A Touch of Ruckus, by Ash Van Otterloo

 

A Touch of Ruckus, by Ash Van Otterloo (Sept 7, 2021, Scholastic), is a lovely real-world fantasy for middle grade readers.

Tennie (short for Tennessee) is wearing herself out trying to be a Good Child, a child who can keep her mother's depression at bay, a child who can look after her little siblings, a child who doesn't make trouble.  Her parents are in a rough spot financially and mentally, but her mom won't ask her own mother for help.  Instead, they are pretending everything is ok.  The plan is to drop Tennie's big brother off at grandmother's on their way to a new, smaller, home, but he doesn't want to stay out in the small wooded hillside town of Howler's Hollow.  Tennie does, desperately, and without actually having to ask directly for what she wants, it happens, and she's the one left behind.

She loves her grandma, loves the woods, and there's even a new friend.  Fox is friendly and is eager to include Tennie in their ghost hunting,  But her grandma isn't as much of a safe haven as Tennie wants her to be--she's on the edge of growing broke, and has a rich new boy friend, who sets off all sorts of alarm bells immediately in the reader's  mind.  Tennie can't help but question how much Fox really wants to be friends, and the ghost hunting succeeds, and explodes into a terrifying haunting.  

On top of this, Tennie is keeping a big secret from her new friend.  Tennie has a magical gift, or possibly curse--when she touches something, she picks up the thoughts and emotions of its owner. It's been a horrible source of stress for her.  Fox has a secret too--they are looking for one particular, very dear, ghost...and though they aren't actually keeping these secret from each other, both kids are shyly and sweetly wondering if they might be on track to being more than just friends....

But the ghosts get in the way of peaceful life, and in their terrifying, angry way, they are trying to help with their warnings that the  forest is in danger.  Plenty of spookiness, mystery solving, and more than a touch of ruckus ensues!  And Tennie, to save this place she loves, and bring her family together, sheds the shell of Good Child and says what needs to be said, and does what needs to be done.

There's so much to like in this one!  I especially liked how Tennie was able to move on from her impossible, self-appointed role in her family, and how her mother actually had recognized she had depression and was doing something about it--it is rare in MG fiction to have a parent with mental illness who actually doesn't need her kid to hold everything together.  I also especially liked the very sweet relationship between Tennie and Fox, not just the hint of coming romance (although I'm glad to have another addition to my list of LGBTQ relationships in MG speculative fiction) but the realistic portrayal of the squirmy tension of getting a true friendship started; both kids make missteps, but realize that being honest about what they were thinking fixes things. 

And finally, the ghosts were great, and their story and what they are hoping to accomplish brings in a nice bit of environmentalism into the mix, which I am always there for. 

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

Chainbreaker, by Tara Sim, for Timeslip Tuesday

Chainbreaker, by Tara Sim (Sky Pony Press, Jan. 2 2018), is the sequel to 2016's Timekeeper (my review), which was also a Timeslip Tuesday book.  These aren't time-slip stories of a traditional sort, with people slipping between different times, but instead are set in a Victorian world where time itself can literally slip out of whack, causing repercussions ranging from the trivial to the profound for the people in the vicinity.  To keep time under control, clock towers were built, each with a resident clock spirit, which are maintained by skilled workers.  17 year old Danny is one such mechanic, and in the first book he fell in love with the spirit of the clock he was maintaining, a boy named Colton (very forbidden both for the same sex part and the spirit/human part).  He also helped solve a crime against the smooth running of time,  surviving exploding clockwork in the process.

Because of his experience with clocks going wrong, Danny is sent to India when clock towers there start being attacked and destroyed.  With him goes a former rival from his days an apprentice, Daphne.  Both are perturbed by the mystery of what's happening to the clock towers in India (where Victoria is about to be proclaimed Empress);  Danny's perturbed to be leaving Colton, and Daphne's perturbed about going to her father's country; he was half Indian, half English.  Their level of mutual perturbation is naturally deepened when their airship is attacked en route, and nothing that happens in India ends up calming them one little bit.

There are plots, both related to the clock towers and their control of time, and related to growing rebellion against the English.  There are romantic involvements and transgressions against the norms of British society during the Raj.  There's the arrival in India of Colton, totally at sea away from his clock tower (which has itself been attacked), desperately looking for Danny.  There are several more attacks and kidnappings, along with spying steampunk spiders.  And all of this has a busy, vivid portrayal of India at a tumultuous time in its history for a backdrop.  But memorable though these things are, what's most memorable of all is the backstory of how the clock towers came to be in the first place.  Part of the book is from Colton's point of view, and he has begun to dream about his past...and what happened is horrifying and sad, and arguably a parallel metaphor to the British Raj....

