The Magical Cupboard, by Jane Louise Curry, for Timeslip Tuesday

I was tremendously pleased when my sister came to visit me this past weekend, bringing with her a copy of The Magical Cupboard, by Jane Louise Curry (1976), which she had cleverly bought for me in a used bookstore along the way.  It's the sequel to Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Time, a classic time travel book that I enjoyed.

Rosemary, the main character of the first book, has only a walk on part here--in the present day of the book, she's anxious to find a magical cupboard that played a part in her first time slipping adventure in 18th century America (at least, I guess the cupboard did, but I don't actually remember it....).  In any event, we soon leave Rosemary to see what's happening in 18th century New England.  

The cupboard, a beautiful thing, with intricate carvings, has been stolen by a nasty preacher and his wife, who have made a living profiting from witch trials and embezzled orphans.  One of these orphans is Felicity, who crawls inside the cupboard one cold night when she's supposed to be keeping watch over the preacher's belongings as they travel west in search of new money making schemes.

Wonderfully, Felicity finds herself in a warm and comfortable room, with strange "dragons" whizzing outside...she doesn't know it, but she's in Rosemary's time.  It is all to brief a visit for my taste, but it does set up events for the cupboard to be returned in the present to the family from which it was stolen.

Much of the book involves the evil schemes of the parson and his wife, and the journey west.  Felicity is a fine orphan, making good and finding love and prosperity after much adversity.  

I enjoyed it, but wish we'd seen more time travel, and more of Rosemary!  

Bone Talk, by Candy Gourlay

Bone Talk, by Candy Courlay (middle grade, David Fickling Books, November 5 2019 in the US), is set in the mountains of the Philippines in 1899.  Samkad is ten, on the verge of become officially recognized as a man, and taking his place as a warrior of the Bontoc people, fighting their enemy, another mountain people,  on and off as they have for generations.  His best friend Luki also wants to be a warrior, but she's a girl, and that's not the role awaiting her.   The ancestors are close at hand, giving guidance and protection, the rice grows well, and the world seems to be working as it should.

Then the world changes.  An American arrives, with a boy originally from Samkad's village, who grew up in the lowlands.  The man is friendly, sharing knowledge of his strange country and its customs.   But other Americans have come to the Philippines too, bringing war, and they too come to the village.   They are not friends, and Samkad's passage from childhood to adulthood is the trauma he and his father must face together in the wake of the American war.

I did not know anything about the Philippine-American War before reading this book, though the general trajectory of violent invasion and clash of cultures didn't surprise me.  But the story isn't about the invasion so much as it is about Samkad's growing up, and coping with the dramatic disruption of his world.  He's a great, believable kid, anxious to prove himself, making impulsive decisions that sometimes aren't great, and ultimately come through everything true to himself.  There's enough about the war and the Americans to make things exciting, without that story decentering Samkad and his perspective as things fall apart around him.

The sights and sounds and even smells of Samkad's world are well described, making this place and its people vividly real, which in turn makes the story of invasion and cultural disruption even more powerful.  The story ends gently, with the horror softened by a reprieve for Samkad and the Bontoc people, and indeed, after finishing the book, I was relieved to find that the Bontoc are still living in their mountains (see link above).

So the book is two things--an excellent, and universally familiar story of growing up, and a great introduction to a culture very foreign to many US readers, and to the horror of "culture contact" and imperialism for young readers!  And it is, in fact, endorsed by Amnesty International:

"Amnesty International endorses Bone Talk because it upholds many human rights, including our rights to life, to equality, to have a religion, to enjoy our own culture. It also shows us what can happen when these are taken away from us."

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher.

The Winged Girl of Knossos, by Erick Berry

Thanks to Betsy at Fuse #8 who has been mentioning it as a favorite for years* The Winged Girl of Knossos was for many years a title I looked for in used bookstores....I never found it, and since it was long out of print, I wondered if I'd ever get the chance to read it.  Now it is back in print (Paul Dry Books July 2, 2017), and I have read it, and I have found it good.

Inas is the daughter of the great Cretan inventor Daedalus.  She fills her life with daring adventure, free diving down to harvest sponges for fun, taking part in the bull dances, which involve doing dangerous gymnastics with a live bull.  And she is the test piolet for her father's most recent project--gliders.  Gliding practice has to be done in secret, because it smacks of sorcery to ordinary creatures, but Inas relishes her chances to soar like a bird (before crashing....).

When a young Greek, Theseus, arrives at the court of King Minos as tribute for the bull dancing, she becomes involved in the most serious adventure of her life.  Princess Ariadne enlists her in a plan to help Theseus escape...and that sets in motion a chain of events that ends in Inas and her father having to flee Crete to save their own lives (and yes, the gliders come into the story, taking the place of the wax wings Daedalus built for Icarus in the original story).

Inas is a young heroine to cheer for, with her indefatigable energy and her plucky determination.  She's not the most introspective or thoughtful heroine going, though, and I enjoyed, but didn't much emotionally connect with, her adventures.  The action is brisk, the Cretan setting fascinating, and it is fascinating as well to see a familiar myth told from a brand new perspective.  It's a great story for middle grade readers who love myth-infused adventures (though the gods themselves aren't players in the story).  Don't expect any fantasy elements; there is nothing here that couldn't be real.  But if you are looking for an adventurous vacation in ancient Crete, this is the book for you!

Erick Berry was a pseudonym of Allena Champlin Best; she was an illustrator as well as a writer, and her original illustrations, based on the actual art of the Minoans, adds lots to the atmosphere in my opinion, which being that of an archaeologist, tends towards appreciation of illustrations based on the originals....

*I poked around to see if I could find the earliest recommendation from Betsy I could.  The earliest link, from this post at A Chair a Fireplace and a Teacozy back in 2007 when there was a weekly (?) round-up of overlooked books in the Kidlitosphere no longer works, but I found this quote from 2008 preserved at the much loved and deeply mourned blog Collecting Children's Books:

“This is only a mystery in the sense that I can't figure out why it isn't available or in print. The Newbery Honor winner The Winged Girl of Knossos by Erick Berry is perhaps one of the best American children's books out there. Try finding it sometime, though. Rare doesn't even begin to describe it. If you do get a chance to read it, it's pip. I believe it won the honor in 1929. Fingers crossed that it gets its due someday.”

The Collecting Children's Books post adds to Betsy's endorsement, and is interesting reading in its own right!  Peter, the blogger whose site it was, mentions that were "overtly offensive racial references" in the original, but I did not come across any that registered in my read, so they seem to have been removed.

