Seafire, by Natalie C. Parker

Seafire, by Natalie C. Parker, is a new YA speculative fiction story of a crew of female pirates who are fighting in a post-Apocalyptic world not for gold and glory, but to strike back at the asshole oppressors, patriarchal violent men with a leader who's the sort who wants to hold everyone in an iron fist, etc.  Caledonia, the main character, had to watch as her family's ship was destroyed by the Bullets (the oppressors soldiers)...and she had to live with the guilt that it was she who betrayed them (which she kind of did, though not on purpose).  But Caledonia and her friend and childhood shipmate Pieces decided to fight back.  They found other strong, smart young woman, rebuilt the ship, and took to the seas themselves, attacking the Bullets whenever possible.  But they are of course fighting against overwhelming odds, and don't even dream of "victory."  Yet as events unfold and they pass from danger into danger, still fighting back, they begin to think that hope might not be as impossible as it seemed....

I very much enjoyed the all female, found family of the crew.  Since there were 52 of them, we don't get to meet them all personally, just those who are close to Caledonia, but the ones we meet are interesting and unique, and contribute to the functioning of the ship and its missions each according to their strengths.  At times reading this I was reminded a little bit of classic naval warefare fiction (like the Hornblower books)--tricks and guile and strategy are more important than brute force of arms.  Yet Caledonia is no Hornblower--she doesn't rise to that level of brilliance, and it is her crew that comes forward with the ideas and initiatives needed (which is fine-go crew!).

Tension specific to the story (as opposed to the evil bad guy they have to fight tension) is provided when a young Bullet soldier begs for sanctuary.  Caledonia has his life in her hands, and it is hard for her not to kill him outright.  As well as providing moral and ethical struggle to the plot, this provides a romance sub-thread....a pleasing one, that I did not object to, though I found the relationships between the women, including one murmur of a lesbian relationship, more interesting because less predictable..

I didn't think this was the greatest book since sliced bread, mostly because I was frustrated by a fuzziness to the worldbuilding (I like more history, more backstory to how the bad guys came to power, the sort of thing that lets one imagine how they can be overthrown), and I was also frustrated that the women weren't thinking about end goals (being pirates is all very well, but where does it get you?), but this certainly leaves the story wide open for sequels!

Terra Nova, by Shane Arbuthnott

I opened my review of Dominion, by Shane Arbuthnott, with this teaser: "Are you in need of a steampunk fantasy set in an alternate New World where air ships powered by aetherial spirits travel through the skies in search of other spirits to capture and sell?"  It was a very enjoyable and interesting book, with a great heroine, and I was very happy to curl up yesterday with the sequel, Terra Nova (Orca, March 2018).  I will tease again with the following question:  Are you in need of a book that tackles with steampunk flair and fantasy elements the systematic enslavement of sentient beings and the economic exploitation of human workers as well, forced to labor for the enrichment of oppressors?  If that doesn't convince you, can I throw in the teaser that Molly, the young heroine, is passionate fighter for justice, wracked by guilt when there are casualties, but never giving up because she cannot turn her back on the problems of her society?

Molly has made it her life's work to free the enslaved aetheric beings that power her world.  Most of the other inhabitants of Terra Nova still believe the spirits are fundamentally hostile, but Molly knows better.  With spirits both great and small, her family, and a handful of allies working with her, she sets herself to overthrow the corporation that tortures the spirits for their own profit.   But freeing handfuls of spirits, and liberating as well the human workers who toil in the factories, is like scooping water with a sieve.  How can she change the mindset of Terra Nova, and bend its arc toward justice once and for all?

Answer--with lots of hair-raising adventures, brave and desperate battles, the courage of her convictions, aetherial beings of tremendous power, and a new ally with lots of p.r. experience, who used to work for the bad guys, who knows the power of the printed word.  The fact that Molly isn't doing it alone is what makes this work; although she special in having a strong bond with two powerful spirits, it's their power, and the power of other spirits and human persons, that allow Molly to be as effective as she is.

In my review of the first book, I said:

"Molly's a great heroine and the whole set up with the spirits is fascinating.  I wish we'd been given more of a look at this alternate world--we only see the sliver of sky traversed by Molly and her Family, and the one city where they dock, though there are hints of the bigger world.  And likewise it seems like the author knew more backstory about Molly's family than is given in any detail.   I'm hoping Molly's world will be broader in future installments, because she's a great heroine who really deserves a great world to adventure in! "

And it is broadened somewhat here.   The mainland, where the colonizers of Terra Nova never travel, is introduced, and its alternate First Nation people, are represented by a man who, like Molly, has a bond with aetherial spirits (not uncommon in his people, though happily not uncomfortably in any "spirit animal" sort of sense).   I would like even more of the wider world in future books, though this book wraps up all the obvious plot threads, so a new antagonist would be needed....

Short answer:  this is a tremendously solid and exciting series, that I highly recommend to those who enjoy fantasy/steampunk adventures that come with considerable action (there's lots of fighting, and some fatalities to give it gravitas), more than a smidge of parkour (Molly learned lots of good climbing and jumping tricks in her childhood on a flying ship),  really cool spirit beings, and lots and lots of thoughtful social justice.  It straddles the space between middle grade and YA, being one I'd recommend to 11-14 years if pressed to draw lines.

Kirkus gave this one a star, saying "This spectacular sequel takes steampunk into new territory."

moral of the story--realize your ancestors did bad things, and work to undo them!