So there's more action and more steampunk in this second book than there was in the first, so if that was something you found wanting in the first book, you'll enjoy this one more!  I did not find it wanting in the first book, which I enjoyed very much indeed, but I enjoyed this one too because though more Happens, the characters are still the central driving force of the story.  Also Chainbreaker is historical fiction (though of course with a fantastical overlay), and I like historical fiction (though I don't know enough about this particular part of history to be a critical reader of it).

As the number of pages left to turn decreased, I wondered how on earth Tara Sim would manage to get everything wrapped up.....and lo.  She doesn't.  It's a killer of a cliff hanger.  If you wait to read this one till the third book is published, you'll definitely want to keep on going, but it's also fun in a tense, strained way to not yet know, and have the pleasure of resolution to look forward to!  As well as having the expected concern for the characters, who I have come to care about; here's what I am now especially curious about--having seen clock towers in the UK and in India, I want to know what is time up to in the rest of the world.

I also of course want Danny and Colton to get a happily ever after.  They are both so sweet!

This is an own voices story, Tara Sims is both biracial (her mother's family is from India) and bisexual (here's an interview with her at Reading (As)(I)an  (Am)Erica  for more on the writing of Chainbreaker).

Short answer:  These book are really good reading!

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

The Raven and the Reindeer, by T. Kingfisher

The Raven and the Reindeer, by T. Kingfisher (Red Wombat Tea Co., Feb. 2016), is a retelling of Hans Christian Anderson's "The Snow Queen," and if you have read any other of T. Kingfisher's books (she's also Ursula Vernon) you can imagine that it is a very nice read indeed, and perfect for reading on a cold day under lots of blankets in front of the fire.  I'm going to spoil a major plot point in the next few paragraphs, but it's one that needs spoiling to help some readers who will love the book to find it!

So "The Snow Queen" is the one about the boy who gets the shard of ice stuck in his eye, and is swept off by the beautiful Snow Queen, and the girl who sets off to find her playmate/love and bring him home.  Kingfisher sticks closely to the events in the original story, but twists them to make something new.

Kay and Gerta grow up together in a northern land where Christianity and old stories and magical beings coexist,  She loves him, but he's not a great friend to her, though she tells herself he is.  The reader quickly comes not to care all that much for Kay; Gerta clearly deserves someone who values her more.  But when Kay is kidnapped (and the arrival o.f the Snow Queen is gloriously descriptive, with her sleigh drawn by flying white otters (!)) Gerta sets off to find him because she is a good, loyal person.  Along the way she befriends a raven with whom she can communicate, which ends up sprinkling humor into the story, and she finds herself in the home of a group of brigands.  The bandit girl, Janna, keeps her from being harmed, and kisses her.

And then Janna sets of with Gerta, who has been given a magical reindeer skin that transforms her into a reindeer herself, to the stronghold of the Snow Queen, to rescue Kay.  And they rescue Kay in an exciting interesting rescue that was good fun to read, making good use of all the disparate things that Greta learned in her journey.

But back to Janna and Gerta.  I was taken aback by that sudden first kiss.  I had nothing against the idea of a Janna/Greta relationship, but the fact remained that Janna had power of life and death over Greta at that point, and she didn't ask before kissing her, rather passionately.  If it had been a young man doing that it would have bothered me a lot, and it bothered me as it was.   But fortunately, after the initial shock ,Greta lets herself acknowledge that she returns Janna's attraction, and things develop between them at a measured pace during the course of their adventure together (making it less an insta love thing than I'd worried it was at first).  It is a rather nice romance, when all is said and done, and Kay basically gets dropped of at home like a parcel of laundry at the end and Janna and Greta set off together for new adventures.

Throughout the story, the power of old women. and the stories and knowledge they keep, is essential to the success of Gerta's mission.  Her strength as a heroine is her persistence, which is close to being an innate goodness--she recognizes what must be done and does it, and she needs the spark of external wisdom and magic the four old women she meets can contribute (even though one of them is horrible, and one imprisons her) to make things work.  And likewise, she needs the spark of Janna's kiss to start really shaking her free of Kay.  I'm still a little worried that's she's not entirely grown into her own self by the end of the book, but she's still young....

Short answer--lots of twists and additions to the original story, and beautiful descriptions, make this a very fun fairy tale retelling.  I would have liked it to push a bit harder at characterization and thematic depth, but it is entertaining as all get out as is!