Final answer: I don't really think this is one of the best American children's books there is, but it's a good, quick read, and the right kids (interested in archaeological mysteries, liking stories of physical pursuits of an adventurous kind, liking brave girls to cheer for)  will love it.

Disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

The Ninth Day, by Ruth Tenzer Feldman, for Timeslip Tuesday

The Ninth Day, by Ruth Tenzer Feldman (Ooligan Press, YA, 2015), is one of three linked time travel books, the others being Blue Thread and Seven Stitches.  I liked this one best of the three.

All three books involve a mysterious woman, Serakh, born thousands of years ago, who can travel through time.  In each book she appears to a young Jewish women of her family, in various eras, to enlist their help traveling back in time to help other young women in need.  In The Ninth Day, the heroine is a girl named Hope who has struggled with a severe stutter all her life.  Only when she sings is her voice clear.  The place is Berkeley, California, the time is the 1960s, just as the Free Speech Movement is gaining ground,....and a few weeks before the book begins, Hope went on an accidental acid trip that left her with a mutilated face and flashbacks.

And then Serakh appears, and takes Hope on a journey back to 11th century Paris, where another young Jewish woman fears for her baby's life.  Her husband, shattered by the slaughter of the Jewish community of Mainz, and experiencing hallucinations, vowed to sacrifice his first born son to God.  Hope and Serakh have just nine days to persuade him to change his mind....and one tool they might use, if they choose, is LSD.  Despite the horrible consequences of Hope's own experience being unwittingly fed it, it might be a way to change the father's mind and save the baby...an interesting moral issue.

It's a very magical sort of time travel, with Serakh's gifts something over all difficulties of language, though even Serakh can't smooth over all the cultural tensions that happen when 20th century girls visit the 11th century.  The result is more a glimpse of the past, with a bit of a history lesson, rather than a full immersive experience--it's the particular people who matter, not the experience of time travel itself.

I think this is the most successfully of Tenzer's books.  Her story telling in all three is excellent, but this book, more than the other two, links the stories of present and past thematically and practically.  Hope's story in the 1960s could still have stood alone just fine, but at least here the time travel added to that story and deepened it rather than being something of a distraction.

The only thing I actively disliked about the book were the characters of Hope's brother and sister, who were too awful to be believable.  They felt exaggerated for effect rather than just convincingly unpleasant.  On the other hand, Hope's relationship with her dying grandfather is beautifully poignant, and her struggle to overcome the difficulty of her stutter and find her voice (she is lovely singer, and this plays into the plot) was very well done.  As an added bonus, I learned things about the Free Speech movement and 11th century European history,  which I appreciate.

review copy received from the publisher

Blue Thread, by Ruth Tenzer Feldman, for Timeslip Tuesday

Blue Thread, by Ruth Tenzer Feldman (Ooligan Press, 2012) is historical fiction about the women's suffrage movement in 1912 Portland Oregon with a time travel twist.

16 year old Miriam, daughter of a relatively well-off Jewish family in Portland, is desperate to work at her father's printing shop, but he is convinced a woman's place is in the home.  She finds some outlet for her frustration by supporting the suffrage movement, secretly printing cards to hand out at the polling places as Oregon, the last holdout state on the West Coast, votes on the issue.  

Though her family doesn't support women's rights, the strength of Miriam's convictions has been bolstered by a most unexpected source.  A mysterious woman named Serakh, whose abrupt appearance in Miriam's home is tied to Miriam's grandmother's  prayer shawl, leads her on a journey back in time.  Serakh, and the power of the blue thread in the shawl, combine to take Miriam back to several thousand years to inspire a young woman fighting a patriarchal system for her own rights.  Tirtzah is one of the Daughters of Zelophehad, and thanks to Miriam's encouragement, she and her sisters become the first women in Biblical history to own land in their own right.  (I'd never heard of them, and was glad to learn!) And in turn, being part of Tirtzah's story inspires Miriam to take her own future into her own hands.

Blue Thread is good historical fiction; the suffrage movement was brought to life just fine, as were Miriam's' frustrations and her father's disapproval.   Miriam's a believable character who thinks and grows as her story progress, and, in as much as I enjoy books about girls thinking about careers, I appreciated all the ideas she came up with for her father's print shop and her desire to jump in and start working.  It was such good historical fiction, in fact, that it really didn't need the time travel part and would have worked just as well without it.

The trips back to Old Testament times were interesting in their own right, but rather brief, and with little real urgency, drama, or emotional investment.  Miriam basically uses her modern perspective to tell Tirtzah and her sisters what to do, they do it, it kind of works, end of story.  Then for much of the book she doesn't even think about Serakh or Tirtzah.  Likewise the story of the prayer shawl and the history of Miriam's maternal line (including a tragedy in her father's generation) could likewise have been expanded with the narrative threads working more cohesively together.   I am reminded of a gourmet doughnut I had last week, in which the chocolate doughnut would have been perfectly tasty without the additional chocolate doodads stuck on top of it to add gourmet doughnut-ness.  Mystical Serakh, acting as a time travel conductor for Miriam's family for generations for unclear reasons just has to be swallowed without explanation....

Short answer-- if you are willing to take this as good historical fiction and interesting girl seeking career fiction, and don't mind the extras that go along for the ride, do give this one a try!  Though Miriam is 16, the social norms of her time and place are such that she reads a considerably younger than a 16 year old of today, and there's nothing here to make a younger reader uncomfortable, so I think it would work better for 11-12 year olds than for teens.

The Girl in the Torch, by Robert Sharenow

The Girl in the Torch, by Robert Sharenow (Balzer + Bray, mg, May 2015)

In the early 20th century, Sarah and her mother leave their home, where Sarah's father has just been killed, for the hope that is the United States.  But then Sarah's mother falls ill, and dies in the immigration center, and Sarah is put on a boat headed back to Europe.  She refuses to give up on her dream, though, and jumps overboard, swimming to the Statue of Liberty.  For the next few days, she makes it her home, scrounging for food discarded by tourists and hiding from the night watchman.

Then the watchman discovers her...but Sarah is lucky, and he takes her off the island to a refuge in a household run by a Chinese woman.   And though more troubles come her way (the life of poor orphaned immigrants in New York City not being all that fun), Sarah is lucky in that she finds people to befriend her (to the point of requiring strong suspension of disbelief), and so her story ends with hope.

The majority of the people whom Sarah meets are well intentioned, and lacking in ethnic prejudice (they were Russian, Irish, Chinese, African American, and Native American, and Sarah herself is Jewish).   So although it might be hard for the cynic to swallow the fact that all these people worked together to look after Sarah, this niceness did much to compensate for the sadness of death and the hardness of poverty that are also part of Sarah's life.   And though I myself am cynical much of the time, I frankly prefer my historical fiction not to dwell too much on dark realities.  I am not drawn to grit.  Which means I enjoyed this one just fine, and thought it pleasantly readable; I'd happily give it to any young historical fiction fan who likes nice character-centered stories of the past!

