Parnassus Reads

I came across this title on i09 and decided to check it out from the library. What a refreshing read in teen fiction! It appears to be a stand-alone, for one thing, it’s based in non-Western mythos, and the characters are POC! (I just used exclamation points, twice! That’s how excited I am.) I was just bitching about the lack of all of this in epic fantasy on Kate Elliot’s livejournal page. While I don’t think Durst’s book qualifies as epic fantasy, it does breathe some much needed new life into teen fantasy (while the cover does show a girl in a corset, which doesn’t seem too logical for a member of a desert tribe, at least it’s not a girl in a prom dress).

 

Vessel tells the story of Liyanna, a young woman who has been divinely chosen to be the vessel for her tribe’s goddess, Bayla. When Bayla doesn’t fill her vessel, Liyanna is cast out and left on her own, until (of course) a handsome dude walks in from a dust storm. Korbyn is the vessel for the trickster god and he has come on a mission to find all of the vessels whose gods did not come to them. Thus begins the main action and quest of the novel. Each tribe presents a new challenge, and each unfulfilled vessel a new voice to the cast. Unfortunately, one of the last is one of the best, and we don’t get to hear her for very long. After collecting all five of the vessels, the group sets out to hunt down the missing gods and goddesses. Eventually, a Host-like (I think, if I understand the premise of that book right (no, I have NOT read it)) love triangle develops and the resolution of that is also the resolution of the novel.

 

The freshness of the novel and its mythology (which was coherent, cognent, and compelling) may have overshadowed some of its defects while reading it. Chief among these are the rapid pace of the plot and the character development. The latter was adequate, but it could have been much better and in turn made this a much deeper novel than it was. Durst’s writing was good, even lovely at times, and her depictions of the desert put me in mind of Nnendi Okorafor (if you haven’t read her yet, WTFN?). While Durst aspired to that level of story-telling, she fell short, mainly because she seemed to focus more on plot than on her characters. This is odd, since her plot is to collect characters, essentially.On the whole, I really enjoyed Vessel and would highly recommend it if you’re a bit tired of the normal teen fantasy fare.

Prodigy is Marie Lu’s follow up to Legend, a popular teen novel set in a dystopian future where the United States is no longer united due in large part to….global warming. On the West coast we have the Republic, and on the East coast, the Colonies; these halves have been at war for a very long time (Lu’s kind of fuzzy on that, but I think it was supposed to be the generic 100 years). When we last left June and Day, they were on a train headed to the warfront near Las Vegas, after escaping from a Republic prison.When we meet them again, very little time has passed. They finally make it to Vegas to meet up, hopefully, with the Patriots, a rebel group trying to overthrow the Republic. It doesn’t take them long to get in touch, but when they do, not all is as it seems (it takes them much longer than necessary to figure this out). The price of admission to the Patriots’ ranks for June and Day is nothing less than the assassination of the new Primo Elector and the complete overthrow of the Republic government, all in the name of the people, of course.And here’s where things get typical. Nothing in this book was really a surprise for me, but it was the same with the first book, and yet I still enjoyed them both. June is a pretty likable character, even though Lu sometimes goes out of her way to make her seem like an ass, and Day is your average boy hero, struggling with inner/past demons and doubt. Of the two, he is less compelling. The secondary characters are fairly flat, even as Lu tried to give them some complexity; it was all very typical complexity, so there wasn’t anything new or interesting about them. The one character I would have like to spend more time with and get to know dies, sacrificing herself after demonstrating how much of a badass she is. Sorry if that ends up being a spoiler, but we all know someone has to die.By the end of the novel June and Day are all “merh” and pretty damn angsty, even while being the celebrities of the Republic. Ah, the horrible price of fame and privilege. The real issue here, of course, as is with all teenagers in teen novels (it seems), is these two have no idea how to talk to each other. Communication, people! It’s a vital skill! Learn how to do it! But then we would have no angst, very little romantic plot, and definitely not a third book, which Lu is presumably busy writing (teen novels these days seem to come only in threes).One thing I do like about Lu’s writing is that she knows how to end a book. There is actual resolution of some conflict, but there is still enough that can carry smoothly over into another book without leaving the reader feeling cheated out of an ending. I really, really appreciate that. When books dont’t do that (as teen trilogies often don’t), I read the next book out of spite, not out of actual desire to read it.. Overall, I enjoyed this book and would recommend it over others in the same genre, such as Lauren Oliver’s Delirium series (yes, I HAVE read the first two, so I am qualified to make such a judgement). Final verdict: this would make for a great anime.

