lightreads

So You Want to Be a Wizard (Young Wizards Series Book 1), Deep Wizardry (Young Wizards Series Book 2), High Wizardry (Young Wizards Series Book 3), A Wizard Abroad (Young Wizards Series Book 4), The Wizard's Dilemma (Young Wizards Series Book 5)

4/5. Adventures of Nita and Kit, pre-teen wizards in suburban New York.

I have been reading this series slowly for six months. I don't really go in for savor when it comes to books – it's just as good going down fast, fight me! – but once in a while I do. The first five are really strong. They're tense, beautifully-imagined stories of young people riding the first wild wave of power, and learning to use it wisely.

The first book is particularly accomplished, which is unusual for a series. It takes Kit and Nita to an alternate, dark AU New York; the creepy creepy image of the nest where the evil sentient helicopter raises its tiny evil helicopter babies has lingered. As has Nita, holding the book of life in which all truths are written, and lifting her pen, and making a mark. The structure serves these books well; Kit and Nita's greatest victory is the thing they accomplish first, and the rest of the books play out the consequences that echo up and down through time and causality.

Note: Apparently Duane has been editing and re-releasing these books with a modern update, since she has been writing them for thirty years and the 80's stuff is very 80's. I read the originals, and do not regret that decision at all. Frankly, I think her insistence on adding, like, cell phones to make these accessible to modern readers is misplaced, and sort of insulting. Are these early books very 80's? Sure. Is it startling to read about parents allowing their pre-teen children to take the train into NYC alone for a day? Uh, yeah. But I think I – and modern teenagers – are capable of understanding.

The Wig in the Window

3/5. YA about the tween girls playing spy games at night who happen upon their neighbor acting suspicious.

Fair warning, I have had a huge Too Like the Lightning* hangover for a week and no book will satisfy me. This one is cute, and full of women! Like, brim full – every major relationship is between ladies of various ages. But it hit a lot of my embarrassment squick, subcategory kids doing terribly inappropriate things for good reasons that adults loudly disbelieve. Auuuuugh.

Still, if I had a tween girl in my life, I'd get her this. …And subsequently make sure she did not have a rope strategically tied to get out her window at night.

*Yes, yes, I read it. I have thoughts! …Someday.

Mars Evacuees

5/5. Twelve-year-old girl is evacuated to Mars as the war with the aliens drags on. Then all the adults on the Mars base disappear.

Oh gosh, burble burble, this is woooooonderful. It's about war and fear of loss and actual loss and – go with me here – it is hilarious. The obvious comparison is The True Meaning of Smekday, which I also loved, and yeah, that's valid. Plucky and sarcastic kids accidentally reaching across the gulf of a species war to make a friend. But this book is also doing very different things. Like, in case this is relevant to anyone's interests, girls in space! Female friendship! Lady fighter pilots!

Also, this is going to make people who haven't read this book go "buh?" but the brilliance of this book, and the seriousness of it, are in its lightness. This book makes the education of child soldiers funny and endearing, okay, in a way that lifts you up and breaks your heart. It is this beautifully controlled but pell-mell first person narration, constrained by our narrator's youth and fear, illuminated by her irreverence. And it trips along, making you laugh and worry and laugh again. And then it stops, and takes a breath, a perfectly placed beat that makes you stop and clench your hands and say, oh very quietly.

It is just really, really good.

A Darker Shade of Magic: A Novel

3/5. There are four Londons in four worlds, and only a few can travel between. One of those who can takes the opportunity to smuggle, and gets caught up in a complicated magical scheme.

Overhyped. This was entertaining enough, but you know I'm kind of bored when one of the main characters is a cross-dressing lady pickpocket who dreams of being a ship captain, and I find it overbaked and kind of tiresome. Points for later establishing that she likes menswear just for the sake of wearing a good suit, though, rather than the usual fantasy bait-and-switch where the lady cross-dresses but in the end just wants to be "herself" again or whatever.