(Here's what I would really have liked more of--Sarah living in the Statue of Liberty for longer, and making a home for herself there ala the Borrowers.  Oh well!)

Here's the Kirkus review.

disclaimer:  review copy received fro the publisher

The Detective's Assistant, by Kate Hannigan

I was very taken with The Detective's Assistant, by Kate Hannigan (Little, Brown, April 2015, middle grade); plot,character, and writing style all pleased me very much, so yay for me!  I was a tad surprised by my enjoyment, because I feel I have read an awful lot of books about plucky orphan girls in 19th century America and feel rather jaded about them (and I decided when I was quite young that I didn't find 19th century American history interesting, and haven't recovered).  But The Detective's Assistant fought back against my biases beautifully.

I liked the characters:

Turns out I am not immune to the charms of a plucky, bright 19th century orphan girl!  Nell was a believable character, who came with a backstory full of mysteries of her own--what happened the night her father killed her uncle?  What were the circumstances of her father's own death?  Who is her pen pal, Jemma?  And will her aunt keep her?

More than Nell, I appreciated the character of her aunt,  her uncle's widow, who works for the Pinkerton Detective Agency in Chicago.    It was tons of fun seeing her at work solving crimes, using her position as a woman to her advantage!  And it was a treat to find out at the end that she was a real person.

I liked the framing of the story:

As well as being a story about a particular girl, it is the story of what was happening in American politics, particularly with regard to slavery, in the time just before Abraham Lincoln was elected.  Jemma, Nell's friend, and her family left New York for Canada after free black families like theirs started being captured and forced into slavery, and the Abolitionist movement and the underground railway are referenced in the story, adding historical depth (even for people who feel tired of 19th century American history).  And I think Hannigan did an excellent job with her historical details--I noticed nothing that grated!

Mostly, though, I liked the whole premise of the female detective and the plucky girl assistant who wants to assist more, both so her aunt will keep her and also because of the thrill of it.

Here's the Kirkus review.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher.

In short, a very good book.

Children of Winter, by Berlie Doherty, for Timeslip Tuesday

Children of Winter, by Berlie Doherty (middle grade, 1985, reissued in the UK in 2007; that's the cover shown at left), for Timeslip Tuesday-- the cold of winter and the horror of plague combined make for a gripping read.

On what should have been an easy hike in the Peak District, three children are separated from their parents.  They take shelter in an old barn.....and there the oldest, Catherine, finds herself living the life of another Catherine--a girl from the 17th century.  That Catherine, also with two younger siblings, was sent to the isolated barn when plague came to their village--their parents hoped that if the children could survive the winter alone, they would be safe from the sickness.

What follows is a tale of cold and hunger, and longing for home, as the three children eek out their food supply as best they can, all the while fearing the worst for those left behind in the village.   (That being said, for the historic children, I'm not sure if life in the barn was a dramatic reduction in their standard of their living!)  The pain felt by the children, and their mother, is vivid, and the descriptions bring all the details of the past vividly to life.  It's rather a nice survival story--and being a fan of that genre, I appreciated the small triumphs of mushrooms and fleeces and such that kept the children alive.

Modern Catherine is totally immersed in the past--there's no reflection here of any dissonance between past and present.  As a result, it reads more like historical fiction with little end pages of modern times, and not much like a timeslip at all, except right toward the beginning, when Catherine in the present feels the pull of Catherine in the past.  This separation is especially clear at the end, when the modern parents return to the barn and the family is reunited--suddenly the children are back in their own time, and there's no attempt to wrap up the loose ends of the past.  

Did historic Catherine's little brother, who was sick (possibly with plague) at the end of the book, live, for instance?  Did the boy back in the village who Catherine fancied live? I would have liked a coda in which modern Catherine finds something out about what happened to the children in the past.  The abrupt ending was an emotional let-down, especially coming at it did after moments of acute emotional pain when the children were forced to isolate themselves from the very real, horrible, suffering of others.   This is the dilemma that really raises the emotional tension of the story-if someone is suffering, and if to help them means you might die as well, do you put yourself in harm's way and break the promise made to your mother, who might already be dead?

Kids who enjoy learning through historical fiction, enlivened by a touch of the fantastic, will probably enjoy it lots.  It's based on the true story of the village of Eyam in Darbyshire, which cut itself off from the rest of the world when the plague came in 1666--here's more historical background at the author's website.   And those who like stories of kids surviving on their own in harsh circumstances will like it also.  Those who love time travel stories, though, might be disappointed--the story would have been  much the same if the modern children had been cut out altogether.

Palace of Spies, by Sarah Zettel

There are not many fun YA novels of intrigue and conspiracy (with a smidge of romance) set in the reign of George I.  In fact,  Palace of Spies, by Sarah Zettel (HMH Books for Young Readers, Nov. 2013), set in 1716, is the only one I can think of, and it sets a nicely high standard for this particular little sub-genre.  This is a good period for intrigue and plotting--the newly installed Hanoverian king is not universally loved and the Jacobites (who want the Stuarts back) are plotting and seething.  So basically, the palace of the Prince and Princess of Wales is a hotbed of somewhat more than your run-of-the-mill political and social tensions.

And young Peggy Fitzroy is right in the middle of it.

Peggy didn't have a choice.  The mysterious friend of her deceased mother, who took her in when she was booted out of her previous guardian's house, plans for Peggy to take the place of Francesca, a young lady in waiting who left the court and died (mysteriously?) some time ago...and as no one at court knows she died, and Peggy looks somewhat like her (the fashions of this period--heavy makeup and powdered hair help viz disguise), Peggy can go to court and report back to her new guardian and his associates--a gentleman (?) of uncertain status who's a whiz at cards, and unfriendly woman who will be Peggy's maid.

And Peggy has no better alternative to offer herself.  But no one has told her just what she's reporting on, and so Peggy, step by intricate step, finds herself ensnared in a dance of intrigue that is more complex than she had imagined.  Francesca had secrets--a lover, a dream, a twisted past of her own--and Peggy gradually discovers that these secrets could be deadly.......