3 1/2 stars. I really hope this lame Deus Ex Machina resolution comes back to bit the fables in the ass (and I have a feeling it will in one way or another), otherwise this was a really cheap and rather pointless story line that could have been a hell of a lot better than it was. This feels to me to be the weakest volume in the series, followed closely by the Great Fables Cross Over (but that's mainly because I think Jack was a horrible character and I really didn't enjoy having him back, even for just one volume). Bitching=done.

Midwinterblood was better than White Crow because the pay-off didn't make you feel quite as duped. You could see it coming, but the how and the individual characters that make up the how were more compelling than in White Crow. Sedgwick does get a bit heavy handed at the end, in an apparent but needless attempt to make what is going on clear to the reader. However, he is excellent at building suspense and a sense of dread in the reader that I have rarely encountered elsewhere, especially in teen fiction. Highly recommended.

So, so good.

I was really looking forward to this book, and it was very good. My only quip is that I wanted to know how the Good Prince's power worked. Excellent entry in the Fables saga.

Smart fun that made me want to know a hell of a lot more about Prague and Beethoven.

I give it four stars just because it was fun. Good is another category.

Meh.

This is probably the most negative review I've ever written, and I think it's pretty nice compared to some of the vitriol that can be found in this community (no personal attacks on the author here). First off, Cole (the romantic lead) is mostly a straight up asshole and there's no real reason except for these "visions" and apparently his hotness that a girl as plucky and self-aware as Alice would continually go for him. I actually did like Alice; her voice was unique, authentic, and funny. Too bad, like so many other teen YA heroines these days, she has no idea what a decent, non-controlling/abusive guy is like (no, he does not abuse her in the legal sense, but he sure as hell exhibits classic signs that he would eventually; he's also incredibly possessive and controlling, which, no matter how much Alice digs being "commanded" by him (her term, not mine), is not part of a healthy, positive relationship (unless we're talking adult BDSM)). I guess healthy, positive romantic relationships are boring. Zombies as evil spirits is kind of interesting, but I think most people would just call them demons. Part of the existential horror of zombies is that they are reanimated human beings with rotting flesh and open wounds. What's described in this book are not zombies, no matter how much the author wanted to be creative and do something now with the genre. Call me a purist, whatever; I like my zombies in the flesh. I also really don't like books that rely on simplistic depictions of good versus evil. Near the very end, the author seems to want to throw in some complications to that, but it's too little too late, especially after repeatedly telling us that there is only one or the other. There are also strange religious overtones (fluffy white-clouded heaven included) that probably have more to do with the strict good or evil than anything else. It felt kind of forced. Oh, and Lewis Carroll has very little to do with this book. So if you were hoping for a zombie twist on the classic Alice In Wonderland, you'll be disappointed because this is nothing more than a silly yet horrible teen romance (this is published by Harlequin Teen and the author is primarily a romance writer; wish I would have figured that out beforehand) with weird religious, not Wonderland, themes.

