10/6/12

The Indigo Pheasant, by Daniel Rabuzzi

The Indigo Pheasant (ChiZine, Oct. 2012) is a multi-cultural historical fantasy, with a complicated alternate history/religious bent, written for grown-ups, but with YA appeal.  Here are my thoughts, with a Bonus Question regarding "muscular fantasy" at the end.

On Thursday I had the pleasure of welcoming Daniel Rabuzzi, author of The Choir Boats, and its sequel, The Indigo Pheasant, to my blog--if you haven't visited his post on historical fiction, do!  At the time of posting, I had not yet finished The Indigo Pheasant, which arrived just before I went to New York for Kidlitcon.   So I am reviewing it today.

To briefly summarize: In the first book, The Choir Boats, we are introduced to Yount a place thrust out of normal space, and reachable only by traversing seas full of places that aren't of Earth.   It is the early 19th century.  A family from Scotland has the gifts of music, math, and dreams to restore Yount to its proper place in time and space... but in this imagining of reality, there are malevolent fallen angels who will use that fluctuation in reality to seize control of Earth, and Yount.

The first book is primarily the story of this family's journey to Yount and the dangers that beset them, and focuses on Sally, daughter of mercantile privilege and brilliant mathematically.  In the second book, Sally and her family return to London, to build the great ship (to be called the Indigo Pheasant) that will, through a marvel of music and math, sing Yount home again.   But for this project to succeed, another girl, perhaps even more mathematically brilliant, is essential.

She is Maggie, whose mother escaped with her from slavery in Maryland.  Despite her life of poverty, Maggie is even more extravagantly self-taught then Sally.  But unlike Sally, whose loyalties become torn, Maggie has the clear-eyed fierceness to impel the Indigo Pheasant to completion.   And Maggie has visited the Goddess in her dreams...the Goddess who must wake if order is to be restored.

On the downside, hideous demonic entities are working against them, both supernaturally, and through more mundane financial and political channels (it was a nice mix!), and the bounds of family loyalty are strained.  It is all very tense (but in a less adventuresome, dramatic way than the tenseness of book 1).

Now, as readers of this blog know, I read lots of children's books, and almost never read adult sci fi/fantasy.   So it was a rather different experience, reading these two books--they took longer, the typeface was smaller, the narrative point of view was more distant than I'm used to (more time spent floating above the characters, rather than living inside their heads).  

But that being said, The Indigo Pheasant was a checklist of things I appreciate in my fiction:

1.  strong and interesting protagonists, for whom I can care.  The books have a fairly large cast of characters, but the focus was on Sally and Maggie--teenage girls (hence YA appeal) who are good at math ftw.   A third protagonist, another teenage girl (this one from China) was kind of stuck on at the end in a rather sudden way, which felt a tad awkward--I would have liked to have had her come on to central stage sooner.

Bonus points here for being a book about family--not just biological relationships, but the bonds between people that make them kin.   I like this sort of book.

2.  interesting world building (aided, in the case of this book, by the inclusion of miscellaneous side matter, like newspaper clippings and letters).   Geography, religion, and politics were all important, and deserve their own sentences:
   --the  geography of Yount and the seas around it was haunting.   Really, truly, memorable and gripping descriptions of strange islands and oceans.
   --I wasn't ever fully convinced by the religious restructuring that Rabuzzi asks us to accept, not because of any conflict with my own convictions (the existence of a Goddess, along with an absent God, doesn't phase me), but because I don't think the Goddess actually did enough to be worth making a big deal about waking her.  Rabuzzi draws considerably on the Old Testament, but it's definitely a reworking of basic Judeo-Christian monotheism that might make some readers unhappy.   I myself liked the inclusion of spiritual entities/saint type people from religions and cultures outside Christianity in Maggie's Paradisical dreams.
   --This is historical fiction, and Rabuzzi knows his stuff.  The politics of the burgeoning world system of the early 19th century are a large part of the story; characters reflect and comment, and act, as a result of an accurately presented global reality.

One issue I had with the world-building is that Rabuzzi has perhaps too much fun with vocabulary--his early 19th-century people use many words (some of which I need to check out in the OED to see if they are really real) that were outside of my ken.  It got a bit distracting.

3.  Authorial tricksy-ness.  The cards are not laid out on the table all at once.  People's motives are not clear right at the beginning, and one character in particular is a really toothsome example of someone who appears one thing, but is really another.
And under this heading of tricksy-ness I'll put the fact that Sally's family knows the Gardiners (from Pride and Prejudice) and corresponds with Lizzy Darcey....