So it was rather fun, to see things getting more complicated, and trying to spot clues and figure things out!  My only reservation is that the whole business of not actually giving Peggy any meaningful instructions--I never quite understood why her new guardian went to all the work to get Peggy installed as a lady-in-waiting if he wasn't going to use her in any useful capacity, and this felt like a pretty substantial plot hole to me.  Some of his other actions made little sense to me either.  But it's possible he was just making sure she was safely installed first, and didn't realize what a trap she was going to find herself in, and maybe the sequel will make things clearer-or even more murky and dangerous!

If you enjoy historical intrigue and mystery, give this one a try. 

Something I liked: One of the characters is an artist's apprentice, so there are a few (not lots, but some) bonus bits about Georgian art thrown in.

A Spark Unseen, by Sharon Cameron

A Spark Unseen, by Sharon Cameron (Scholastic, 2013), is the sequel to The Dark Unwinding, and continues the adventures of young Katharine Tulman as she struggles to keep her mentally fragile uncle and his brilliant inventions safe, and away from England's enemies (and its government).  It is the age of Napoleon III, and the balance of power between the European nations is precarious--mechanical devices that could sink ironclads would easily tip the balance, and that is just one of Uncle Tully's fantastical creations. 

When The Dark Unwinding ended, Lane, the love of Katharine's life, had left her on a mission to France...and when this book opens, so long a time has passed with no word from him that he is presumed dead.  Katharine, though, refuses to believe this is so, and when she is caught between armed men, working from the French, attempting to kidnap her uncle, and her own government attempting to co-opt him, she boldly smuggles him out of the country to a dangerous refugee--the old family house in Paris.

There Katharine, searching for Lane while trying to keep her uncle happily sequestered and secret, finds herself caught in a web of political intrigue and danger, where neither she (nor the reader) knows who can be trusted, and just what the heck is really going on....The pages sure do turn fast, but this is definitely one for the reader who is stronger of heart then me-there was absolutely no respite from distress and danger and tension.  So if you like those things, you will probably like this one lots.

Although I appreciated the suspense of it all (even though it wasn't quite my cup of tea), I most definitely prefer the first book, which was full of Gothic mystery and magically surreal bits, as well as all the lovely smoldering tension between Katharine and Lane.  And that fist book had a lovely sense of place; in this one, Paris, as seen through the desperate eyes of Katharine as just about everything goes wrong around her, doesn't get a chance to shine.

That being said, the sweet relationship between Katharine and Uncle Tully is still as pleasing as ever, and many interesting minor characters added to the interest.

Things are wrapped up more or less at the end of the book (although as long as Uncle Tully is alive, governments will want to exploit him).  Though there are hints of more story to come, I just hope poor Katharine will finally get a chance to catch her breath before new danger comes to find her!

(A peevish aside, of no bearing on the book--I find it annoying to see 21st century hair on a 19th century young woman.  She looks like she's solving a murder mystery on prom night).

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

The Lost Kingdom, by Matthew Kirby

The Lost Kingdom, by Matthew Kirby (Scholastic, September 2013, Middle Grade).

It is the mid-18th century in a (just slightly) alternate America.  The colonies are not yet united, and the French and Indian Wars are flaring up on the western frontier.  And Ben Franklin, and his colleagues at the American Philosophical Society, decide to launch an expedition to find the legendary kingdom established by the Welsh prince Madoc, and convince the Welsh to join in the fight against the French.  Fortunately the Society has a magnificent air-ship, a marvel of engineering, that will make the voyage last only a few weeks instead of months or years...and the scientists and philosophers aboard are eager not only to find out if the legend of Madoc is truth or fiction, but to collect data and make observations as they go.

And one of the scientists is a renowned botanist, John Bartram, bringing his son Billy plant-collecting with him for the first time (both are real historical people, which I found cool).  Billy is thrilled, and pleased as well to find out he's not the only young person on board--the daughter of the expedition's leader, Jane, successfully sneaked on too.   It's sure to be a grand adventure--after all, high in the air, what could possibly go wrong?

Answer:   Treachery.  Attacks by the savage megafauna of this alternate America.  Natural disasters and Sabotage.   Violent conflict with the French.   The prejudice of Billy's father toward Andrew, the half-Native translator of the expedition that threatens to destroy the relationship of father and son, and threatens Andrew's very life.   And then the arrival in the hidden kingdom they had searched for...where they do not find exactly what they were looking for.

Once airship sets off on its journey, these exciting bits follow one another like beads on a string, and the tension grows steadily.  But alongside these adventures, and often taking center stage, is the conflict between Billy and his father, as Billy sees his father exhibiting ugly racism toward Andrew.   Like Billy, the reader will (I assume) be disturbed by this; though it's historically accurate, it's no less repellent.

All though the excitements of the journey are enough to carry the audience along nicely,  the perfect reader for this one, I think, has to have some interest in the pass times of geeky adults.  The world of the ship is dominated by the eccentric members of the American Philosophical Society, who we met and observe (as they fixate on their particular interests) as the journey passes.

My one major issue with the book is that Jane, the token girl, never gets to be more than the token girl.  She has no character arc, and though I thought that the relationship (and it didn't have to be a romantic one) between Jane and Billy would be explored during the story, Jane remains off to the side, functioning only to drive the plot (in a dangerous direction) at one point.  And I wondered why she was there at all.


I am often troubled by presentations of Native Americans in historical fiction, but I think Kirby did a pretty good job here of using the attitudes of the characters to convey a pretty accurate idea of how 18th century colonials would have perceived them.  So I have no substantive complaints on that score, though I think Kirby does tilt slightly toward portraying the frontier lands as unused wilderness with only a scattering of people who weren't properly taking advantage of it, which wasn't exactly the case (and which was something the Pilgrims, for instance, liked to believe).  In fairness, though, the horrific mega-predators in this alternate America might well have kept population densities lower than they were in reality...

In short, a solid adventure with a fresh and ultimately satisfying premise, and a really cool air ship that should delight the scientifically-minded reader, that would have appealed more to me personally if Jane had been more of a person and less a female place holder.

Here are other reviews at Random Musings of a Bibliophile and Views from the Tesseract

Disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

How I Became a Ghost, a Choctaw Trail of Tears Story by Tim Tingle

How I Became a Ghost, a Choctaw Trail of Tears Story by Tim Tingle (The RoadRunner Press, June 2013, 160 pages, Middle Grade and up) is a stunner of a book that deserves to be widely read, not just by kids but by grown-ups.   I'd heard of the Trail of Tears, and knew it was horrible, but now it has been made real to me.   And it was a really good story, with lots of magical, exciting, adventure.  

Isaac, the narrator of the story, is a ghost.  But when his story begins, he is an ordinary kid, growing up in a close-knit Choctaw community.