Passenger, and Wayfarer, by Alexandra Braken, for Timeslip Tuesday

These past few days I have spent reading Passenger and its just released sequel, Wayfarer, by Alexandra Bracken, which is about a thousand pages of time travel romance high body-count adventure through many centuries and many places.  And I have just now finished Wayfarer, and it is almost my bedtime, but I do want to write about the books for Timeslip Tuesday....

So the gist of the story is that a modern teenager, Etta, finds out that she has the gift of travelling through time when her debut as a concert violinist ends up instead with her on board an 18th century privateering vessel.  For the first half or so of Passenger, the reader gets an introduction to the whole set up of how time travel works in this scenario, and Etta and a young man Nicholas (born a slave, but with a rotten-souled white time-traveler father whose gift he inherited) fall in love.  At which point a quest item is introduced--an astrolabe that can control the passages through time, and which many people of varying motivations want to get a hold of.  One of these people is Nicholas' monstrous white grandfather, the head of that time traveler family.  Another group are time travelers who oppose that family.  And then, in Wayfarer, another astrolabe seeker is introduced, even more scary and powerful than the rest of them. 

So Nicholas and Etta search for the astrolabe, and the body count gets pretty high as they travel through time, and then they almost have it, but things go wrong.

In Wayfarer, they are separated, but still searching for this incredibly powerful device that can be used to warp reality horribly, or make the time line regress to what it would naturally have been without time travel interference.  The body count gets higher (and goodness, Nicholas, Etta, and various secondary characters are the most resilient bunch I've ever seen; it is unbelievable how they recover from broken ribs, horrible lacerations, and general exhaustion in order to fight more enemies the next day).  There's a lot of fighting, which got a bit old, but what made Wayfarer gripping was that the motivations of the secondary characters became a lot more interesting, and because Etta and Nicholas weren't on the same page for most of the book, there was less of their passionate romance (which I feel bogged Passenger down a bit). Wayfarer also gives less page time to Nicholas' position as a black ex-slave in the 18th century, which was interesting social history and though provoking, but which has less relevance to the issues of survival central to Wayfarer. 

Wayfarer, in short, though a bit longer page-wise, has much more action and adventure than Passenger, and a much faster pace.  If you loved the romance of Passenger, you'll get a nice dose of that here, but not infusing the book as a whole.   The best part of Passenger was the way in which Nicholas and Etta were able to put aside their temporally different cultural norms and work as partners, and the best part of Wayfarer was seeing people who had no reason to trust each other learning to do so.   (Aside--a nascent LGBT romance is a part of this, and if I could have one more bit of story from this world, this is what I'd like to see more of.  I sure do hope it works out for them).

Though these two books together constitute a long read, and would not have suffered greatly from the loss of a 100 pages (which equals about 30 violent encounters), and though I would have liked a bit more realism re. wound recovery time, the reading experience is a satisfying one, especially as one reaches the end with its teasing promise of .........(that is me teasing!).  I don't think I'll need to read the books again, but I'm very happy to have spent the past few days with them, mostly because the characters grew on me, but also because of the vivid images of all the different times (though not so much the vivid images of all the ways people died....).

With regard to the time travel--it was one of those time travel set ups that make my brain hurt too much to try to see if it made sense, with alternate versions of the future popping up and down all over the place, and people not being able to go to the same time twice (which I'm not sure was a rule as carefully followed as it could have been).  Passenger is better for time-travel cultural dislocation, and does it well.  Wayfarer is more time-travel as insane kaleidoscope of experience, but with very memorable alternate version of the last czar and a delayed Russian revolution....

Timekeeper, by Tara Sim, for TImeslip Tuesday

Timekeeper, by Tara Sim (Sky Pony Press, YA, November 2016), literally starts with time slipping; in this case, two o'clock goes missing from a clock tower.  In this quasi Victorian world, clocks don't just tell time, they keep it running, so the loss of 2 o'clock has repercussions for the people that live around that tower, for whom it is suddenly three o'clock.  17 year old Danny is the clock mechanic sent to repair this tower, but what should be a simple job leads him down unexpected paths when he meets the spirit and driving force of this particular tower, Colton, who has the form of a boy Danny's own age.

Danny has lots on his plate emotionally--his father got trapped in a town where time was stopped, and Danny wants to be on the team working to mend things.  His mother has withdrawn from him, and he himself is caught up in his own problems to an unhealthy point.  Being gay is not a crime in this version of the past, but it's not the done thing either, and that difference also contributes to Danny's loneliness and depression.  But Colton, beautiful, impossible Colton, makes him think of other things.....