Lots of people thought the hype was called for, so maybe I'm just cranky. Or maybe this is, at its heart, just bland.

The Merlin Conspiracy (Magids)

2/5. Standalone sequel to her Deep Secret, which I loved. More alternate universe-hopping magical shenanigans.

I am at a loss here. Deep Secret is charming and sweet and complicatedly kind. This book is – I don't even know what this book is, aside from a mess. It's a splattery mash of magic and personalities; it is perhaps appropriate that a literal elephant walks through this book, randomly trompling things. The plot is, eh, whatever, things happen, it more or less hangs together. But the few parts of this book I can comprehend on a meta level strike me as confused at best, wrongheaded at worst. This book is sort of about influence – magical, familial, political – in relationships, which is a way tidier explanation than anything in the actual pages, and to the extent it is a thinking creature at all, this book has no comprehension of consent or why it's important.

What the hell, DWJ?

Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass series Book 1)

3/5. YA fantasy. Infamous assassin is removed from prison death camp to compete to be the king's champion; also magic is banned and stuff.

So the front matter of this book proudly proclaims that the author began posting it at the age of sixteen on Fictionpress.com. Remember fictionpress? That would be the original fiction spin-off of fanfiction.net, for those who don't.

And I was like you go, girl. So many authors try to hide their internet origins; even those who claim not to be ashamed sure don't act like it. This author lays it right out there, and thanks her fans and commenters from the site. It's like she realizes these people helped to get her published! And like she's genuinely grateful! And like she really doesn't care who knows how she got her start! Imagine.

So major kudos. Unfortunately, the book itself, despite several edits I can only assume, is incredibly sixteen. I mean, our assassin's name is Celaena; she is an orphan with a tragic past and – it is not revealed in this book but seems inevitable – royal parentage, and she is involved in a brewing love triangle with a crown prince and a captain of the guard, and her eyes might not really be purple, but I'm sure they are in Sarah J. Maas's soul. I wish her well of them; her and the thousands and thousands of girls and women who really dig this series. But it's not for me.

Note: If it might be for you, this book is super cheap on Kindle right now -- $2.24 as of linking.

Fangirl: A Novel

3/5. The story of Cath's first year of college. She has an anxiety disorder, and her twin isn't talking to her, and she has lots of work to do on her slashy fanfic magnum opus, oh and there's this boy….

Aw man, this book was so hard to read because reading about anxious people makes me super anxious. But don't let my issues stop anybody else, because this is awesomesauce. Actually, more accurately, this is so fucking truefax. Cath's struggles with writing original fiction, the intensity of her feelings for her fanfic, the beautiful way this book creates intimacy between people by having them share fanfic read aloud . . . yeah. Been there.

I love the way this book is about slash. It's just part of who Cath is, and some people get that and some people don't. And if the reader doesn't, well, whatever, basically. There are excerpts sprinkled throughout from Cath's WIP and her older work, and from her canon book, and they made me facepalm and chortle in turn. Cath's writing is that awkward but compelling stuff that an eighteen-year-old with genuine talent will turn out . . . and that will horrify her a decade later. Yes, also been there, thanks.

My only objections are (1) that I was utterly uninterested in the romance here. Just . . . nothing; and (2) Cath's fannishness is oddly isolated. She doesn't seem to have real online friends, just fans, which is a little weird.

But if it's a young adult book that normalizes and validates fannish behavior you want, then here you go, this is a good one.

Cuckoo Song

4/5. 1922. The thirteen-year-old daughter of wealthy parents wakes up after a near-drowning. With gaps in her memory; and a bottomless, terrifying hunger; and hair that turns into leaves overnight; and dolls that try to flee her; and a sister who calls her a "thing" and hates her guts.

I talk about what I'm reading a lot with my nearest and dearest. Seriously, my poor wife gets the disorganized and incoherent thought soup that I yank these reviews out of. You know, my sparklingly coherent and organized reviews. You know.