"I'm ten years old and I'm not a ghost yet.  My name is Isaac and I have a mother and a father and a big brother, Luke.  I have a dog, too.  His name is Jumper, and he is my best friend.  We go everywhere together.  We swim in the river together; we chase chickens together."

Only the date at the top of the chapter, 1830, tells the reader this is a long ago story.

Isaac's life is about to be destroyed.  The Choctaw are about to be driven out on the long forced march from their ancestral homeland in Mississippi to Oklahoma--on foot, in winter.  Many will die, and Isaac finds himself seeing visions foreshadowing who, and how.  And he knows that he will be among those who do not make it, and that he will become a ghost.

But though what happens is almost unbearably harsh, Tim Tingle accomplishes something remarkable with the way in which Isaac tells his story.   Without diminishing the import and impact of the suffering and death, he manages to make his characters more than just the sum of their horrible experiences, and their story more than just a litany of darkness.  Part of this comes from Isaac's voice--he's very much a lovable, somewhat naive kid; a typical ten-year-old boy (who happens to be a ghost), telling his story in a matter-of-fact way with touches of humor. Another escape from darkness comes from the resilience of the Choctaw people, who face the horrible hand they've been dealt with heroism, determination, and the strength of their community, one that includes the ancestors and the recent dead as well as with the living. And because death does not sever the bonds of family, the fact that Isaac becomes a ghost is desperately sad, but not as emotionally devastating as it might be. 

And the final thing that keeps the weight of the subject from crushing the reader is that Isaac's story is also a gripping adventure, one that finds him on a desperate mission to save a teenage girl from the soldiers forcing the march onward...with the help of an unexpected ally, a shape-shifting panther boy.   This adventure is one with tremendous appeal for younger readers (shape-shifting panther boy! desperate escape involving schemes and subterfuge!), making the pages turn fast and furiously.

And an even more final, small, thing--Isaac's dog Jumper is a joy.

This is historical fiction doing what the best historical fiction does--making part of the past come alive, jolting the reader into new knowledge of the past and its atrocities while keeping them engrossed in a great story.   And it's the best sort of historical fiction for kids--teaching without preaching, telling a story that's exciting and entertaining, while packing an emotional punch that leaves the reader stunned and changed.  It's the first of a trilogy, and I am looking forward to the next book lots.

Note on age of reader:  I'm going to go with 10 years old and up on this one, with the caveat that a grown-up should be nearby.   Bad things happen to people in this book--blankets deliberately infected with smallpox, for instance, are given to the people of Isaac's town, and people die.  So many ten-year-olds have a keen sense of Justice, and they will be outraged and angry, and might (thinking of my own child) want to throw the book violently down because they are so furious that people could do such things to other people.  But I think the fact that the horror isn't underlined with a heavy hand, and Isaac's friendly voice, and his friendly dog, and the growing excitement of the story (if the young reader gets to the shape-shifting panther boy, they'll be hooked for good), will balance that out.   There's a lot of gradual buildup to Isaac becoming a ghost, too, so it doesn't come as the sort of horrible shock, making it difficult to keep reading, that sometimes happens with deaths of characters one is fond of.  In any event, I will try it on my boy, and will watch with interest to see if he says I am a terrible mother for making him read something so sad, and gives up, or if it sings for him....

I have no reservations at all about recommending it to grown-ups.

Tim Tingle is himself an Oklahoma Choctaw and storyteller, who has been recording the stories of the Choctaw elders for the past decade, and whose great-great-grandfather walked the Trail of Tears. 

So.  There is the book, and it is an excellent book, and it defies easy categorization.  Is it realistic fiction, in that the elements of the book that might seem supernatural (shape shifting, ghosts, visions) are a real part of the world of its characters, or is it Speculative Fiction, in that things far beyond mundane "reality" are an integral part of the story (like the fact that it is being narrated by a ghost)?  I would like very much to nominate this book for the Cybils come October 1, but where?  I am thinking I will email Tim Tingle, and ask him where he thinks it would be most at home....

Templar, written by Jordan Mechner, illustrated by LeUyen Pham and Alex Puvilland--a stupendous graphic novel

Templar, by Jordan Mechner, illustrated by LeUyen Pham and Alex Puvilland (First Second, Juley 2013, 408 pages) is an utterly stunning, gripping, heart-breaking graphic novel that tells of the dissolution of the Knights Templar in the early 14th century, and the torture and execution of its members.  

It's the story of three members of the order who escape, discover the location of the Templars' vast treasure (the whole reason why the French king wanted the order dissolved--he was deeply in debt to the Templars), and hatch a daring scheme to recover it from out of the heart of Paris.  It's the story of the love between one of these men and the noblewoman he left behind when he went off to the crusades (she plays an active role in things, despite his attempts to keep her "safe")...and it's a story that knocked the socks off me.

It is the first graphic novel I've ever read that moved me to the brink of tears.  It is the first graphic novel that I've read more slowly than I would a regular book, because I was so invested in the pictures as well as the words.   And it's the first time I can remember in reading a graphic novel having to desperately turn to the end to see...

I just went and read what other people had to say about it....and thought it might be worth adding that other reviews give more import  to the swash-buckling action-filled fun of the three daring dudes and their great treasure heist.  Huh.  I was all focused on the doom, betrayal, loyalties clung too in the face of hopeless odds, human frailty, etc.  In fact, I must confess I kind of went very quickly through the actual heist because of emotional anxiousness. 

Recommended without reservation to older teen and grown-up fans of graphic novels and historical fiction.  In addition to the adjectives used above, I can in all honesty add powerful, beautifully illustrated, memorable, educational, etc.

Recommended, with reservations, for younger teens.  The reservations are as follows:
--the story is complicated, and it's never stated that the whole reason the Templars were disbanded wasn't because anyone really thought they were heretics, but because the Crusades were over, the Templars hadn't won, and they were just sitting around being incredibly rich--much richer than the King of France.  My own younger teen reader didn't get this.   I'm not sure he understood either how torture can make a person "confess" to things they didn't do.

--there's torture, violence (including innocent people being burned at the stake), and a bit of "adult content," though not graphically so.

Incidentally, Jordan Mechner is the creator of Prince of Persia, and Book 1 of Templar was first published independently as Solomon's Thieves.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

Stolen Magic, by Stephanie Burgis

Stolen Magic (Atheneum, April 2, 2013, middle grade) by Stephanie Burgis, is the third book in a series about an incorrigible Regency girl, Kat, who just so happens to be a powerful magic user.  Unfortunately for Kat, any magic other than that of the Guardians (snooty upper class types) is tremendously looked down on.  Although Kat has inherited a place among the Guardians from, she's also inherited more than a little of her mother's distasteful, distrusted, witchcraft....as have her sisters.