So, to summarize, I enjoyed these books just fine and would happily recommend them to a reader (YA or Adult) who wants something a solidly entertaining and thought-provoking, multi-cultural, historical fantasy, which is just one small step down from Loving them and desperately wanting all and sundry to read them.

That concludes the review portion of this post; and now, a question.

Question:  a review of The Choir Boats called it " a muscular, Napoleonic-era fantasy."   I am not exactly sure what "muscular" means.  Does it mean a really complicated, yet firmly-constructed plot? Do you have to have lots of things happening to be "muscular"?  Or does it mean a really confident, strong authorial hand?  (Choir Boats fits all three definitions).

The opposite of "muscular" I guess would be a "timid" or "weak" fantasy, which implies that no risks are taken, the stakes are low, and everyone, including the author, just vacillates like crazy.  Or it could be one that is simply more cerebral, or spiritual, in which the character development is internal.   If you are a muscular fantasy, are you a less thought-provoking and intelligent book?

My own conclusion is that I will continue to eschew "muscular" as a descriptor of books. 

Thanks, ChiZine, for sending me copies of these! 

10/5/12

MG SFF eligible books from Jan, Feb, and March, 2012

Continuing my quest to make sure that no one forgets to nominate a middle grade science fiction/fantasy book for the Cybils that they loved, and to make the long list of nominees as good as it should be, I am reading over my new release posts (which I don't do any more because of the site I was getting my info. from closing down).

So these books, which haven't been nominated yet, aren't one's I've necessarily read, or liked, just ones that I think might be worthy of nomination, or ones that I might, myself, like to read! (And of course since my opinion is just my own, please do visit the lists for yourselves if you wish to see what else is on them that's eligible! They have the "new releases" tag).

MUNCLE TROGG by Janet Foxley

SEEDS OF REBELLION: BEYONDERS by Brandon Mull

THE STAR SHARD by Frederic S. Durbin

 BLISS by Kathryn Littlewood
 
THE CROWFIELD DEMON by Pat Walsh


FAIRY LIES by E. D. Baker


THE WHISPER by Emma Clayton

 THE BOOK OF WONDERS by Jasmine Richards (now nominated)

 PRINCESS OF THE WILD SWANS by Diane Zahler

STEALING MAGIC: A SIXTY-EIGHT ROOMS ADVENTURE by Marianne Malone

(here are some books from November and December)


And then there are these lovely books-- Darkbeast, and The Golden Door, and Claws, and The Serpent's Shadow, and The Adventures of Sir Balin the Ill Fated, and The Wishing Star and........

and here's a third list, that I gleaned during a happy time spent browsing at Kirkus...

Cybils nominations--looking back at eligible books from 2011

So nominations for the Cybils are chugging along, and sixty some books have been nominated in the middle grade sci fi/fantasy category, and over ten mg sci fi/fantasy books have been nominated in other categories....but still there are important and interesting books missing.

Now, I am not a fiercely, desperately competitive and neurotic person and I don't every year get saddened by the fact that more YA sci fi/fantasy books get nominated than middle grade ones and I don't write frantic posts saying ACK! These books haven't been nominated and I don't obsessively check just about every hour to see if any new books have made it onto the mg sff Cybils list.  (Kidding.  I am and I do).

This year some of the pressure is off me because publishers get to do a bit of filling in the blank at the end.  So this is not a frantic, hysterical post; it is a calm and reflective post, in which I look back at November and December of 2011 to see what books came out then that haven't been nominated yet.

It used to be that there was a great website that listed books by their release date, and I used to go through these lists and cull the middle grade and YA sci fi/fantasy books into lists I shared here.  But it went dark in March.   Still, the November (part a and part b) and December lists (part a and part b) are there....So if you haven't nominated, take a look and see if you are reminded of a beloved book, and if looking back at those lists reminds you of a YA title you want to nominate, I guess that's ok too.

I didn't actually read as many of these as I would have thought I might have, but here are some that look interesting to me personally, and some I read and liked:

MOUSENET by Prudence Breitrose

BESWITCHED by Kate Saunders (now nominated!)

THE FUTURE DOOR: NO PLACE LIKE HOLMES by Jason Lethcoe
 
THE GRAVE ROBBERS OF GENGHIS KHAN: CHILDREN OF THE LAMP by P.B. Kerr 


 LITTLE WOMEN AND ME by Lauren Baratz-Logsted 

MADAME PAMPLEMOUSSE AND THE ENCHANTED SWEET SHOP by Rupert Kingfisher

THE OUTCASTS: BROTHERBAND CHRONICLES by John Flanagan

 SNOW IN SUMMER: FAIREST OF THEM ALL by Jane Yolen (now nominated)

 THE TWILIGHT CIRCUS: WOLVEN by Di Toft

(and here are some books from Jan-March

Starry River of the Sky--review and interview with Grace Lin


Back in 2009, it was my very great pleasure to be part of the Cybils panel that shortlisted Grace Lin's Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (before it won its Newbery Honor!).   It was also a pleasure to welcome Grace to my blog as part of Mountain's blog tour.