Invictus, by Ryan Graudin, for Timeslip Tuesday

It seems to me there are in general two major types of time travel book--time travel as personal magical adventure, and time travel as a corporate endeavor, with multiple operatives, questionable motives, and tangled timelines (with many exceptions, but still).  If you read my blog regularly you can guess I prefer the former.  So Invictus, by Ryan Graudin (Little Brown YA Sept. 2017), isn't my personal cup of tea, but there were many things to like and you might well love it.

The main character, Farway Gaius McCarthy (aka Far) was born by a time traveler from the 2300s who fell in love with a Roman Gladiator and gave birth on the trip between times on her way home.  So Far's never had a real birthday, which caused minor glitchiness in his records.  He did well at time travel school, and was all set to follow in his mother's footsteps as a government time traveler...but then he fails his final exams (mysteriously) and ends up captaining a crew of three friends to hunt for lost treasures in the past to sell on the black market. Imogen, Far’s fun and quirky cousin is the historian; Gram (who is black), is the math genius, tetris addicted engineer, Priya (who's Indian) is Far's beloved and the medic.

On a heist mission back to the Titanic, Far meets Eliot, a strange girl who is also time travelling, whose  habits of clearly knowing too much and saying too little, and the fact that she's infiltrated herself via blackmail into the crew, make it almost impossible to trust her.  And she does indeed have secrets that makes trusting her more than a little risky.  She is on a mission of her own...because the fact that Far was born outside of time has caused bigger headaches than just his birthday glitch, threatening the existence of multiverses, and this has become her problem to solve.

Now it is a problem for Far and his friends as well.  Their past is endangered, their happy present as time-travelling young rouges totally gone to heck, and their future is a big question mark.  

What I really liked

--the crew is great; they had a fun bond and were an interesting group of people.  There is a bonus red panda on board as well.

--Eliot's mission, and the way it unfolds, provides a strong backbone of plot.


What I didn't much like

--my head hurt a bit trying to make sense of the swirl of multiverses and different pasts.  I strongly prefer single timelines.  This was almost too much for me.

 --I had trouble warming to Far, who's rather cocky, and this made it hard to get into the book, since it is quite Far-centric at first.  The crew, and Eliot, get more story time as the book progresses, and the story gets more interesting, so that wasn't a deal breaker.

--The actual time travel wasn't magical at all.  It was very down to earth, with no anthropological nuance to speak of.  So not particularly interesting to me.

Here's the Kirkus review, if you want a second opinion.

Brightly Burning, by Alexa Donne

Brightly Burning, by Alexa Donne (HMH Books for Young Readers, YA, May 2018), is an easy book to pitch in one sentence--Jane Eyre in Space.  It's the story of Stella, an orphan, mistreated by rich relatives, who escapes impoverished circumstances (on board a decrepit farming spaceship orbiting an icebound Earth) by finding work as a governess to a little girl in an isolated manor (in this case, isolated private spaceship), falls in love with the mercurial, wealthy guardian of the little girl, and then finds there's a madwoman on board as well...and things get problematic.

What makes this interesting is that there is enough Jane Eyre-ness to make it fun to play along with the author, but the framing device of humanity orbiting the earth for generations, waiting for the ice-age to end, is an interesting sci fi story in its own right. The class struggle and inequality of this society, and the moral dilemmas it poses to the characters, adds  interest, and Stella is a stronger character than Jane was, and a much better advocate for herself.  I actually cannot stand Jane Eyre, the book or the girl, and did not find Mr. Rochester appealing in the least, but his placeholder here, Hugo, though also an insensitive ass, is a few steps up from the original, and at 19 much more suitable for teenaged Stella.

So basically, I enjoyed reading it (good descriptions of spaceship life, and I loved the conceit of grand estate transformed to luxury spaceship), though I would have liked the ending (set on Earth) to go into more re-building terrestrial civilization specifics just because I like that kind of thing lots.  But maybe there will be a sequel in which they figure out flush toilets again.

Kirkus is several notches more enthusiastic than me--"A gripping examination of class, romance, and survival set in a dystopian future that feels chillingly relevant to our present times."


Postcripts: 

While at Amazon getting a link I was amused to see that Brightly Burning is

#13 in Books & Teens & Romance &; Clean & Wholesome

because "wholesome" is not a word I'd ever use to describe even an echo of Mr. Rochester, though Hugo is much, much more wholesome than the original!  The romance is confined to a bit of fairly detailed passionate kissing, not chastely clean at all, but there is no actual sex, which might be all that matters )

I was much less amused by this-- it took me a while to get the link to the option to buy the book new, because when you just search Amazon for it, the buy option goes to the used book sellers.  I had to put a bundle of this one plus two other books into my shopping cart to get the link to buy it new.  Though I'm angry at Amazon, I'm leaving the link in because it does seem to work and I feel I have foiled them, but if you are interested you might want to go elsewhere....)

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

The Oddling Prince, by Nancy Springer

Back when I was a freshman in high school, the book I re-read most was The Silver Sun, by Nancy Springer.  Part of the appeal was that I crushed equally on the two protagonists, both beautiful young men, with different enough personalities that I spent time trying to decide if I had a preferences, part of it was the magical world,  and exciting story.  But I think that what most drew me back and back again to the story was that it centered on the idea that there are people you meet with whom you form relationships that complete you.  As a 14-year-old, I naturally felt uncompleted and not fully and beautifully understood, so the idea that you could meet someone who helped fill the empty part of one's self, making that self a better thing, was tremendously appealing.