In this third book, one of her sisters, Angeline, is about to marry a very high-breed young man, whose mother is a snobby harridan of the worst kind.   Kat, Angeline, their father and stepmother arrive at the finance's grand estate....and immediately mayhem ensues.

There are ordinary questions:

Will the schemes of the nasty mother keep Angeline from finding happiness?

Will Kat disgrace her family more than she usually does with her lack of regard for decorum? 

There are magical questions:

Will Kat ever get another portal that will allow her to be a true member of the Guardians?   She sacrificed hers in the previous book, and unfortunately all the spare portals have been stolen.

Will she and the woman tasked with working with her on finding them (a nasty piece of work from the previous books) come to blows?

Just what sort of spell does Angeline think she is doing?

And there are mysteries:

Who is stalking Kat with Malevolent Intent?

Who is the mysterious marquise who seems to know so much about Kat's family?

And then there is the Really Big Mystery:

Who is trying to kill Angeline?

And then there's a bonus kicker-- a plot by the scheming French that needs foiling (this being the Regency, and things not being too friendly between the French and the English).

So a very busy, entertainingly swirling plot that ends with the introduction of such a delightful appealing new twist that I hope rather a lot that there are more books to come!!!

I couldn't help but wish, as I read this one, that Kat would grow up just a bit more....she seems to have regressed somewhat in impetuosity and lack of empathy. Although that being said, there were times when I would not have blamed her for utterly loosing her temper, and she managed not to!   But of course, the fact that I was caring about this as I read shows that Kat was very real to me.

The second book, Renegade Magic, is still my favorite (it has a more mythologically rooted plot, and more sympathy for Kate's poor, put-upon, unappreciated stepmama), but this was a fun, rollicking read, and I highly recommend offering this series to any ten or eleven year olds you happen to have on hand.

Here's another review at The Book Smugglers

Disclaimer:  review copy received from the publisher.

Dust Girl, by Sarah Zettel

Yeah for reading books that have been sitting around the house, possibly crying in corners, for far too long! Finally I have read Sarah Zettel's Dust Girl (Random House, middle grade/YA, June 2012), and I found it good.  It is good because although the barest bones of the story are familiar--girl finds out she is half fairy,  the opposing sides of the fairy realm fight over her while she figures out how to use her magic--the particulars are very unique indeed.

Callie's mother won't let her go outside the Kansas hotel she runs, in case her skin gets dark and people suspect her father was black.   But then the dust comes (this is the 1930s) and there's almost no-one left in town to care.  Still her mother won't give up and leave, though the food and money are running out, and Callie is choking her life out on dust, because she's waiting for Callie's musician father to come back.

Then Callie plays the piano for the first time.  And her playing awakens the magic in her, and a dust storm like no other comes, blowing her mother away and bringing into town the first (and most truly horrible!) of the magical adversaries Callie must deal with.   (Just to give you a taste--they are grasshopper creatures in human guise, and they are very....hungry).

So Callie, and Jack, the boy she just rescued from the abandoned jail in town, hit the road, first running for their lives (grasshopper creatures sure are fast!), and then running less fast for their lives while searching for the people they have lost. On their journey they encounter madness and mayhem and magic...all the while moving through the blighted landscape of the dust bowl Midwest.

So yes, I liked it lots--although Callie was Special, she also managed to be nicely ordinary, and her motivations and actions all made sense to me.   Callie also had to think considerably about the fact that her father was black--in the racially charged world through which she moves, she can't forget it--yet this aspect of her story was well integrated with the whole, and though sometimes it was underlined, it never felt overly didactic.  And, on top of that, it was a swinging, exciting adventure, with (wait for it!) no Romance front and center, which was rather refreshing--it's nice to read a book in which people are running for their lives without getting distracted by their Feelings for each other.    Callie and Jack will probably hook up in the future, when they're a bit older, and that's fine.

But what I really loved was the historical part of this fantasy--I don't turn to Dust Bowl fiction for my reading pleasure, and so meeting that historical landscape in my favorite genre was a lovely treat.

Here's what I especially appreciated--America is not treated as a fantasy blank slate, just waiting for the immigrants to arrive with their magics.  Instead, the first magical Person Callie meets is Native American, almost certainly Coyote, and this is what he has to say about it:

"Stupid white people.  Stupid yellow people, or stupid brown people.  Bringing in all kinds of ghosts and little spirits.  Can't even tell who's in the game anymore." (p 31). 

And so even though Callie's magical journey doesn't directly involve the native magic of her place, at least there's this acknowledgement that there is an indigenous presence.  The only other fantasies for middle grade/YA readers set in North American that I can think of simply do not have this (The Prairie Thief, by Melissa Wiley, and Patricia Wrede's Frontier Magic series), and I think they are the weaker for it.

Note on cover:  that's the new paperback cover up at the top; it comes out in June.   Some people thought that the cover of the hardback (at right) didn't show Callie  accurately as half black (although since she's been passing as white, or at least, her mother thinks she has, all her life, she has to look at least somewhat ambiguous, and I think the paperback goes a bit too far in the other direction....).  But in any event, it's nice to have the paperback showing a Main Character of Color, and so good on ya, Random House. 

Note on age:  This one is a perfect tween book, great for 11-13 year olds.  As far as I can remember, there's nothing in it that would be Inappropriate for younger readers (which is to say there's no sex, but I'm not sure how well I do at registering curse words, since I am married to someone from Liverpool and have become hardened), but there are issues of racial and religious prejudice (Jack is Jewish), law-breaking and human unhappiness/human evilness that make it a bit strong for a younger kid.

A few other blog reviews, by people who were reading it ages ago:  Bunbury in the Stacks, Someday my Printz will Come, and alibrarymama

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! 

The Diviners, by Libba Bray (with a bit of Kidlitcon to start with)

I am writing from New York, where I am busily attending Kidlitcon.  Yesterday I attended two lovely publisher previews, at Random House and Harper Collins, where us bloggers heard about many wonderful sounding books (about which more later), enjoyed tasty snacks, and left with generous bags of books.  It was then banquet time, where very good company (I sat with Kelly from Stacked and Leila from Bookshelves of Doom, neither of whom I'd met before today), and more tasty food combined to make a very pleasant evening. 

The particular upshot of all this is that, due to the generous bags of books, there is no way I want to take my ARC of the Diviners, which kept me company on my journey, back home with me.  So I am quickly sharing my thoughts.

The Diviners, by Libba Bray (Little Brown, YA, Sept 18, 2012) --paranormal historical fiction in which the excitement of life as as party girl in  New York in the Roaring Twenties turns into the excitement of trying to stop a murderers, would-be Antichrist!