This book is both romance and mystery (the mystery being how time was stopped in the town where Danny's dad is trapped).  The dangers that spill over from the mystery solving jeopardize the romance, and the romance jeopardizes Danny's role in freeing his father....The two threads are nicely entangled, making for a nicely balanced whole. This is one for readers who don't expect constant Alarms and Excursions; it's something of a slow burn that requires immersion into the fascinating world of clocks and clock spirits and manifestations of temporal twistiness.

Do try this one if you are looking for a sweet but fraught romance (especially if you're looking for an LGBTQ one).  Do try this if you think that time spent cleaning and repairing clockwork with the clock tower spirit helping, and lots of Danny sensing time bending and moving around him, sounds interesting.  But don't go into it expecting a steampunk extravaganza of strange mechanicals and lots of zapping and zipping.  I myself enjoyed it lots, and recommend it.

And so, in a recommending spirit, here's what the pros said, all of which I agree with without any (substantive) quibbling:

"Part mystery and part romance, this fantasy novel delves into what it means to grow up and make important decisions. With an easily relatable main character struggling to fit in, the novel has a realistic and contemplative voice. VERDICT: A must-have richly written fantasy novel that will have readers eagerly anticipating the next volume." —School Library Journal

"Sim creates a cast of complex and diverse characters, as well as a mythology to explain how the clock towers came to exist . . . an enjoyable, well-realized tale." —Publishers Weekly

“[M]ystery, LGBTQ romance, and supernatural tale of clock spirits and sabotage that explores how far people might go for those they love. Its strongest elements are the time-related mythology and the supernatural gay romance.” —Booklist

"This LGBTQ steampunk romance sports a killer premise and admirably thorough worldbuilding, helpfully annotated in the author’s afterword. The characters—even the bad guys—are sympathetically drawn and commendably diverse in sexuality and gender." —Kirkus Reviews

"An enjoyable start to a promising new trilogy." —BookPage


disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

The Scorpion Rules, by Erin Bow

Erin Bow's YA books are not exactly comfy--the heroines of her stories (Plain Kate, Sorrow's Knot) must navigated complicated worlds in which contentment is precarious, and is balanced with darkness and loss.  The Scorpion Rules, her most recent book, fits this description to a t. 

In a future world, desperate for peace, a collective bargain was made.  An artificial intelligence known as Talis keeps watch over the various nations of Earth, enforcing peace with the threat of death.  Cities are destroyed when the peace is broken.  And hostage children, the dearest ones of the various rulers, are gathered together in an enclave, knowing that they will be killed if their nations go to war. 

One of these so-called Children of Peace is Greta, daughter of a queen of North America.  If she can make it to 18 years old, she will be free, and so she calmly goes about her life, being instructed by her AI teacher, working on the enclaves farm, keeping to the pattern of the days dictated to her.  She is so much the good hostage child that she doesn't even sneak off with the other teens to play "coyotes" (euphemism!)  in the dark night outside.   But then a catalyst from outside shatters the calm of her life.  Elian, son of a new American alliance that is threatening to make war with Greta's homeland, arrives, and he refuses to be a docile hostage.   He is tortured as a result, while the other Children of Peace watch.  And Greta knows that his people declare war on hers, which seems likely, the two of them will die.

Her  peace of mind is cracked both by the horrible implications of his presence, and by his stubborn defiance.   And a new Greta emerges from the structure of her controlled life, one who questions, who loves, who wants a future of her own making....But Talis is watching, always watching, and for him, death is not just an abstract threat.

So basically the book is about Greta growing from Good Hostage Child to strong, passionate, questioning young woman, and as this happens, there's a very gripping ratcheting up of the tension not just of her personal situation but of the lives of those around her, and the lives of thousands of strangers who Talis could kill at any time.  I was so afraid reading it that it would have a heartbreaking ending, and was glad that although tense as all get out, it wasn't all devastation and darkness....There is lots and lots of room for a sequel, but it ends at a good ending point, where there is hope (hanging fro a thread) for a different sort of peace to come.

I don't want to spoil things, but I do want to say, to help those who want to find such  books, that the teen romance at the heart of the book is LGBT, and this was an unexpected and tender romance that tightened the knot around my heart just beautifully!

In short, The Scorpion Rules isn't exactly a comfy kids at a farm school fooling around with each other sort of book, although almost it is (I put my boarding school label on it!); instead, it's that sort of book but with the very real threat of death, and no possibility of escape, hanging constantly over the kids, beautifully written and achingly engrossing.  I read it two months ago, and it is still crystal clear in my mind.