But anyway, I keep saying "Frances Hardinge" to people, and they keep saying "Who?" And that. I do not understand that.

So hear ye, hear ye.

Frances Hardinge. Frances motherfucking Hardinge.

She writes young adult…ish. Fantasy….ish. Her brain is a magical tree that bears strange fruit, and I want to eat every single one, even when I know there are teeth on the inside. And people do not know who she is, which is incomprehensible to me, because she's written more than a half dozen books by now, and they only get better.

As a first Hardinge, I recommend Fly By Night, which beings with our young lady protagonist starting a fire and gets more madcap and wonderful from there, or Gullstruck Island which is the best young adult about colonialism I have ever read. Both of those books will give you a sense for Hardinge's powers, the way she yanks stories off their tracks and drops them into new ones, and where she puts the bite (spoiler: everywhere), and how no one can stop her writing amazing young women relating complexly to each other.

This one is kinda advanced level Hardinge. The first quarter is a slow motion, claustrophobic interpersonal car accident, and it kind of fucked me up. And then the accident happens, and the book leaps right off the road, and we have sisters, and jazz, and spells to trap the dead, and magic by architecture, and a motorcycle with a sidecar, and a woman chased by perpetual winter, and other kinds of sisters. It's a wonderfully prickly, complicated book that made me brace, on every page, for pain. And then surprised me, at the end, with a drop of mercy. Not her most accomplished, on a technical level, but there is something . . . unrestrained about the horror at the center of this book that really got to me.

Frances Hardinge, you guys.

Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens: Lost Stars

3/5. Star Wars expanded universe, spanning about fifteen years before, during, and after the original trilogy. The best of friends grow up together, fly together, go to the imperial academy together. And then Alderaan happens, and they start asking questions. But the answers they arrive at are very different, and take one through defection to the alliance, and the other up the imperial command chain.

So, confession: Star Wars was my first fandom. Like 'make up dreamy nonsensical fanfic playlets in my head while my second grade teacher droned on and on about things I already knew' fandom.

I suspect this is Claudia Gray's fanfic. Except hers is way way way better than mine. Hers is thoughtful and humane. The two main characters love each other deeply, and agree on most basic points of philosophy and ethics. But that takes them in opposite directions for utterly plausible reasons. They argue, and get mad, and get hurt, and they don't understand each other, except how they still do, to the very end. The catchphrase of this book is look through my eyes, which says a lot.

And, I mean, there's only so much depth and sympathy you can add to the imperial cause when they actually named the thing the Death Star. Because, uh, like, what did anyone think it was for? But Gray does a damn sight better than anyone else I've ever read.

That was nice.

Curtsies & Conspiracies (Finishing School Series Book 2) And Waistcoats & Weaponry (Finishing School Series Book 3)

3/5. A couple more titles in that young adult alt Victorian urban fantasy finishing spy school series.

There is something not quite right about this series. The adult titles maintain this airy soap bubble of frothy charm, and they make it look effortless. But there's some internal wobble in the young adult set that I can sort of put my finger on, but also sort of can't. Like, okay, in one of these books, our heroine is thinking about someone on the opposite side of a conflict from her, and notes that he's not bad, he's just evil. "Not that there was anything wrong with that." Which typifies this universe, and this series more specifically; it's not about good and evil having any particular valence, because good and evil are really just words that have a lot more to do with how people dress than anything.

That's the charming part.

But – here's where I get a bit hazy about it – but the racism. This is an AU where servants have been replaced largely with mechanized laborers, and yet – it is carelessly implied – there is still an African slave trade, and all that flows from that fact. It is still a scandal for a young lady to fall in love with a black laborer, specifically because of his race more than his class. And I just. Idk.

I guess I just really don't want to be reading a book whose charm is that evil is an esthetic choice, but oh also racism, ha ha. I'm not drawing this connection very clearly, but yeah. No. This series isn't right.