The Basic Plot:   Evie is a flapper girl, desperate to plunge into life and (this is my opinion) immerse herself in sensory overload so that she doesn't have to think about things she'd rather not thing about (such as her dead brother.  Such as the effects of her actions on other people.  Especially the effects of her preternatural gift--the ability to hold an object, and see things about its owner).   So when her parents send her off to her uncle in New York (curator of a museum of the occult), she's thrilled.

When the first bizarrely grotesque murder victim is discovered, and Evie's uncle is asked by the police for his opinion on the occult elements of the crime, Evie goes along for the ride, excited to see her first New York crime scene.  And finds herself into very dark and dangerous waters...because this is no ordinary murder, and no ordinary police force can stop the inexorable progression of killings.   Killings that might lead to hell on earth....

And in the meantime, the canvas of New York on which the murders are being played out is as full of characters as a Bruegel painting.   All of whom have secrets...

My Thoughts, written in haste because of needing, like Evie, to hurl myself back into the giddy excitement that is Manhattan (although I don't think Evie would be interested in Kidlitcon):

--Evie annoyed me at first, but grew on me.  I decided that I liked having a flawed character front and center--she was very believable, but with room to change as she became more mature.  And she has her good points.
--the first few murders, before the identity of the murder was confirmed, were very interesting indeed.  After Evie and co. figure it out, the next murders are still interesting, but not as much so because we know what's happening.
--there were too many characters of interest with secrets and too many bits of unresolved or apparently extraneous side plot.  I really really did not think it added anything to the book, for instance, for Jericho to have the particular secret that he did.  I'm sure that it will all be useful in future books, but I do think that The Diviners could have been trimmed and tightened.   It was very long (the final version, according to Amazon, is 608 pages) and I don't think it really needed to be that long.

Final Conclusion:  Even the snappy dialogue, interesting characters (even though there were perhaps too many of them, they were all interesting), and a creepy, supernatural mystery weren't quite enough to keep the ball rolling as briskly as I would have liked.  

Look Ahead, Look Back (The Snipesville Chronicles #3), by Annette Laing, for Timeslip Tuesday

Look Ahead, Look Back, by Annette Laing (Confusion Press, 2012), is the latest adventure of three time travelling kids from Georgia.  When Hannah and Alex Diaz moved from California to Snipesville, they suffered all kinds of culture shock, but were fortunate to make a new friend, a boy named Brandon.  But Brandon, whose black, doesn't go to the Diaz's snooty private school... However, for these three kids, there is a lot more to life than school.  When they stumble across a skeletal body eroding out of the ground, they find themselves embarking on their most nail-biting time travel adventure to date.  And this time, the mysterious professor who masterminded their previous travels doesn't seem to be on hand to provide her usual safety net.

In mid-eighteenth century Georgia, slavery has just been legalized, and Hannah, Alex, and Brandon are about to see for themselves just what that means.  And this time around, time travel has played a trick on the boys--Brandon is now the white kid, working as a servant for a newly immigrated Anglican minister.  And Alex is now a black slave, the property of an ambitious, vicious man.   As for Hannah, she finds herself the indentured servant of that same man...one notch up from the horror of slavery, but still virtual property.    In a world where old beliefs and Christianity both hold sway, in a world where some have the power of life and death, and some have only the power to resist, Alex, Brandon, and Hannah survive as best they can, seeking not only the answer to the mystery of the skeleton in the woods, but a way to get back home....

Laing explores difficult questions with a confident hand.   The relationships between Africans, Europeans, and Native Americans in the remote Georgia frontier are fraught with fear and danger, and, without sugar-coating anything, she makes this complexity clear to the reader.   In what I think is a wise move, she avoids Alex's first person perspective on what it is like to be a white boy turned into a black slave.  But she does give him a clear voice, and allows Brandon and Alex to reflect and react both meaningfully and believably on their changed skin color, and the social consequences of that change.  The evil of slavery is confronted in a forthright way, not only through descriptions of physical abuse and hardship, but more philosophically as well--can you own someone, and still be a good person, or will having such power corrupt you?  Likewise, religion is tackled head on.  Brandon is a Southern Baptist, and a sincere Christian.  Hannah and Alex aren't.  Rather than being avoided, this is something that is talked about in the open, and something that affects Brandon's motivations back in the past.  

The historical world building is excellent.  Annette Laing quit a tenured university job teaching history to write, and it's clear that she knows her stuff.  This is not a place or period that's within my own area of historical expertise, but the details of the social structure, and the three cultures intersecting, seemed pretty good to me (although the Native Americans were mostly off-stage--the setting was primarily the cleared land of the nascent plantations.   I had only one moment of doubt in the whole book, which is pretty darn good, because I am very picky about my historical fiction.*   Others with more knowledge might, of course, find more to question.  But in short, from an educational standpoint, I highly recommend it. 

And finally, it's a pretty darn exiting story, qua story!  The three kids are not just sock puppets of Time Travel, but are very human, and the book is as much about the relationships between people as it is about the adventures of time travelling.  Hannah, in particular, is a complex and interesting character--her mother died not long ago, and she is still working through her feelings of resentment, loss, and failure.

This is my favorite of the three books in the series, and I think it can be read as a standalone--there are lots of reference to other characters met in the past in other books, but there's enough context to keep the new reader from being too confused.

*  As I said above, I found almost nothing to bother me in the details of the history.  But just for the record, my one moment of doubt occurred when Alex actually saw (or thought he saw, in a fever dream) one of the Little People who lived alongside the Native Americans--I certainly don't mind them being part of the world, because they were, and still are, here,  but the description of this Person was rather stereotypical, and the episode as a whole struck me as somewhat odd (edited to add--in that this was a manifestation from outside Alex's own culture)

"His visitor was a minuscule but perfectly-proportioned Indian warrior....He had bronzed skin, very long black hair, almost down to his ankles, and he wore only a loin cloth.  he carried a tiny bow and arrow." (page 137)

It's fine to say that people from different cultures inhabit different worlds, but it stretches credulity when things specific to one world cross into another.  But this is the only detail that actively bothered me in the whole book.

Note:  This series is independently published, and the page formatting is not standard (the top margin is very small).  But do not be put off by this! The editing is spot on, and soon you'll get used to the layout.

Disclaimer:  review copy received from the author

The Broken Lands, by Kate Milford

Wowzers (and bang goes my resolve to write coldly crisp, analytical reviews of great intellectual rigor).   But when a book knocks your socks off, sometimes a wowzer or two is just called for.

