans of John Grisham's Theodore Boone series, regardless of age: it's got that same sense of fuzzy nostalgia and tends to gloss over any uncomfortable issues by either providing easy solutions or just not mentioning them. More specifically, it's also similar to Theo Boone in that it's an often-didactic adventure with a distinct avoidance of any profanity or sex that stars amazingly judgmental young protagonists who see issues in black and white, rather than in shades of gray.

A few of my issues:

• The worldbuilding is mostly achieved through conversations like this:

Jeremy: Derisive comment about his mother's love of old technology, followed by a list of all of the new technologies she could have used instead.

Michael (Jeremy's friend): Reply commiserating about same, followed by a list of the difficulties of being the child of a Crosstime employee.

...or through the omniscient narrator, who often provides historical context and commentary followed by a description of Jeremy or Amanda's thoughts on how crappy Agrippan Rome is.

• Based on his behavior and maturity level, I assumed that Jeremy was about twelve until page 88: when I was informed that he was seventeen. A classroom scene, in which the teacher asks questions of high school students that would have made more sense in a middle school setting, added to my confusion.

• It's hugely repetitive. I GET IT: REAL WAR IS NOT LIKE A VIDEO GAME. Also, Amanda can't go to the water fountain without a few sentences about the impossibility of carrying a jug of water on her head, and Jeremy is unable to see animal pelts without a diatribe about the evils of the fur industry. (A diatribe, I should add, that is never tempered by a mention of the fact that this culture doesn't have access to synthetics, mass production, or a lot of the other conveniences that make it easy for us to stay warm bloodlessly.)

• I don't understand why, if these kids are going to be sent to another world by a zillion-dollar corporation, they aren't given any sort of formal training/education about the culture beyond implants that teach them the language. It's possible that my background in anthropology is making me especially twitchy, but Jeremy and Amanda walk around this book constantly bagging on the beliefs and customs of this other world, without any real attempt at understanding anything in a context other than through the filters of their own worldview. It comes off as creepily jingoistic, and as there's never any sort of growth on the part of either protagonist, it seems that that's all portrayed as a good thing. Yecch.

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Book source: ILLed through my library.

On the First Day of Christmas... Pure -- Julianna Baggott

On the First Day of Christmas, my true love sent to me a partridge in a pear tree.

A week or so after the Detonations—explosions that killed, burned, and poisoned the populace, as well as causing peoples' bodies to fuse and mutate, incorporating anything they happened to be touching when the blast occurred—a plane flew overhead, and dropped not another bomb, but a message:

We know you are here, our brothers and sisters.
We will, one day, emerge from the Dome to join you in peace.
For now, we watch from afar, benevolently. 

Almost a decade later, Pressia is about to turn sixteen. Once she does, she has to make a choice: join the OSR—Operation Sacred Revolution, formerly Operation Search and Rescue—to become a part of their militia, or live the rest of her life on the run from them. But joining willingly doesn't necessarily mean safety: there are rumors that those who were altered by the Detonations—people like Pressia—are used by the OSR for target practice.

Partridge, meanwhile, is two months away from his eighteenth birthday. He was one of the lucky few who made it into the Dome before the Detonations. He made it, his older brother made it, and his father made it. His mother didn't.

Unlike Pressia, Partridge has grown up in relative comfort. He's well-fed, healthy, educated, and, as his father is a bigwig in the Dome, somewhat privileged even among the privileged. But then he finds out that his mother might still be alive. Out there, somewhere, outside of the Dome.

So he runs away.

Pure was originally published for the adult market, but it has obvious crossover appeal, what with the apocalyptic setting and the teenage protagonists and the Fight The Power storyline and the action and the conspiracy and the romance (EXTRA POINTS FOR THE LACK OF LOVE TRIANGLE!) and so on. It has a more sedate pace than most of the YA post-apocalyptic titles I've read—although, looking back, there really is a ton of action, with fire and fights and near-deaths and chases and escapes and sekrit plans, but somehow it still never feels fast-paced—however, once I was hooked, I read the whole thing in one go.

It starts slow, and the third person narration makes for a less-immediately immediate emotional connection with the characters than first person narration usually does, but it really works: the lack of ongoing commentary from the protagonists forces the reader to pay closer attention. To note details, to look for clues and foreshadowing, to piece together the backstory. Ultimately, I got so involved in the world and the characters that when A CERTAIN THING happened, I shrieked, "WHAAAAAT??" so loudly that Josh came running into the room because he thought I'd accidentally cut my finger off with my pocketknife or something.

That isn't to say that there wasn't foreshadowing—there was—because when THAT THING happened (well, after the shrieking), I was all, "oh, yeeeeeeeah, riiiight, I remember now". But it was woven in there so well and so organically—it didn't have the blinking neon arrow that foreshadowing sometimes does—that for me, it didn't track until after the fact. I realize that I'm making kind of a ridiculously big deal about such a tiny facet of the book, but I'm quite good at Predicting Stuff, and so it makes a big impression when I get surprised like that.