 So I have been looking forward to Starry River of the Sky (Little, Brown, Oct. 2012, middle grade), the just-released companion novel, very much, and I was awfully pleased to find that I liked it even more than I did Mountain!


Starry River of the Sky tells of a young boy named Rendi, who we meet running away from home in the back of a wine merchant's wagon.  In a village in the middle of nowhere, Rendi is discovered...and forcibly evicted.   His only option now is to work as the chore boy at the village's inn, until he can somehow make it to the big city.  And he is not happy.

His days are spent scowling at the world, but gradually, sharing stories with the odd-ball collection of inn patrons (all two of them), and the innkeeper and his daughter, he begins to reflect on his life, and the choices he made...and to see outside his own unhappiness (and there are good reasons for that unhappiness.  Magistrate Tiger, who readers of Mountain will recognize, plays a huge role in Rendi's story).

But outside the inn all is not well.  In the night, the sound of crying disturbs Rendi's sleep, and the moon has gone missing.   The world is out of balance...and it won't be righted until the truths inside all the stories of myth and magic that Rendi has been hearing at the Inn come together, and the moon is free again.

Although I like a good questy journey, like Minli's story in Mountain, as much as the next reader, I really love stories that stay in one place and make it a home.  And that's what Grace Lin does here--the external dangers are less important that the internal path that Rendi must follow.  On a more personal note, ever since I've been the mother of boys, I've had a soft spot in my heart for unhappy fictional boys who have lost their own mamas, and so Rendi appealed greatly!

Starry River is full of stories within the story, which sometimes irks me, but not here Perhaps because I was expecting it, but mostly I think it's because they were good stories in their own right, as well as holding the threads to the final resolution.  I felt that the ending brought all these threads together beautifully--it certainly required suspension of disbelief, but I felt very well primed to do so.

So in short, I found it a lovely book, word-wise, made even more so by Grace's utterly lovely pictures.

Now it's my pleasure to welcome Grace Lin!

Me: Both the words and the pictures are beautiful-- which gives you the most joy
to create?  Which comes most easily, or does it depend on variables outside
your control?

Grace: Hmm, that is a hard question to answer. To be honest, I get more joy from the process of painting  then the process of writing, but I get the most joy from hearing from readers and they are usually responding to the words. So, in the end it's about even! It's also hard to say which comes easier--it really depends on the book. I dislike the first draft stage of both writing and illustrating so I can't really say
either comes easy, both feel difficult.

Me: Starry River is your first novel with a boy as a main character.  Does writing from a boy's point of view feel different?  Were you conscious of it, or did Rendi just come out on the page in the same way that a girl character would?

Grace: Yes, this is my first novel with a boy protagonist. In some ways he
did just come out on the page. When I began to form the story, it
seemed to demand a boy character even though I am much more
comfortable writing a girl (I have two sisters!). But it did feel
different; I tried very hard to make sure Rendi felt like a true boy
and used my husband a lot to vet him during the revision process.

Me: And speaking of boys, I know from my own first hand experience with my two
sons that boy readers love Where the Mountain Meets the Moon; they haven't
read Starry River yet, but I'm sure they'll enjoy that one too.  My sample
size is limited (just the two of them)-- have you gotten much positive
feedback from boys?

Grace: For Where the Mountain Meets the Moon I most definitely have, which
is very gratifying (too soon for Starry River of the Sky!). I think
when it was first published, there were worries that it would be seen
as only an Asian book or only a girl book, or even worse  only an
Asian girl book--all of which limits the readership considerably. But,
most likely because of the Newbery Honor, that hasn't happened. Boys
and girls of all races have read and loved the book and I have the
letters and e-mails to prove it! The Newbery can erase the perceived
marginal appeal of a book to show its mainstream potential.  I only
hope Starry River of the Sky can gain a similar readership even
without the shiny sticker.

Me: And my fourth question is the really obvious, but very interesting one--what
are you working on next?  Will you take us back to your fantastical China
again (please)?