As a grown-up, I haven't been moved to re-read it, but I still felt much interest and anticipation when I was offered a review copy of The Oddling Prince, Nancy Springer's newest book (Tachyon Publications, upper Middle Grade/YA, May  2018) .  It was a book with much the same theme, and I was not at all surprised to read in the author's note that it is "a deliberate return to her beginnings as a writer." 

It is about a king saved from death when the son he never knew he had arrives from the land of fairy, becoming mortal to save his father.  But there is a catch.  The king had been imprisoned by the fairy queen, who bore his son, Albaric, and while no time passed in our world, there that child grew to be a young man, the same age as the king's human son, Aric.  Aric recognizes and embraces his brother instantly, but the king has no memory of his imprisonment and the son he loved while the fairy queen's captive, and is horrified by the arrival of the strange, unworldly Albaric.  He becomes almost insane with paranoia, threatening to destroy his once loving relationship with Aric, and even his kingdom.

But Aric and Albaric will never forsake each other; each is necessary for the other's happiness.  It takes all of Aric's loyalty and determination, some marvelous magic, and love, to bring peace back to the family and the land.

So that whole idea of the beloved second-self, that spoke so strongly to young me, is here even more explicitly, as is the medieval sort of world where magic happens from time to time.  And young me would have loved it.  Older me is more worldly-wise, and though I enjoyed the book, I was more conscious that the prose was somewhat stiff in a sort of old-fashioned sounding way, and that made me wonder who exactly would love this book if it was the first of the author's they'd read.  Since the tension of the plot comes from personal relationships, though there is some fighting action, those who like Excitement in their stories might not feel invested in the story.  Those who like misty Scottish-esque medieval settings, where magical rings of the fey can ensnare kings, and love wins in the end, may on the other hand find this gorgeous.  Starry-eyed youthful dreamers in their younger teens (who don't get distracted by cynical thoughts about word choices) are the best audience, and (inevitably) that is not who I am any more.

nb:  there is also a beautiful magical horse, giving the book bonus appeal points for horse-loving readers.  And thought the book is focused on the two boys, the queen and the girl Aric is destined to marry are both strong characters; the queen, in particular, is the sanest of the bunch!

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

Being a Witch and Other Things I Didn't Ask For, by Sara Pascoe, for Timeslip Tuesday

Yay me!  I have a time travel book for this week's Timeslip Tuesday-- Being a Witch and Other Things I Didn't Ask For, by Sara Pascoe Trindles and Green, Feb. 2017,YA). This book has been in the active pile for far to long, so I'm glad to finally be writing about it and moving it on to a shelf.

Raya is 14, fed up with foster care, and afraid she's going mad.  Her mom suffers from schizophrenia, and now Raya is hearing a cat's voice inside her head...Angry and tired of having to be answerable to other people, Raya takes off for London, and after a few false starts, find a good place to live and work, with good people.  But when her little foster brother Jake comes to London too, and gets badly hurt in an accident, and her social worker finds her, something inside Raya snaps...and she travels through time.  Raya, it turns out, is a witch.

Fortunately, the talking cat, Oscar (her social worker, Bryony, is also a witch, and Oscar's her familiar) travels back in time with her, and helps the witches back in London find her.  Unfortunately, they end up in the middle of the Essex Witch Trials of 1645, just about the worst possible time to be a strange girl.  It is very touch and go--will Raya be hung as a witch before she can be pulled back into her own time?   Bryony does arrive in time, but then Raya's uncontrolled gift kicks in again, and instead of taking them back home, she takes them to Istanbul that same year.

Istanbul is kind to Raya and Bryony, and Oscar the cat.  It is pretty idyllic--the time travelers are taken in by a kind family and Raya enjoys shopping for silks and slippers, and enjoys as well her growing fame as a fortune teller.  Bryony depends on Raya to take them home to London again...but Raya isn't at all sure she wants to go.  Then the dark side of Ottoman politics ensnares Raya...and she has to risk messing up the past for everyone, or else watch her friends be executed!

It was a perfectly fine book, but it didn't entirely work for me.  The three big plot elements above feel in my mind like they are from three different books; they are very different in story and pacing, and they could be about three different people.  I didn't feel like I was getting to know Raya any better as a coherent, maturing character as the stories unfolded, though clearly we are supposed to be seeing her change, and the time travel problems are related to her inner conflicts. It wasn't until the Ottoman Empire that I really started enjoying it, mostly because I was interested in reading about Istanbul ...yet it turned out not to be a very convincing Istanbul--it was very much a fairy tale city, all clean and shiny with good shopping, and no day to day seamy side that even the cleanest 17th century city would have.  And finally, I wish the whole world building of an England with witches, that it turns out lots of people know about, had been more integral to the story, and not just a convenience when necessary.

That being said, these are all things that other readers might react differently too; they aren't fatal flaws.  And on the plus side, Pascoe is very good at describing the past vividly, and I liked Oscar the cat.  It just wasn't a book for me.

Weave a Circle Round, by Kari Maaren, for Timeslip Tuesday

I highly, but cautiously, recommend this week's Timeslip Tuesday book--Weave a Circle Round, by Kari Maaren (which was supposed to be last week's book, but time went wrong..).  In case you don't have time to read a complicated plot synopsis, here's what you need to know.

Weave a Circle Round hits all of the best time travel notes--

--relatable main character caught in a fantastic, complicated, twisty nest of time slipped realities

--her lived experiences in the past are vivid and compelling; bordering on tourism time travel but advancing the plot and character development enough to have Point. 