The Broken Lands, by Kate Milford (Clarion Books, Sept. 2012, YA), takes place in New York, just after the Civil War; the title is both a reference to the raw wounds of the war, and is the name of a hotel on Coney Island.   It's on Coney Island, with its crime, poverty, and exuberant energy, that we meet young Sam, making a living beating holiday makers from the big city at cards....

And to this place, through coincidence (possibly) or design, come others.  The Chinese firework maker, and his adopted daughter, Jin (who becomes a central character).  Tom Guyet, black veteran of the Civil War, now guitar playing Traveller of the roads.   And other travellers, those who live lives that cross the borders of what is real.  But a sinister evil is drawing close to New York as well.   Jack Hellcoal seeks to make New York his own literal hell on earth.  And his sinister henchmen have been sent before him, to open the city to him through the death its five guardians.

Sam and Jin become inexorably drawn into this bloody, supernatural struggle.  And in a new reality of things impossible to believe, they must believe in themselves, and their unique abilities. Or else the city will fall.....

So intricate is the world building, so scary the story, so fond I grew of Sam and Jin and their friends (and so happy to watch Sam and Jin moving cautiously toward love), and so poignant the flashes of pain from this wounded land and the wounded people I cared for that I fell, hard, for the book.   But so twitchy the book made me--the middle two hundred pages or so of darkness encroaching and things being scary--that though I wanted desperately to find out what was going to happen, I had to keep putting it down!  And then so riveted I was in the last hundred pages that I stayed up too late to finish.

In short, I really really liked The Broken Lands.  I couldn't quite love it, because of being made so twitchy (a weakness in me, rather than the book), and because of a niggling feeling that maybe it could have been pared down just a tad), but boy did I appreciate it emotionally and intellectually.   The Broken Lands is a prequel of sorts to The Boneshaker (2010), though it stands alone, and that one I only was able to appreciate intellectually.  Here, though, the characters won my heart (the good guys are good, and well intentioned, and vulnerable, and care about each other; it's about how families can be made from friendships, about healing from emotional pain), and my intellect was more than satisfied by the tremendous, intricate world of Milford's New York, with supernatural tendrils stretching along the roads that cross the country.  This one, also, differs from The Boneshaker in that it is most definitely Young Adult-- the central characters are teenagers, with age-appropriate concerns, as it were, and there is much dark violence of a savage kind.  This is primarily of the supernatural sort, but there are shadows of human violence too (Jin's feet, for instance, were bound when she was an orphaned child being raised for a single, unsavory, purpose).

Here's what I loved best of all:  the supernatural card game based on medieval haigiography.  It is my Favorite Fictional Card Game Ever.   Here's a bit of it:  "By the strange logic of Santine, Sam had defeated the black plague (remembering this time to use a Nothelfer rather than a Marshal), a deluge, and a plague of locusts.  He'd lost a few of his cards to torture and apostasy" (pp 372-373).  And then Sam gets to counter a play of two Stylites (the dudes that sat up on pillars all day) with a pair of Cephalophores (the saints that get to carry their own beheaded heads in their arms)--

"Walker jabbed a finger at Sam's cards.  "What the hell kind of play is that?"
Sam shrugged.  "Figured they could throw their heads and knock the Stylites down." Sam had no idea whether this was a legal move, but as far as he could tell it followed Santine's logic"   (p 373).

Highly recommend to fans of historical fantasy, paranormal horror that doesn't involve vampires/zombies etc., and teenagers saving the world (or city) while falling in love.   Also recommended to fans of fireworks.  They play an important part in the story.

Here are other reviews, at The Book Smugglers, Book Aunt, and Random Musings of a Bibliophile.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

Splendors and Glooms, by Laura Amy Schlitz

Splendors and Glooms, by Laura Amy Schlitz (Candlewick, August 28, 2012, middle grade)

In late 19th century London, a lonely rich girl named Clara Wintermute begs her father to let her have a puppet show for her birthday. For years, her birthday's have been full of Gothic horror--the only surviving child of a once substantial family, her grief-crazed mother carefully gives her gifts from all her dead siblings, and they spend a happy time at the mausoleum visiting them. But this year she begs for the puppets. She had stolen a glimpse of Gaspare Grisini's masterful marionette performance on the street, but even more than the show itself (remarkable though it was), it was her brief encounter with the red haired girl who was one of the trio of puppeteers that entranced her. And her father obliges.

That red-haird girl is Lizzie Rose, orphaned daughter of an actor. She and a former street urchin, a younger boy named Parsifal, have toiled for Gaspare (a cruel and miserly master) for years, making theatrical magic. He loves the puppets; she loves him like a sister. And lonely Clara wants to be their friend.

But Clara vanishes the night after her birthday performance, and suspicion falls on Gaspare (rightly so). Gaspare disappears from London, and Lizzie and Parse must fend for themselves. They have found Clara, but cannot save her--there is dark and creepy magic involved--Gaspare was much more than a master of puppets. When a letter arrives inviting them to a mysterious mansion in the north of England, they accept this somewhat dubious refuge--only to find that they are now part of an even larger story, filled with even more deadly magic. For the mansion is home to a dying witch, desperate to rid herself of a curse...and the three children are now players in an story that began long before they were born.

It is a gripping read, very nicely told indeed, I thought. I was fascinated by the characters and their situations -- there's not much Action and Adventure here (although there is some). Rather, the focus of the book is on whether the children will survive, on a day to day level, the vicissitudes of poverty (for Lizzie and Parse in the beginning), a truly dysfunctional, though wealthy life (for Clara), and then whether they will survive enchantment and life-threatening magical plots.

As an adult reader, I enjoyed it. I appreciated the rich characterization of the three children, the details of the historical setting, the descriptions of the marionettes, and the spooky old house full of ancient magic. The Villain is Villainous, Lizzie Rose in particular is heroic, and there is lots of poignant back story to make it all nicely three dimensional. So it's one I'd recommend to adult readers of children's historical fantasy with no hestitation.

However, I do wonder about its child reader appeal --are there many young readers of darkly magical historical fiction that isn't steampunkish? If you know such a reader, give them this one.

The UK title of this one is Fire Spell, and that's the cover on the right. I think it has more young reader appeal, because it is much prettier and promises more magic.

Splendors and Glooms is definitely on the upper end of the middle grade age range, because of the manner of its telling--it's a book that takes reading, rather than light zipping. What happens to Clara is rather disturbing, but not made horrible by writerly twisting of psychological screws, so that shouldn't be a problem (not like The Toymaker, by Jeremy de Quidt (my review), which has some similarities and which bothered the pants off me).