Grace: I have one more companion novel that I'd like to do. The storyline has
not been figured out yet, though I do have some ideas flitting in and
out of my brain. I really want to do one more because I have this whim
in my head about these books correlating to the Chinese elements.
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is linked to sky, Starry River of
the Sky is link to earth and the next one would be linked to water.
This might not happen, of course, but that is what I'd like to do if
the writing muses are willing!

Thank you, Grace!  And thank you Little, Brown, for 
a. publishing the books 
b. sending me a review copy 
c. bringing Grace down to Kidlitcon to talk to us
and
d. sponsoring everyone's dessert (as reported here).  (The fact the dessert display was utterly sumptuous has, of course, inspired fond feelings in my dessert-loving heart toward Little, Brown, which I will, of course, not allow to influence any of my future reviews in the least little bit).

10/4/12

Guest Post--Daniel A. Rabuzzi (The Choir Boats and its sequel, The Indigo Pheasant) on writing historical fantasy

For a number of years, The Choir Boats, by Daniel Rabuzzi (Longing for Yount, Book 1, ChiZine Publications, 2009) sat on my wish list.   So when I was asked if I'd be interested in participating in a blog tour to welcome the second book, The Indigo Pheasant (released this October),  I said, yes please, I want to read them both!

Yount is a place that exists uneasily in the same space as our own world, thrust into a strange convergence with Earth through a great convulsion long ago.   And now Yount and its people are imprisoned in their liminal enclave...waiting for the right person to use the key that will unlock the final door that will free them.   Emissaries from Yount have ventured to England, to find the destined person to whom they will give this key, and their choice is a surprising one--a prosperous merchant, Barnabas McDoon.  They promise him that if he takes the key to Yount (a voyage across the southern ocean, where science and mysticism must combine to make the crossing happen), he will find his heart's desire--his lost love.  But Barnabas hesitates...

Then the jailer of Yount, the mysterious and scary Cretched Man, kidnaps Barnabas' nephew, Tom, promising to take him to Yount and there exchange him for the key.  So Barnabas, his business partner, and Sally, Tom's teenaged sister, set fourth on the ship that will take them to Yount...  And Tom is making his own way there (under compulsion), listening to the Cretched Man tell him the other side of the story that Sally is hearing.  If the door were to be unlocked, and Yount were to be freed before the time was ripe, Hell would be unleashed on both Yount and Earth.

Sally begins to dream...of places in Yount she has never seen, of a broken temple at the heart of the island.  Her ship is lost in a  surreal and horrible sea that is no place on Earth, but a song comes to her from her dreams that opens the way.  Back in London, a black girl named Maggie, daughter of a slave who escaped from America, hears Sally, and joins her in song across the miles...and together, they might save both Yount and Earth.  (It's important, and very pleasing to me as a reader, that both these girls are avid readers who are brilliant at math).

So that's the gist of the story of The Choir Boats.  It is a book to savor, with appeal for both adults and younger readers.  At first the story seems simple, the characters pleasant, almost gently risible, the setting familiar.  But gradually more and more complexity appears, more dark notes are sounded, more questions are raised...the dissonance and the magic grows, and the resolution becomes more uncertain.  And so I was eager to plunge into the second book of the series, to see how everything worked out!

I haven't finished The Indigo Pheasant, so I'll be writing a more comprehensive review of both books on Saturday.  But in the meantime, it is my great pleasure to welcome Daniel Rabuzzi to my blog, to talk about historical fantasy!

Daniel studied folklore and mythology in college and graduate school, and earned his doctorate in 18th-century history, so he is a writer who knows his stuff (and it shows!).  His wife is the artist Deborah A. Mills (who illustrated and provided cover art for both Daniel's novels).

And now, the Guest Post:

I write historical fantasies: for me, getting the history right is harder than making the fantastical believable.  After all, we know how giants speak and witches behave, right?   But we most likely do not know how in, say the England of 1815, a vicar speaks or a merchant’s daughter behaves.  Such things have changed in the intervening two centuries, and they will be doubly estranged for readers who are not English. 

So my first task as the author is to immerse myself in that vanished time and place, as foreign to me as Faerie, and bring back enough material to guide both story and reader.  As I have written recently elsewhere (see “A Picture-Show in theNight-Kitchen,” in Layers of Thought, September 26, 2012), I am an “imagist,” not a “plotter.”  My novels spring from scattered images, sounds and words that bake up in the middle of the night.   For The Choir Boats and The Indigo Pheasant, where the action starts in London in 1812, I found myself haunted by visions of tall-case clocks with ornate hands and the moon chasing the sun on the face, of winsome portraits revealed within a delicate locket, of carriages grinding over cobblestones, of bold patterns on porcelain tea cups, and equally vibrant patterns on colorful waistcoats.   