--the plot and characterization are complicated enough to engage the mind without making said mind want to crawl into a corner and hid from it all

I highly recommend it to fans of Diana Wynne Jones, not because it is a DWJ read-alike, but because it has a similar chaos resolving into a mythically rooted central order/origin point.  You have to be able to tolerate chaos and not understanding things for much of the book to appreciate this one (Hexwood I am looking at you in particular).

Kirkus and I agree-- "A charming, extraordinarily relatable book with the potential to become a timeless classic."

The Kirkus review also says--"This debut novel could easily be pigeonholed as YA, and certainly those in that age group will gravitate to it, but adults shouldn't hesitate to dive in, too."  And indeed the book is marketed as YA.  Much to my surprise I found it felt much more upper middle grade in feel; the central character, a 14 year old girl,  is kicking against domestic life, and trying to fit in, and is still very much a child and not a Young Adult for much of the book.  There is nothing to cause a parent of an eleven or twelve year old concern unless that child has lived in a bubble (there is no romance, and no sex, but there is some violence).

Here is a somewhat negative review at Bibliosanctum. I don't often link to negative reviews in order to help people decide if a book is right for them, but in this case, I think that if in general you like all the things this reader doesn't, you will like this one!  

So now that you know if you will like the book or not, here's the plot (more or less).

Freddy, the main character, is 14, and trying hard to fly under the radar at high school.  Now that her little sister, brilliant and unabashed, and her stepbrother, nerdy, also unabashed, and deaf, have joined her, it's hard.  But then the new neighbor, Josiah, shows up as well, and he seems determined to latch on to her, pushing her social weirdness rating up many many notches; he freely shares his contempt for much of what he's experiencing at school, provoking conflict and disrupting the normal pattern of each day.  The woman Josiah lives with (Cuerva Lachance) is a loose cannon too; her mental state is on of constant non-sequitorish chaos. 

At this point, the reader and Freddy don't know what's happening, but it is clear that the new neighbors are odd and hiding something.  Freddy's brother is acting oddly too, trying to keep her and Josiah apart for reasons unknown.  

At the point right after this, things get weirder still, when Josiah and Freddy slip into the past.  The reader and Freddy are both taken aback to find themselves amongst Vikings, with Cuerva Lachance in the role of Loki.  It gradually is explained (over the course of much more timesliping from thousands of years in the past to hundreds of years in the future; the timeslipping isn't controllable) that Josiah and C.L. are two opposing forces, balanced by a third, constantly reincarnated person who is called upon to determine which of them will be dominant for that age. And it is further explained that in Freddy's time, this third person is supposed to be either her or one of her siblings.

Josiah, even though he's supposed to be the embodiment of order, isn't exactly trustworthy, and Freddy comes to realize that there is more to this business of the third party decider than he's letting on.  And by the time they finally get back to the present (three weeks before they leave, which is tricky for them, but after over a year spent in various other times) she's become pretty hostile to the whole business of a third party being compelled to make a choice. 

Which results in everything blowing up, thanks to Chuerva Lachance, into full blown insanity, and it requires all of Freddy's brother's experience as a role-playing gamer to bring the story into submission.  Which then makes the reader rethink the whole story, and plan to read it again.

Freddy isn't particularly likable, but her wild experiences bouncing through time give her plenty of life experience and moments for introspection, leading to welcome character growth and insight.  Because she's habitually honest with herself inside her head, even when she's not "likeable" she's very relatable.  

final though:  the plot is nuts, and the ending is played to a draw so if you want Answers, Resolution, and surety about whether what happened was Good or Bad, you'll be dismayed.

More final thought--I myself enjoyed it very much.

The Girl with the Red Balloon, by Katherine Locke, for Timeslip Tuesday

The Girl with the Red Balloon, by Katherine Locke (Albert Whitman 2017), is top notch YA time travel goodness! It's the story of a modern American girl, Ellie Baum, granddaughter of a Jewish Holocaust survivor, is visiting Berlin on a school trip.  When a red balloon drifts by, she grabs it....and finds herself in 1988, still in Berlin, but such a different place (there's still a year to go before the wall comes down). The red balloon was not supposed to have found Ellie.  It was supposed to magically carry an East Berliner in particular danger to the west.  But instead of a successful mission accomplished, the runners for the magical balloon operation that night now have Ellie on their hands.

Kai and Mitzi, the runners, don't know what to make of Ellie, but shelter her in their hideaway house.  Her bad German and lack of identity papers and working knowledge of "how not to get arrested by the Stazi" make her a danger to herself and to them, and they are not safe even at the best of times (as well as actively working against the state, Kai is Romani, and dark-skinned, and Mitzi is gay).  The balloon makers, part of a world-wide organization of magical rescuers who bespell each balloon for its intended passenger, don't know what to make of her either.  All are in agreement that Ellie needs to go home.  But how? And why did this happen to her?

 Kai and Ellie don't wait passively for the Balloon Makers to provide answers, but instead start investigate the problem for themselves.  Appallingly, the dead bodies of other time travelers start appearing on the streets of East Berlin--clearly there is some larger wrongness happening than just Ellie's trip from the future.  Why, though, did she live and the others not?

The answer lies further in the past.  Chapters of Ellie's story are interspersed throughout with that of her grandfather, who escaped as a teenager from Chelmno, a concentration camp in Poland, in 1942, with the help of his own red balloon.  (this isn't a spoiler; we know about his balloon almost immediately because he's told Ellie about it many times).

And so the mystery unravels, or more accurately tightens and becomes more dangerous, and as Ellie and Kai spend more time together, attraction, impossible, forbidden, and powerful, builds between them.