I have not read either of these authors' independent work, so I cannot make any comparisons in that regard. I liked this book well enough to probably be suckered into waiting for the next in the series. However, I didn't buy this one (Go SPL!) and I won't buy the next one either because while I enjoyed Bowl of Heaven well enough to want to read the sequel, the books weren't that great. The main issue I had was the book's repetitiveness, its hollow characters and some obvious plot holes/mistakes (discussed below). The basic premise is that Earth sends out a spaceship that will take the best and brightest scientific minds to the nearest (millions of light years away) habitable planet, Glory, so that they can terraform it and make it human-friendly. Everybody gets frozen for the journey except rotating teams of pilots. Cliff, senior officer and biologist supreme gets woken up early. There's a big thing in the sky and the pilots don't know what to do about it. You'll get plenty of description of this thing, so I won't go there except to saw that it's a bowl with a hole in the middle, and it seems to be the size of our solar system. Running short on supplies, of course, the newly awoken captain and a few others brought out of stasis decide to make contact. Chaos ensues, the humans are on the run, the place is kind of like Earth but way more weird and not really like Earth at all, etc. Let me repeat that last bit a few hundred times: the place is kinda like Earth, but not. It's weirder, really weirder. Did you get that? It's weird. And it's HUGE. Let me repeat that a few more hundred times. It's beyond human comprehension how HUGE it is! And the aliens, yeah, they're weird too. Like Big Bird. No really. And let me repeat a few hundred times that according to the Big Birds, humans are sooooo primitive and stupid and helpless and ridiculous. And yet so elusive and tricky and hard to catch! Look, I'm geting pretty tired of this Ascendency of the Human Race thing, where no matter how advanced or more capable the aliens humanity encounters, humans still prevail due to their scrappiness, their smarts, their humanity, or even worse, their capability to love (here's looking at you The Host). The Bird Folk created in this series could be genuinely interesting, and they clearly have a complex hierarchy and political system that would be really fun to explore, especially considering how the book ends, but they are stunted by the authors' need to show that human beings are always better than anything else that's out there. Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to really give a shit about any of the human characters because there are no real characters. There are more like character types, and maybe because they're all scientist-types, almost none of them show any sort of emotion (I'm qualifying that statement in case there was some incredible subtlety that a mere casual reader like myself might have missed or not been smart enough to *get*). Due in large part to this, the entire book has the same narrative tone, even though there are at least 5 different character viewpoints. The only one that is distinctive is Memor's, and that's because she's the alien dripping with scorn for the humans. Remember that scene in Jurassic Park (out in 3D soon?) where they're in the car and the T-rex breaks through the wires? Well, it come out on level ground on the right-hand side, if you're looking at the cars. In a scene shortly after, there is a huge drop on that same side that some of the characters face. It was a small thing, but fairly easy to have corrected. Similar things happen in this book, most noticeably with Beth's group at the beginning. This seems to happen in part due to the multiple-view-points narrative construct. So we first see the main action of landing on the Bowl through Cliff's eyes, the other main character. Then, after the split, we see some of that same action through Beth's and there are discrepancies, but not the kind that come from post-modern-fractured-narrative style. Straight up discrepancies. One of the reviews on Amazon claimed that this book read more like an unfinished draft because of such basic mistakes, and while I wouldn't go that far, there could have been more done to make sure the narrative views aligned and were consistent with one another. And yet. I give this book three stars because it was fun to read. I liked it and sped through it pretty fast. The basic on-the-run-narrative trope works well enough here, though it ends with no resolution whatsoever. I personally didn't mind that much, probably because I wasn't horribly invested in it enough to shake my fist in rage at the authors and damn them for not publishing the sequel until June 2013. Whatever. If I remember that then, I'll put in on hold at the library. If not, well, it won't leave me sleepless and wondering. A mediocre sentiment for what promises to be a fairly mediocre series.

This is a great anthology of dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction for teens. Almost all of the stories made me want to seek out the author's other work. The fantastic editors have chosen truly great representations of the genre. Highly recommended.

I love this book, and I love it's movie version too. I'm so glad I finally read it!

Review to come.