Juliana Baggott has dreamed up a scary future in Pure. And the scariest thing about it is that much of it has already happened, or is actually possible. Cheery thoughts for Christmas Day, eh? Wheeeee!

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Book source: ILLed through my library.

Two great deals from Strange Chemistry.

Deal the first: Through the month of December, they're offering buy-one-get-one-free on their five launch titles. I already had Blackwood (which I'll write about as soon as Cybils season is over), so I bought the hell out of the other four. For the price of two! So that's cool.

See this blog post for more info.

Deal the second: They have a subscription service. As in, you can pay for a year's worth of books up front, and get a new book or two every month. I can't even handle how much I love that idea.

See this page for more info on that.

Today @KirkusReviews...

...I wrote about Emily McKay's The Farm.

To sum the entire column up in three words: I had issues.

All of those post-apocalyptic books got you curious?

Then check out this gallery of post-apocalyptic artwork.

Diverse Energies, edited by Tobias S. Buckell & Joe Monti Index

This is an index of my posts about Diverse Energies.

I'll add the links as soon as they go live.

"The Last Day" by Ellen Oh

"Freshee's Frogurt" by Daniel H. Wilson

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Amazon.

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Book source: Review copy from the publisher.

"Freshee's Frogurt" -- Daniel H. Wilson from Diverse Energies, edited by Tobias S. Buckell & Joe Monti

From Tobias Buckell's Preface:

I write adventures about the future and of future worlds, and they're populated by a diverse set of characters. Why? It's the future face of the world. It's us. All of us. And we all deserve to be seen in the future, having adventures, setting foot on those strange new worlds.

"Freshee's Frogurt" is an interview in which a young man named Jeff Thompson is questioned by Lonnie Wayne Blanton of the Oklahoma police force about the robot attack he'd just barely managed to survive.

I loved this story LIKE WHOA. It was fast-paced and funny, with some seriously wonderful descriptions of some seriously horrific violence: for instance, the bit about Felipe's teeth "pop[ping] out of his mouth like fucking popcorn" made me both cringe and feel appreciative of the imagery. Even just typing it out there made me squick all over again, even as I was thinking about how great it was.

Felipe, by the way, is described as the spitting image of Danny Trejo, which made him (obviously) that much more badass.

Anyway.

After reading it, I flipped to the back to read Daniel H. Wilson's bio, because A) his name sounded familiar and B) I was suddenly determined to read EVERYTHING HE'S EVER WRITTEN. And I hit the jackpot! Not only is he the author of the Alex Award-winning Robopocalyse, but "Freshee's Frogurt" is an excerpt from it! So I'll totally be reading that ASAP. It's always so satisfying to find an author that you click with so quickly. Woo!

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Book source: Review copy from the publisher.

"The Last Day" -- Ellen Ohfrom Diverse Energies, edited by Tobias S. Buckell & Joe Monti

From Tobias Buckell's Preface:

I write adventures about the future and of future worlds, and they're populated by a diverse set of characters. Why? It's the future face of the world. It's us. All of us. And we all deserve to be seen in the future, having adventures, setting foot on those strange new worlds.

As much as I totally support the sentiment in that passage—as well as the idea behind Tu Books, which is to bring more diversity to speculative fiction—I found it pretty jarring to move from such an inspirational introduction to "The Last Day", which was brutally, devastatingly dark. And is set in a world that, honestly, I can't imagine anyone wanting to see themselves in.

It's set in war-torn Japan, either in a post-apocalyptic future or in an alternate version of the past. (Unless I missed an indicator somewhere—I rather hope not, though, as I liked the idea that it could have been set in either time frame.) After decades of fighting, there are only two governments left on Earth: the President of the West and the Emperor of the East. Children are being drafted into the Emperor's Army at younger and younger ages, the civilian populace is starving, and there are rumors of entire city populations just... disappearing.

On the fateful day—note the title!—that the story takes place, twelve-year-old Kenji goes out scavenging for food with his friend Akira... and it isn't long before they both know that their lives will never be the same again.

Good stuff. Dark, but good. It reminded me of the Hunger Games trilogy, not in plot or style or tone, but because it espouses the idea that no one really wins in war. Or, more specifically in this case, that "War was only good for governments and always bad for people". In addition to the up-in-the-air nature of the era, there are also hints about a possible paranormal ability, though that, too, is debatable.

While it totally works as a stand-alone story, there are so many unanswered questions by the end—the main one being, "OMG, WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT?—that I wondered if "The Last Day" was originally a prologue to another story, or some sort of writing exercise to create a backstory for one of the characters. (<--Not saying which one, as that would very definitely affect your reading experience.)

Looking forward to more from the author—she's new to me—and this collection!

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Book source: Review copy from the publisher.

The 2012 World Fantasy Award winners...

...have been announced.