These artifacts, which I spend many hours looking at in museums and in books, literally set the scene.  My wife and artistic partner, Deborah Mills, has rendered many into the illustrations for The Choir Boats and The Indigo Pheasant.  Some of her illustrations are interspersed here, side by side with the originals that inspired them.*

And then my actors start to drift in, one by one, sometimes in groups.  So like us, and yet so different.
Their language, for starters, is not wholly ours.  Not that the words are different, not for the most part, though certainly some of their words have disappeared for us, and many of our words cannot be known to them.  No, it is more that they use our common vocabulary with a different sensibility (now there is a proper Regency word to be sure!), with small but important distinctions from our usage.  For instance, “artificial” and “condescending” had a more positive import for Regency ears than they do for ours, while “enthusiasm” for them was a negative, as it had a different definition then.

Individual words can be deceptive enough...the deeper challenge is diction, style and syntax.  Well-educated Britons of that era constructed sentences in a very different manner from ours today, among other things, they attempted to emulate the models of rhetoric inherited from Classical Greece and Rome, and they were conversant with the King James Bible and Milton’s Paradise Lost.  (Modern Americans may feel more at home with the vivid similes and brash banter recorded among the less-educated Britons of that time!).  We understand their meaning but simply don’t talk like that today.

Hence the problem: creating dialogue that rings true to the period without bogging down the modern-day reader.  Frankly, the challenge is nearly impossible to overcome, so I have in my novels opted for a transparently extravagant approach, i.e., the dialogue is intended to call attention to itself, as if it were the chanted spell that transports the reader back to the earlier time.  Call it an open trickery on the surface of the hidden trickery that is the writing of fiction.

 I am very interested to hear what readers of Charlotte’s Library have to say about the challenges, and satisfactions, of historical fiction generally, and historical fantasy specifically.  Regency clocks ticked seconds as ours do...but we can never be entirely sure how those seconds sounded in the ears of Regency people.



*the image of Sally's locket (the central one) and the Pheasant Clock are reproduced here with all rights reserved, (c) Deborah A. Mills.  The copyright to the bottom locket picture is held by ßlϋeωãve, and the original can be found here.


Thank you so much, Daniel, and Deborah! I'll be picking up the threads of the conversation on Saturday, when I write my full review, but in the meantime, those who wish to say something viz historical fiction here, please do so!

More information can be found at these places:

Book Previews:

The Choir Boats: http://chizinepub.com/media/choir-boats/TheChoirBoats-Preview.pdf


Book page links: 



Daniel's Twitter: @TheChoirBoats

Deborah's web site: http://www.deborahmillswoodcarving.com/

And here are the other stops on The Indigo Pheasant's Blog Tour:

Sept 14 - Civilian Reader
Sept 26 - Layers of Thought   Book & Yount greeting cards giveaway.
Sept 28 - So Many Precious Books, So Little Time   Book giveaway.
Oct 4 -     Charlotte's Library
Oct 4 -     World in a Satin Bag
Oct 5 -     The Cozy Reader
Oct 11 -   Jess Resides Here
TBS -      Disquieting Visions
TBS  -     Grasping for the Wind

10/3/12

Waiting on Wednesday--Earth and Air, by Peter Dickinson

So a long time ago, Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson, who are married, decided it would be a nice thing to create four books of short stories together, one book for each of the elements.  Water came out, and Fire came out....and Robin McKinley found that her short stories had a tendency to want to become novels.  Three such novels later, the stories Peter Dickinson had written for his contribution to Earth and Air were languishing....until now.





Perusing the program notes for Kidlitcon, I saw an advertisement from Small Beer Press announcing forthcoming books, and, being very fond of Small Beer Press because of their Joan Aiken book, The Serial Garden, I stopped perusing to actually read all the details.  And there was the announcement for Earth and Air--Peter Dickinson's stories gathered in one volume, coming out this month.


I must confess that I bought Water and Fire because of being a McKinley fan, but I was very impressed by Dickinson's stories in those volumes, impressed enough to both make a happy "Oh" sound, and to do Earth and Air the penultimate compliment (?) of placing it in my Amazon cart (the ultimate compliment being to stand outside the bookstore on release day) with the expectation of either buying it for myself in the near future, or asking for it for Christmas.