So not a comfort read, but a gripping one that I highly recommend.  Ellie couldn't Do much to solve her problems in her position as illegal foreigner in East Berlin, but that didn't make her a passive heroine needing rescue.  She was able, for instance, to stay sane which is saying a lot in her cirumstances!  And she was also able to learn to make little flying paper birds, which weren't much use, but which were intriguing and charming....Basically, she provided a very good perspective to share while visiting 1988 East Berlin, and that's one of the things that makes a time travel story work for me.

Although the particular plot threads are for the most part resolved, there's plenty of room for more, and indeed it is the first of a planned series.  So I recommend it lots (the only down side is that you might have the song 99 Luftballons going through your head over and over and over for the next week....)   Kirkus agrees with me (good job, Kirkus!)-- "An absorbing blend of historical fiction, mystery, and magical realism."

The Tombs, by Deborah Schaumberg

The Tombs, by Deborah Schaumberg (Harper Teen, Feb 20 2018), is a tense and atmospheric story set in an alternate 19th-century New York, where zepplins are common-place, but conditions for workers in the factories are much as they were in real life (which is to say, bad).  Avery is one of those workers; she's a welder, a skill picked up from her mechanical genius father, and despite the fact that she's a girl, her skill has gotten her a job (with miserable hours and working conditions, but still desperately needed).  Her father came back from the Civil War pretty broken, and though he found love, set up a shop selling clocks and mechanicals, and things went while for a bit, he was broken once more when his wife was taken from him.  The crow-masked goons working for the insane asylum in the basement of the Tombs, the city's notorious prison, came for her a few years before the story begins, and Avery hasn't seen her since.

But now the Crows seem to have set their sights on Avery, just as she is beginning to manifest the same psychic gifts that drew their attention to her mother.  Questioning her own sanity, she finds reassurance from the Gypsy community living outside the city.  (NB:  yes, Gypsy is the word used.  The author explains this by saying that this is the word 19th-century New Yorkers would have used.  But since they call themselves Romany, it doesn't seem like it would have taken much effort to have them explain to Avery that Gypsy is offensive, so that she and the author could have quit using it).  With the help of the Romany, Avery begins to understand her gifts, and begins to think that she can rescue her mother from the Tombs.

But the task in front of her gets more monumental when she finds out what the whole sinister purpose of the "mental asylum" actually is.  Horrible experiments are being carried out there, that could jeopardize the hopes of the working classes for a better life.... And when Avery herself is captured, and turned into a lab rat herself, her hope that she can be a rescuer dims even more.

Fortunately, even in dark prisons, there are friends...

So if you enjoy dark urban YA with a generous dollup of romance (two very worthy and helpful young men are present as love interests), a sprinkle of steampunk (incidental mechanicals as well as zeppelins), in which there's lots of atmospheric buildup before thing really get going in the last 200 pages, and if you appreciate a book where the female protagonist is a brilliant welder, has a hawk, and can do cool things with auras and life forces, and most importantly, if you can over look the grating, incessant use of an offensive descriptor, you will enjoy this.  I personally found it very readable, though not exactly my preferred cup of tea (dark and urban isn't my preferred thing), and though it was slow at times, a tad too New Age during the exploration of psychic gifts when Avery is first with the Romeny, and I was grated to the limits of my endurance by the use of "gypsy".  Seriosuly, it wouldn't have been hard to just switch to Romany, or better still, Romani.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

Time Knot, by M.C. Morison, for Timeslip Tuesday

Yay!  The power just back on after being knocked out in the fierce storm Sunday night, so I can do a Timeslip Tuesday post!  I have been meaning to write about this one for several weeks, so I'm glad to finally be doing it.  Time Knot, by M.C. Morison (Lodestone Books, June 2017), is the second in the Time Pathway series, the first being Time Sphere (my review)

There's a lot of plot going on in these two books, so I'm not going to try to summarize the whole thing.  The basic premise is that there is a group on the good side of the time continuum who want humanity to improve, and a group on the bad side who are working to promote chaos.  An English teenager, Rhory, finds in the first book that he has the gift of time travel (though he can't actually control it).  He has a pivotal role to play in the age old struggle, and the second book sends him first to 17th century Sweden, and then to Alexandria, in time to see the Great Library burn, and to help rescue some of its treasures. Along side Rhory's point of view are the stories of other characters, primarily a girl from Egypt and a Swedish boy, both of whom stand with Rhory on the side of good.

The fact there are multiple points of view, coupled with a plot that includes much magical stuff alongside the time travel, and a very generous cast of both supporting characters and antagonistic ones, means that the reader is somewhat challenged viz keeping everything straight.  I decided halfway through that I wouldn't worry about that too much, and just enjoy the particular moments of the story I was in.  Which I did, whether it was escaping from religious zealots through the snows of Sweden or exploring the labyrinth of the Great Library...Because we see a lot of the past from characters who are native to it, at times it reads more like historical fiction/fantasy than time travel, but that is fine with me!

Teens who like magical destinies with an anchor in the real world and history will enjoy this one; teens looking for romance tortured by temporal complications, as happens in so many YA time travel stories, will not find enough here to satisfy them (which makes this a fine pick for 11 or 12 year olds as well as teens).  Adult readers who enjoy richly detailed historical fiction might also find this more YA centered story a fun change of pace.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

Future Shock, by Elizabeth Briggs, for Timeslip Tuesday

Future Shock, by Elizabeth Briggs, is a YA time travel thriller, in which five teens are sent to the future on what seems like a harmless mission that soon goes horribly wrong.