This would be 3 1/2 stars if Goodreads allowed half-stars. Let me just state up-front that I’m a huge Jacqueline Carey fan; I’ve read all of her other books except for The Sundering duology. I’ve been excited for this book since she first mentioned on her website that she was working on a new urban fantasy project. My wonderful husband unexpectedly brought it home for me on Tuesday, so I dove right into it. Aside from the ridiculous cover, Dark Currents is pretty good. I’ve never read urban fantasy before, and very little adult paranormal romance (I’m not even sure Dark Currents fits in this category), so I have very little to compare it to other than Carey’s other fiction.Dark Currents is far closer to Santa Olivia and Saints Astray, but retains some of the darkness of her Kusheline Legacy series. Daisy Johanssen is an agent of the Norse goddess of the dead, Hel. In Carey’s world, there are several functioning underworlds across the globe that allow members of the Eldritch (magical/mythical) community to exist in the world. The sleepy tourist town of Pemkowet’s underworld is presided over by Hel. She is the highest authority and enforcer of Eldritch law. As her agent, Daisy, who is a half-breed hell-spawn, acts as her liaison between the mundane (fully human) world and the Eldritch community and enforcer of Hel’s law. When a human boy apparently drowns in the river, Daisy must figure out the truth before things spiral out of control and the members of the mundane world take up arms and raze Pemkowet’s underworld.Working with her on the case is a closeted werewolf, Cody, who she’s had a crush on since grade-school. Together they track down those responsible for the boy’s death and uncover a plot that puts the newly-renovated image of the ghoul community at risk. There’s fairies, vampires, wood sprites, bog hags, river nymphs, and even a lamia Daisy has to deal with, all the while trying to keep a lid on her otherworldly temper. Since she’s half hell-spawn, Daisy has to potential to unleash Armageddon if she gives in to her father’s powerful temptations. This apocalyptic scenario plays less of a role than I imagine it will in later books, but sets up the probability of its occurrence nicely. As with many of Carey’s books, one of the lessons Daisy must learn is that what you were born to be isn’t necessarily what you become; it all comes down to what you chose to do with your life that matters.Even though there are some dark themes in the novel, the tone remains light. This, coupled with Daisy’s usually chipper, slightly doltish his-girl-friday personality makes the book feel rather fluffy. She’s not an idiot or airhead by any means, but neither is she a Phedre or even a Lupe. Like I said, I don’t have any other urban fantasy leading women to compare her to, so saying she’s not a Pherdre or a Lupe may not really be fair. Daisy’s perspective and voice didn’t really annoy me, and she did grow a bit over the course of the novel. As long as she continues to grow and her actions remain logical to her character, I think she could be a really good female lead.One of the things I like about Carey’s novels is that even her side-characters are developed and sometimes experience the same measure of growth as the main character. Dark Currents does less of this than I would have liked, so I was left feeling that some of the characters were just stock. There’s the pretty best friend who sets up the initial conflict and love triangle; once that gets resolved they’re back to being BFFs. There’s also the vaguely European tall, dark and handsome mystery man who could be a stand in for Bill from HBO’s True Blood (except that he’s a ghoul, not a vampire) that completes the main love triangle. Daisy is simultaneously afraid of and attracted to him. Cody is pretty stock too, and is a little too reminiscent of Sam from True Blood. At least this isn’t a human-vampire-werewolf/shapeshifter love triangle, so I should be happy about that. There’s also the magical mystery artifact shop owner who has all the latest gossip, and who’s quirky because he’s a cross-dresser.One final thing to mention about Dark Currents is the sex, or rather the lack thereof. In almost all of her other novels, sex has been included in a mostly tasteful, not over-the-top manner (Santa Olivia and Saints Astray are a bit of an exception on the over-the-top scale). There is no direct sex in Dark Currents; there’s not even any kissing. There is, however, rape, and it forms the main aspect of the crime Daisy & co. are investigating. But, there really wasn’t a need for it either, and I think that’s what I’ve always appreciated about Carey’s use of sex; she rarely includes sex just for the sake of sex. There’s always a purpose for it. I think at some point Daisy will have to cross that bridge and it will not happen just for the hell of it (I imagine it will have something to do with her learning to safely experience intense emotions and passions, which she is currently afraid of doing because of the whole hell-spawn thing).Dark Currents introduces readers to a world similar to ours, only more magical and more dangerous. Carey’s true strength lies in her world-building, and this is no exception. In Dark Currents she juggles multiple mythologies within one main cosmology, and I can’t wait to see more of both. The novel is a relatively light, quick read, but as the title suggests, there are dark currents running through the small town of Pemkowet, MI. As the series progresses, I imagine the currents will get darker yet, and the stakes will be higher. I finished the novel two days ago, yet I’m still thinking about Daisy and her little world. I will definitely come back for more, and I would recommend this book for people who may not know where to start in urban fantasy/paranormal romance, or who are looking for a slightly less sexy, less bloody entry to what’s already out there. Longtime Carey fans might be a little disappointed with the fluffiness of Dark Currents, but I would say don’t give up hope, and take this mostly light-hearted novel for the fun that it is.