From the publisher's website:

"In this collection, you will find stories that range from the mythic to contemporary fantasy to science fiction. You will find a troll, gryphons, a beloved dog, the Land of the Dead, an owl, a minotaur, and a very alien Cat. Earth and Air is the third and final book in a trilogy of shared collections connected by the four classical elements. It follows previous volumes Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits and Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits, written by both Peter Dickinson and Robin McKinley.
Ridiki is Steff’s beloved dog, named after Eurydice, whom the poet Orpheus tried to bring back from the dead. When, like her namesake, Ridiki is bitten by a snake and dies, Steff decides that he too should journey to the Underworld to ask the King of the Land of the Dead for his dog back.
Mari is the seventh child of a family in which troll blood still runs. When her husband goes missing in a Scottish loch, she must draw upon the power of her blood to rescue him. Sophie, a young girl, fashions a witch’s broomstick out of an ash sapling, and gets more than she bargained for. An escaped slave, Varro, must kill a gryphon, in order to survive. A boy named Yanni allies himself with an owl and a goddess in order to fight an ancient evil. A group of mind-bonded space travelers must face an unknown threat and solve the murder of a companion before time runs out."

So anyway, thanks again Small Beer Press for The Serial Garden, thanks for your support of Kidlitcon, and thanks for publishing this one!

Waiting on Wednesday is a meme hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine

My son is being forced to read banned books

It's Banned Books Week, and it has occurred to me that all the books that my son is reading for 7th grade English class have shown up on lists of banned or challenged books.

The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, can actually still be taught in high schools in Arizona, having survived the debacle that occurred when the Dept. of Education went into classrooms and removed the books used for Mexican Studies.  But it wasn't clear at first, when it showed up on the list of books being challenged and removed, if it was going to be approved by those in power or not.

The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton, is "ranked #43 on the American Library Association’s Top 100 Most Challenged Books of 1990-2000 and has been banned from some schools and libraries because of its portrayal of gang violence, underage smoking and drinking, strong language, slang usage, and exposé on family dysfunction." (from Banned Books Awareness).  My son just finished this one, and is not smoking, drinking, or swearing (much), nor is he more a dysfunctional member of the family than he was before.

Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, has been denounced by the religious leaders of Iran and banned in that country.

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, is going to expose my son to the "n" word 48 times.   But I think he's going to be a better person for having read it.

Macbeth is going to expose him to graphic violence and witchcraft.  Shoot.  He took part in a production of it last year, so it's too late.

In short, I'm glad my son is going to this school.  They have lots of banned books in their library too.

10/2/12

The Many-Colored Land, by Julian May

For Timeslip Tuesday today, I have an old favorite--The Many-Colored Land, by Julian May (1981).   The cover at left is the cover I have.  All other covers are wrong.  This one is so much a favorite that I am on my second copy, having read the first to death; I think my mother might be on her second copy as well, which just goes to show. Even my husband enjoyed it [edited to add: the even is because he has very high standards]. It was marketed to adults, but I think it has lots of teen appeal (I was a teen when I first read it), and as well as being a darn good story, there's a generous sprinkling of paranormal romances (lots of people get to have romances.  Some happy, some less so).

So.  Imagine that in the future, various alien races with psionic powers have made contact with Earth, Earth having reached a critical mass of psionic inhabitants of its own.  Earth is now part of a galactic milieu of calm order; more and more humans are being born with mental gifts, war is over, all is happy.   Except that there are some people who still aren't--the deviants, mystics, misfits, eccentrics, criminals, those whose souls are out of step somehow with a galaxy of good feeling.

Then imagine that a French professor invented a machine that allows one way travel back to the Pliocene (six million or so years ago).   He dismissed it as worthless, and his widow was just about to dismantle it, when the first would-be time traveller begged to pass through, wanting the chance to explore an unpeopled world.   And more and more travellers came...some willing travellers, some pushed back in time because they were too troublesome to be allowed to stay.

Time travel becomes organized; the travellers equipping themselves with what they need for life they'll imagine they'll have (I love reading all the lists of what people are taking back to the past!).   They are sent back in groups, after a brief period of bonding.  One such group (our main characters in this first book--men and women, old and young) is about to pass through....a group whose members are going to change the past, and in so doing, make the future what it's going to be.

It's not a walk in the park, back in the Pliocene. There are surprises (you know that paranormal romance thing?  that's a hint).  What the time travellers find will blow their minds (some to the point of insanity).  And the reader (if the reader is at all like me) will be riveted. 

I don't generally like books with multiple main characters, and story lines of great complexity and fantastical-ness going of hither and thither.  My first time through, lo these many years ago, I might have found myself uncertain during the introductory period--there are a lot of characters, and we meet them all individually, and there's a lot to keep track of.  But May makes it all work in a masterpiece of plotting and characterization and exuberant imagination.    For those who like the mental powers and the paranormal, there's that.  For those that like the survival in a strange land, there's that.  For those that like their characters put through various emotional ringers, and/or their characters finding love and friendship, there's that too.  Magic. Sex. Death. Flying on the wings of the mind.  Extinct mammals (so few fantasy books do as nice a job with extinct mammals).  Crafting of beautiful things.  Generous splashes of humor.  Tragedy.