Elena Martinez, tough, tattooed, and in the gifted program at school, is about to age out of the foster care system. If she doesn't find a job before she turns 18, she'll be homeless, and her one most pronounced skill, perfect recall, isn't doing her much good.  Then comes an unexpected offer, that will solve all her financial problems-- to be a test subject for the tech giant, Aether Corporation, for just one day.  She and four other teenagers—Adam, Chris, Trent, and Zoe—will be sent through time to the future to bring back information about technology that hasn't been invented yet.  All but Adam are foster kids, with no one make a fuss if they don't come back.  The rules are simply--don't look up your future self, and be back at the portal point at the right time. 

But there are many things the Aether folks haven't told them.  Little things like other test subjects going insane.  And things go wrong from the moment they arrive at Aether Co. in the future and find it abandoned.   When the teens break the rules and look into their own future lives, it's clear that things are even more wrong than they were starting to suspect.  Because when they get home, all of them but Adam will be murdered.

There isn't much the kids can control, but they struggle to work together to figure out what's going to happen to them, because they must, though suspicion and the dangers of the future make it hard to do so.  Adam seems an obvious suspect, because he lives, but he and Elena are drawn to each other, and she can't help but believe that there's lots more going on than meets the eye.  There is.  And the clock is ticking...because if they don't go back to their own present, with or without the information they need to save their lives, they're stuck.

The mad science of the future, and the big question of whether past events can be changed, make this a very successful time travel story. The thriller mystery part was exciting reading, in a scrambling to put pieces together way.  The romance was a tad on the cheesy side, and too quick to blossom from attraction to more, but that's what happens to fictional YA characters.  The ensemble cast of diverse teens take a while to emerge as individuals as opposed to types, but by the end there's enough to each one's story to make them believable people to care about.

I enjoyed it, and have added book 2 to my tbr list!

Here's another review at Finding Wonderland

The Door that Led to Where, by Sally Gardner

I have read enough time travel books in my life that I feel pretty confident in saying that The Door that Led to Where, by Sally Gardner (Delecorte, November 2016), is one of the best recent YA time travel books.  I'll skitter around my confidence by saying that what I like in a time travel book is a character-driven point to the whole enterprise, preferably a point that isn't a love sundered by centuries or some such (I am Done with romance time travel for the moment...).  So you might disagree with me regarding this one, and indeed there are those reviewing it on Amazon who found it "too confusing" and such.  I was not confused, or if I was, I trusted the story to see me through safely to the other side, and it did.

London teenager AJ hasn't done well in school, except in English.  Not because he was unintelligent, but because he spent school in the library reading (Dickens, for instance.  Also Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which was an instant bond, because I read it too when I was his age).  So it's rather a miracle to him that his mother gets him a job as a junior clerk at a decent law firm.  It's a double miracle, because his mother has clearly loathed him all his life (his father was never in the picture).  But there he is, employed. And there are his two best friends, also done with school, and getting deeper and deeper into murky, illegal waters....

Then AJ is given a key by a mysterious professor who talks in riddles.  And AJ finds the door the key unlocks, and it takes him back in time to 1830, plunging him into a murder mystery.  His own father was one of the victims, and the murderer is still at work....Also there is a snuff box smuggling ring operating (they are a good think to buy in the past to sell at profit in the present).  Possibly this part is confusing.  It was the part of the plot that interested me least, so I didn't try to hard to Think about it, and so was not at a loss for understanding.  As my favorite Salada teabag saying went, "if you don't try you can't fail."

More interesting to me was that AJ took his two friends through the door to the past, giving them a second chance that suited them both tremendously.  This was the really good time travel part--how two good-hearted boys, who were loyal brother figures to AJ, had gone wrong in the present, but could make new lives for themselves in 19th century London.  And there was a nice dose of time travel tourism, with great descriptions of London back in the day.

AJ is a courageous boy, trying to do the right thing for those he cares for.  This group includes an 1830s girl, Esme, who's adopted father is one of the poisoner's victims.  But his growing tender feeling for her is not the point of the plot; it's something of a nice romantic extra that complicates things a bit, and gives AJ a reason to keep pushing through the difficulties of the past.

So I enjoyed it lots, and was happy to keep cheering for AJ, and am happy to recommend it!

And now a game of comparing my own opinions to those of the Kirkus reviewer....

Kirkus:  "The convoluted time-travel mystery has verve, but readers will encounter some bumps. AJ’s fondness for Dickens (he excelled at English if nothing else) prepares him somewhat for life in the early 19th century, though the ease with which the characters adapt to different centuries strains credibility. Too, many of the large cast of characters add nothing to the plot beyond a thicket of complications."

Hmm.  My credibility was not strained; I think that if you are desperate for a place to start over, the past is as good as anywhere.  I am, however, confused by the reference to the "large cast of characters."  I would not call it large and I was able to keep everyone I needed to keep straight in my head.  And seriously, this wasn't all that complicated a book!  Boy time travels.  Solves poisoner mystery with help of friends.  Meets some people in past and present. Worries about friends in past and makes sure they are settled.  Returns home with new girl friend.

Whatever.  I liked it.

Landscape with Invisible Hand, by M.T. Anderson

Landscape with Invisible Hand, by M.T. Anderson (Candlewick, Sept. 12, 2017), is a sci fi satirical parable that's both thought provoking and entertaining.  The vuvv, an alien race, have come in "peace" bringing gifts of wondrous technology and parking themselves in low orbit around earth.  In this case, though, peace has not meant plenty for the majority of people on earth, who now have no jobs, no money, and property that's no longer worth much.  The vuvv, however, are happy to consume the best that Earth has to offer them--human culture from the 1950s, the period when we first sent the wavelengths of our ingenuity out into space.