This book is kind of amazing. It deals with weaponized rape in a thinly veiled African country set in the not-too-far future. But it also has magic and love and humanity. Full review to come, but I highly recommend this novel if you are looking for strong female leads and are tired of white-washed fantasy. Excellent book.Full Review: My foray into the fantasy section of the bookstore was due entirely to the arresting cover art of Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Dart. I saw it, opened to about the middle and began reading. I stood there for at least an hour. I couldn’t put it down, and I couldn’t afford it at the time. When my shoulders began to ache from my heavy backpack, and I finally noticed the odd looks the salesgirl was giving me, I reluctantly put the book back, determined to come back for it as soon as I got my next pay check. I cam back about a week and a half later, hoping that it would still be there, not knowing what I would do if it wasn’t. It was. I bought it stuffed it into my already overstuffed bag and went home. I read the whole thing in one sitting. It was my First Book in the adult fantasy genre, and I’ve been trying to recapture that thrill ever since.I read some YA fantasy as a kid, sure. I even managed to find some of the good stuff, like Tanith Lee. But SF/F was not a section I usually bothered with until Carey rocked my little world. I’ve of course read all of her other books and can’t wait to get my hands on her latest, Agents of Hel: Dark Currents, which comes out tomorrow (once again, I’m broke and thus have to wait till my library reservation shows up). I’ve also tried to find more heroines like Phedre, more writers like Carey. There are few out there. It’s no secret that both the Science/Speculative Fiction and Fantasy genres are dominated by male writers and male protagonists. This is not to say that there aren’t excellent female writers in the genre, or that a male writer can’t write a strong female lead (though, off the top of my head I can’t think of any in the latter category). Only one author thus far has come close to Carey and her heroines: N.K. Jemisin. Her excellent Inheritance trilogy quickly became a favorite (I’ve written about them here, here, and here), and I devoured the Dreamblood duology. Like Carey, Jemisin has written both male and female leads. Unlike Carey, Jemisin’s worlds aren’t stand-ins for some version of Europe. Carey is a good enough author to not completely white-wash her alterna-Europe, but it wasn’t until the third trilogy in the Kusheline Legacy series that the lead could be considered a Person of Color. Race has been a larger focus and theme of Jemisin’s novels, but not necessarily a blunt point of them.It was only after reading Jemisin’s work that I added People of Color to my fantasy novel criteria, whether it be the author or the characters depicted. I wanted novels written by women of any race that had strong female leads of any race, but I didn’t want novels that upheld or depicted the status quo regarding race relations. I wanted novels that subverted them or challenged them. It’s harder than you might think to find such a novel, especially when you don’t know how to search for what you want. I was aware of Octavia Butler of course, but I also kind of wanted an author who wasn’t American or British, an author who wasn’t from a colonial power. That’s why I love sites like Io9.com, or when authors themselves recommend novels.I really don’t remember how I discovered Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor (who is Nigerian-American), but doing so changed many things for me. Who Fears Death is the coming-of-age story of Onyesonwu, an ewu child born to a desert wanderer. To be ewu is to be scorned by everyone, to be feared by everyone, to be hated by everyone. To be ewu is to be a child of rape. Onyesonwu is marked as such by her sand-colored skin and hair and her tiger’s eyes, her biological father’s eyes. Onyesonwu’s mother, like the rest of her people. the Okekke, have dark brown skin and the physical characteristics of indigenous African people. The takes place in a post-apocalyptic Africa, though the exact place is not disclosed until the author’s afterword. In Onyesonwu’s world, rape is a weapon wielded by the ruling race, the Nuru, who have yellow-brown skin and straight black hair. Okekke and Nuru religion teach that the Nuru were sent from the sun by the goddess Ani to rule the Okekke people, who in the darkness of the world grew monstrous and destructive. Onyesonwu not only has to confront the everyday racism from nearly everyone she encounters, she also has to confront the everyday sexism of her people. Add to that the fact that she is a sorcerer prophesied to rewrite the Great Book (the religious text that justifies Okekke subjugation and self-hatred), and she’s got a lot to deal with. With the help of her friends, she’ll learn to face anything that comes her way as she journeys toward her past and her future.Onyesonwu is wholly likable and a sympathetic character, and her world is horrible but inhabitable. That’s probably because her world isn’t that different from the place that inspired it. There is magic, yes, and Okorafor does an excellent job describing it, and using it. Okorafor doesn’t shy away from the harsh reality of Onyesonwu world, but neither does she relish in it. Rape is often used as a piece of scenery, something common that happens in the background in high fantasy novels (here’s looking at you George R.R. Martin). Okorafor does too good a job at bringing the horror of rape and its accompanying shame and rage to her readers. This is no casual rape either; it’s weaponized, meaning that the rape that occurs in this novel is part of a military campaign to further break the spirit of the Okekke people. Magic may be pure fantasy in the novel, but this is not. Fantasy and science/speculative fiction have long been an arena to talk about the current societal ills and injustices, and can in many ways be more powerful than seeing the images or the faces of people victimized on the news. It’s the power of a good storyteller to make you care about her characters, to care about what they care about, and Okorafor is a good storyteller. I haven’t yet read any of her young adult novels, but I just got two of them from the library. I am incredibly excited to have discovered Okorafor, and I would highly recommend Who Fears Death to anyone who is tired of the usual fantasy tropes. But be warned, this book is hard to read at times, as only the best books are.