In short, I really cannot recommend this too highly to anyone who wants a sci fi/fantasy adventure of epic proportions, set on a very different earth.    But I've read it so many times I can't be dispassionate about it...this first book, and the three that follow it, are and integral and much loved  part of my mental map.   However, since my mother and my husband, both of whom are less emotional thinkers than me, and both of whom read grown-up books, enjoyed the series as well, I feel pretty confident in my recommending.

(I also don't feel like writing a thoughtful review, because that would be full of spoilers.  I hope I haven't spoiled it too much as it is!)

My Friday afternoon at Harper Collins

Yesterday I wrote about the publisher preview I attended at Random House as part of Kidlitcon; today I tell of my afternoon at Harper Collins!  Once again there were tasty snacks, and once again the editors took the time from their busy lives bringing books into the world to tell us bloggers about them.  Thank you!

The Harper Collins folks talked about their 2013 titles, which include many books that gladdened my middle grade sci fi/fantasy loving heart.

First and foremost of the books I'm looking forward to is Fyre, by Angie Sage (April 2013), the seventh and final Septimus Heap book.    I love this series, with all its intricate details of place and plot, and its lovable cast of characters, and apparently Fyre is a stunner.

But lots of other books sound excellent as well.  I'm just going to talk about the fantasy/sci fi ones that appealed to me in particular...starting with one that I promise will fly off the shelves into the hands of your average 7-9 year old--Stick Dog, by Tom Watson (January 8).  This is the epic quest of four dogs, drawn stick style, in search of a...hamburger.  It just exudes kid appeal.  I handed it to my nephew on Friday evening--he read it cover to cover.  I handed it to my own nine year old on Sunday--he read it cover to cover, chuckling. 

There a new series for that same elementary school aged kids that I wasn't sure at first was for me--The Fairy Bell Sisters, by Margaret McNamara, about Tinkerbell's siblings.   It's for readers 7-9, and the covers reflect this.  But when I heard it described as "Little Women with wings," how could I not be interested?

Moving middle grade-ward:

There's a "kids moving into a mysterious house that leads them into a fantasy adventure" book (I like these)-- House of Secrets by Chris Columbus and Ned Vizzini (April 2013).  

Superheros are big these days--Sidekicked, by John David Anderson (June 2013) sounds like a good addition to this subgenre.  For young fans of mythical creatures, The Menagerie, by Tui T. Sutherland and Kari H. Sutherland (March 12) looks like a winner.  And in January from Walden comes The Fellowship for Alien Detection, by Kevin Emerson, coming Feb. 2013, and here is where I fail Utterly and Completely as a reporter of previews, because I put a really emphatic checkmark next to its picture on my handout, but didn't actually write down details.  However, I'm sure I can trust myself to look forward to it...(I'll try to find it closer to the date and do a Waiting on Wednesday post on it).

The School for Good and Evil, by Soman Chainani, got even more than an emphatic checkmark--my notes show a star taking up the entire lined space next to it.  The Harper Collins folks were very excited about this one.  It's "the tale of two girls, one fair and beloved, the other homely and reviled, who are kidnapped from their village by a charismatic storyteller who runs the legendary School for Good and Evil, where students prepare to become future fairy tale heroes and villains."

The new Seven Wonders series by Peter Lerangis sounds like one to give your basic Percy Jackson fan; I'm looking forward to the first book, The Colossus Rises  (February 5).   And one to give to your geeky young sci fi reader--Case File 13: Zombie Kid, by J. Scott Savage (December).    Speaking of sci fi, the authors of The Familiars series, Adam Jay Epstein and Adam Jacobson, have a new series (about kids marooned in space with alien convicts!) coming out this summer--book 1 is Starbounders.

The editor of Jinx, by Sage Blackwood (January 8) sold me on that one by saying it was reminiscent of Diana Wynne Jones, and I am looking forward lots to Merrie Haskell's new book, Handbook for Dragon Slayers, coming in May--a historical fantasy with strong girl character that sounds excellent (the cover hasn't been officially revealed yet.  But I bet it makes you all want the book too!)


Moving on to YA:  

The Madman's Daughter, by Megan Shepherd, (coming January 29) was one included in our gift bag of ARCs, which elicited a very pleased ooohhh from me--the titular madman is none other than Dr.  Moreau, as in "Island of..." 