A teenager named Adam and his girlfriend Chloe decide to make money (badly needed) by feeding the vuvvs desire for 1950s human romance, by recording each Tender Moment in a pay-per-view format.  It goes sour pretty quickly, though, when the two of them realize that they aren't in love after all, and though they tough it out as long as possible, it's hellish for them.

Adam's other chance for a better life is winning an art competition the vuvv are running.  But with vuvv taste running to the banal (still lives of fruit), his own more edgy paintings might not succeed....

And then a third chance comes, and Adam must convince his family to take it, and wipe the slate clean.

So it's sort of a parable about colonialism and its concomitant exploitation of indigenous cultures, about human creativity shackled to meaningless consumerism, or maybe about the individual discovering the value of being true to himself when there's no good external yardstick for human worth.  But though it is parablish, Adam's story is an interesting personal journey (I liked reading about his art very much, I appreciated his caustic thoughts on the vuvv, and I sympathized with his embarrassing illness that he could not afford to have treated with the vuvv's technology).  It's not just a moralistic, satirical allegory (although if you are allergic to allegory and/or satire you will not enjoy this).

Here's what I'm wondering, though--what is the Invisible Hand of the title?   I'm thinking something along the lines of the choices people make that they don't consciously realize they are making, although I am finding myself thinking as I write that the wavelengths of cultural transmission are literally invisible puppet masters of humanity.   I'm also thinking that you could use this book, very nicely, in a high school English class....

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

The Autumn People, by Ruth M. Arthur, for Timeslip Tuesday

Ruth M. Arthur (1905-1979) was a Scottish author who I have always thought I should like better than I do.  Many of her books are real-world fantasy, of a time-slipping, ghostly, sort, and I have enjoyed reading those that I have, but none has really convinced me that I should spend real money to collect her complete oeuvre (though I do look for her at library book sales.  I think she's mostly been deaccessioned though; even the Rhode Island library system, which is very good at keeping old books, has only two of her books left....).

The Autumn People (1973) is my most recent Ruth M. Arthur, and it comes the closest to being a book I really enjoyed.  I'm counting it as this week's Timeslip Tuesday, even though it's a bit arguable as to whether there's time slipping back to the past (my opinion) or visits with ghosts in the present (the opinion of the 1997 Encyclopedia of Fantasy)  But the main character says 'I had stepped back into her time..." and that's good enough for me!  Plus I think when there are hot drinks and warm fires involved, you've gone back to the past because ghosts don't usually come with all their furniture etc.

In any event, here's the story--teenaged Romilly and her grandmother are going to travel together to the Scottish Island where the family used to vacation; a cousin now lives in the family house.  Romilly's great-grandmother visited there when she was a girl, and never went back.  There was a tragedy, and Rodger, one of her cousins, died.  Having set this scene up, the book gives an account of the great-grandmother Millie's summer on the island, and how she fell in love with Jocelyn.  But Rodger wanted Millie for his own, and he was evil, and could work dark magic....it ended sadly for Millie.  And now Romilly, following in the footsteps of her namesake, is caught in the unfinished web of Rodger's malevolence.  She finds comfort with "the Autumn people" of the title, Jocelyn's family, come to stay in their old home....and at last, with the help of a local wise woman, is able to lay the curse to rest, and escape Rodger.

So it's a bit ghosty how other islanders can see the lights of the Autumn people, but Romilly goes right inside and it is all how it was years ago, so I call it time travel.

Rodger is a tad overblown in his evil malevolence and torture of small animals; his family just accepts that he's evil and tries to pretend it's not happening.  There is no nuance to his psychopathic behavior, nor is there nuance to the goodness of Jocelyn who is rather colorless as a result.  But the thread of the story tying together past and present is very gripping, and Romilly's horror as she comes under Rodger's sway in the present is nicely done.  I almost liked as much as I hoped I would, but not quite--the fact that all the story is spelled out in the detailed account of the great-grandmother's time on the island removes a lot of the suspense when reading about  Romilly in the present, and there just isn't as much subtlty and atmosphere as the story really calls for.

What Goes Up, by Katie Kennedy

I very much enjoyed last year's Learning to Swear in America, by Katie Kennedy, so I was very happy last week to plunge into her new book, What Goes Up (Bloomsbury, 2017).  I find it very easy to grow fond of her characters, and to find their predicaments very engrossing, and the fact that What Goes Up has a more blatantly sci fi element to it made it all the more interesting.  I don't want to spoil what exact form that sci fi element takes, so I will try to be coy in my reviewing.

The story begins with  a group of ultra-select teens being tested by NASA's Interworlds Agency for some unclear purpose involving preparing for encounters with aliens; the two teens that pass the testing with the higher markers will be retained for said purpose.  There was the standard math and physics part to the testing, which I would fail, (though in the story there were about an equal number of girls, so positive re-enforcement for girls in STEM) but  NASA also wanted to see how well they could think outside the box, and how they'd react in conditions of life threatening danger, which required an element of excitement, as it were....(I would probably fail this part too.  Sigh.  The ability to improvise bad puns is not valued by NASA).

We are given two teens to root for right off the bat--Rosa Hayashi and Eddie Toivonen.  Rosa has basically been raised to take this test, Eddie has had a struggle.  His dad isn't a pre-eminent scientist like Rosa's; instead, he's in jail.   His engineer grandmother who brought him up was able to teach him lots, and they happily launched rockets together in her backyard, but coming to NASA for the testing wasn't an easy thing for him; the shadow of his abusive father weighs heavily on him. (I am glad we unexpectedly get to meet Eddie's grandma--she is great!)

So there are the kids, and the tests, and it is fun reading about the training and the group dynamics and the efforts of their instructor Reg to prepare the teens for the question mark of possible alien encounter.  There are poignant bits, and amusing bits, and tense bits, and then the sci fi part starts! All that testing--very useful.  All the lessons they'd just had about trusting themselves--also unexpectedly, more literally than you might imagine, useful! The bonds of friendship formed between Rosa, Eddie, and the third boy who's their alternate--essential.  The chances of saving Earth--slim.

So in any event, the sci fi part required a big suspension of disbelief, and really can't be poked at too hard or the belief crumbles, and if I read the book correctly there is a big plot thread left hanging (perhaps someone who has read the book can enlighten me--what happens to the guys who arrived first? did they ever leave again?), but I enjoyed it all lots and lots.  It is funny and friendly and a wild ride.  I'll be re-reading it, which in this day and age of book buildup in the home is the best compliment I can give a book.

There's diversity here--Rosa is of  French and Japanese descent, and Reg is black.  Which makes Rosa the first Japanese/French American fictional teen in space, to the best of my knowledge....

Kirkus agrees with me, except in the matter of how much of the plot to give away.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

Horizon, and its sequel Infinity, by Tabitha Lord

Today, for a change, I'm not blogging about middle grade books. Instead I offer the first two books of a space-opera(ish) sci fi romance, books that should please teen readers in particular very much (though it was not written, as far as I know, with teens in mind). Horizon (2015) nd its sequel, Infinity (2017) by Tabitha Lord, are self-published, but there is no need to be judgey on that account; I would not have guessed.

Horizon begins with an almost destroyed space craft falling from the sky. A young woman, living alone in the wilds nearby, senses it happen, and rushes to see if she can save either of the two men on board. She saves the life of one, Derek, healing him with her mental powers. And as he regains his strength, Caeli shares her story. It is a sad one.

Caeli once had a pretty idyllic life--loving parents, her life to come with the man she loved, a fulfilling career in medicine--until the genocide began and almost everyone she loved died. Her planet is home to two societies of people, one empathetic with mental powers, living a more rural life, and the others more urban, lacking mental gifts.  The new leader of the second group fears and loathes Caeli's people, and wants to do away with the protective cloak established over the planet that has kept them a peaceful, unknown backwater. So he launches an assault on that levels their homes. Caeli and the other survivors (mostly women and children) are marched to the city, a hellish journey on which Caeli is raped by one of the guards (in the second book, she projects that experience directly into his own mind, make him feel as if it happened to him...). In the city, she makes contact with the resistance, and when she finds hereself in danger, she must flee. And now she has healed Derek, they fall in love.

But Caeli's homeworld is not currently a place where happiness is possible, and Derek has his own commitments as an operative for an interplanetary alliance that strives to keep the galaxay safe from oppression. So the two of them rejoin Derek's mothership, and fly off to his homeworld, with a brief stop for interplanetary adventure. In the second book, Infinity, things really get going back on Caeli's homeworld. It can't be part of the interplanetary alliance with an evil dictator ruling it, so Caeli and Derek lead a somewhat off-the-record mission to strengthen and revitalize the resistance. In what was a very realistic result, they don't offer a miracle cure, and it is only when the reistence is a battered, almost destroyed fragement of itself that success seems possible.  Alongside the current desperate struggle is back story from an earlier conflict, that illuminates the origin of the mental powers of Caeli's people.

The books didn't seem to me to offer that much truly original or exciting, but they are perfectly fine reading fare for those who enjoy high-body-count tension on alien words (my own preference is for the good guys to start saving the day before the high body count part), with a generous helping of racey sex! Caeli seemed to much of a wonder girl for me to really take to her, and Derek was not a deeply three dimensional character (although he got points, in my book, for remembering in a sensitive way (I mean this sincerely) Caeli's dead former lover and fiancé.   In any event, the books were fine, it was a solid story, and I read through to the end with interest, and maybe you will love them more than my own lukewarmness.

My idea of the perfect reader--a fifteen year old girl whose just starting to read sci fi.

Hunted, by Meagan Spooner

I don't have all that much to say about Hunted, by Meagan Spooner, other than that if you were someone who read and reread Beauty, by Robin McKinley back until you almost knew it by heart, and if you desperately wished you hadn't ever read it so that you could have the pleasure of reading it for the first time again, try Hunted. 

That being said, it's not a copy, but it's own retelling. Hunted sets Beauty and the Beast in the woods of late medieval (?) Russia, and Beauty here is a smart, skilled huntress (though she also likes books lots); she's a self-reliant person full of wanting for more than a safe life, married inside walls. It's somewhat grittier than the McKinley version, and less pure wish fulfillment, with more discomfort and pain involved, both emotional and physical.  And in Hunted we also get glimpses from the Beast's own point of view, which makes for interesting reading!  Plus there's a whole magical world just beyond, or inside, or alongside, the snowy woods.

All this was very good, but what made it a personal joy to read is that it also works into the story one of my own most favorite fairy tales--the one where the firebird is stealing the golden apples, and the youngest brother kills the fox when the fox asks him to.  It gives a whole rich additional layer to the story that I enjoyed lots!

So yes, I recommend it!