And how could any reader of YA fantasy not look forward to City of A Thousand Dolls, by Miriam Forster (Feb. 5)--"Nisha was abandoned at the gates of the City of a Thousand Dolls when she was just a child. Now sixteen, she lives on the grounds of the isolated estate, where orphan girls apprentice as musicians, healers, courtesans, and, if the rumors are true, assassins."   

Or how about this one, pitched as "The Korean Blue Sword, with martial arts."   That would be Prophecy, by Ellen Oh (January 2).

Or "Rapunzel in the Catskills" aka Towering, by Alex Flinn (May), or "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children meets The Shining" aka Asylum, by Madeline Roux (April).

But the book preview that impressed my impressionable mind most of all isn't a middle grade or YA fantasy.  It is: 

Stardines Swim High Across the Sky, a book of poems by Jack Prelutsky (Feb. 26).

I find myself murmuring "stardines" at odd intervals, and getting great satisfaction from it.

So thank you very much, Harper Collins, for a. publishing books I want to read b. being so generous with your time and ARCs!  (and the non sci fi/fantasy MG and YA ARCs that you gave me I put on the book swap trolley at kidlitcon and they found good homes with people who were, I assume, as excited to have them as I was to have the sci fi/fantasy ones!)

10/1/12

My Friday morning at Random House

One of the lovely treats of Kidlitcon 2012 was the Friday publisher previews.  The major publishing houses of New York opened their doors to groups of bloggers, and the editors themselves gave us lovely previews of their forthcoming books.  Thanks so much, Publishers, for doing this, and thanks so much, Monica, for organizing it!

My Friday morning publisher was Random House.  I arrived early, but was happy to spend time perusing hundreds of titles from years past on display, and musing about how much money they would sell for on ebay should R.H. become desperate (I look at my own books and muse about the same thing, quite often, so I'm not actually worried that R.H. is going to need to do this).  Seriously, it was rather awe inspiring to see all the books they'd published that I recognized...

Moving on up the building, us bloggers were welcomed with tasty breakfast snacks, and I found myself in conversation with Jim Thomas, editor of Seraphina.  It was lovely to see his pride in all the stars its gotten (seven, which is remarkable for a debut book), and fascinating to hear of the struggle for its US cover (certain more commercial interests wanted something less black and white and more (this is my conjecture) along the lines of a girl in a beautiful dress of inappropriateness passionately embracing a dragon while the wind blows her long (probably) red hair into tangles).    (You can read more about how Seraphina came to be published here at Random Acts of Reading).   So anyway, that was very interesting indeed, and then we all sat down to hear about this fall's books!

The presentations kicked off with apps and enhanced books and picture books.  One in particular looks like its going to be a classic for the ages--  I have a Dream, in which the more kid friendly elements of Martin Luther King, Jr. are illustrated by Kadir Nelson (and now I am wondering if anyone has nominated it for the Cybils yet...it really was lovely....goes to check...and lo!  Now I have my picture book non-fiction nomination).

We then moved on to the Magic Tree House books, which are now twenty years old!  R. H. is doing special full color editions of the first four (they are very attractive), and the author and illustrator both got a chance to go back in and fix small details and inconsistencies that had been bugging them all these years.  Cool.

A new Squish book just came out--Captain Disaster!  (Why haven't you gotten it for me, asks my 9 year old, reading over my shoulder.  I need to fix that.)  Squish is a great graphic novel series for the seven to nine year old set.  I promise.  (There's a new Lunch Lady book too--Lunch Lady and the Picture Day Peril).

But the graphic novel I'm most excited for is The City of Ember, in full color!

There are several companion books/sequels just out, or coming soon, that gladden my middle grade loving heart, but I'll be reviewing them later, d.v., so I'll just move quickly on to some YA!  (which is ironic, in that people reading my blog do so for the mgsff...).  So I'll just quickly mention Joshua Dread, the start of a superhero/supervillain series that looks like fun...

Like The Paladin Prophecy.  Mysterious boarding school ftw!  The final book of Montmaray--The FitzOsbornes at War! (coming Oct. 9).   I want even more now to read Unspoken, by Sarah Rees Brennan...

And there were more, but I have to go now.  In any event, I came home with a generous Magic Tree House bag of books,  one of which, The Blood Keeper, diverted me very nicely indeed on the bus ride home.....

THANK YOU so much, editors and publicists for Random House, for taking the time to share your books with us!  And for the tasty snacks.

(now having done the easy part, I'm going try to add illustrations in the new blogger!  Oh joy).



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