What would you do if you found out that your long lost dad was a high ranking fairy prince? That’s the situation that Okie teen Callie finds herself in during a hard core dust storm in 1935 Kansas. After the “worst dust storm ever recorded” seemingly swallows up her sweet-tempered Mama, Callie is left shaken and full of questions. But not alone. The storm spit out a mysterious man named Baya who tells Callie that Mama is not just a struggling single mother trying to manage a dying hotel and raise her headstrong daughter. Instead she is the abandoned wife of a prince from the Unseelie Court who has been imprisoned for daring to marry a human. With Baya’s help, Callie sets out to find both Mama and her real father and untangle her strange genealogy before she herself is captured. Because the storm has raised more than dust. It has also lifted the curtain between Callie’s world and the world of the Fey, and now that Callie’s fairy family has located her, they want her back with them whether she wants to go or not. But Callie’s not going anywhere without Mama. This fast paced hist. fic/high fantasy mash-up will blow your wig off with it’s killer combination of period detail and scary fairies. Within these wholly original pages, there’s everything from giant carnivorous grasshoppers to enchanted dance competitions that only end after everyone has boogied themselves to death. A perfect genre blender to blow the dust off your summer reading brain.
Category: Spectacular Speculative Fiction
Science fiction and Fantasy Reads for Teens
Monstrous Beauty by Elizabeth Fama
In 1872, a swoony nature boy falls for a winsome water girl–who just happens to have a dolphin’s tail. Though they long to be together, they are separated by their deeply different circumstances and mobility issues. Then the winsome water girl comes up with a particularly gruesome solution to their problem, and for a while they are happy. But nothing’s ever easy when love’s involved and the former mermaid realizes that to live in the naturalist’s world, she must make the greatest sacrifice of all (and no, it’s not the loss of her tail). Flash forward 140 years. Seventeen year old Hester, professional Pilgrim impersonator and all around history geek, meets a gorgeous sad man named Ezra on the beach. She is immediately drawn to him, despite the fact that she has sworn off love forever. Because in Hester’s family, the mothers always die after the birth of their first daughter. Hester is determined that fate won’t be hers, so she avoids all relationships that may lead to romance. But this man is different, and Hester can’t deny the way he makes her feel. She is even able to ignore the fact that he lives in a cave, his old fashioned clothes never change and he can’t seem to leave the beach. Who or what is Ezra? Why does Hester feel like she has known him forever? And how is their instant bond related to the swoony nature boy and winsome water girl of long ago? Once Hester has all the pieces to this historical puzzle, she just might be able to solve the deadly mystery of the dying mothers.
I have to say that I normally bypass anything that smacks of cross species/supernatural kissing. With a few exceptions, I have mostly had it up to here with paranormal romance. But this book not only rocked my little reading boat, it blew me out of the genre water and any other ocean related expression you can think of. By linking together mythology, history and genealogy in a thoroughly entertaining (and wee bit gory) way and inventively reinterpreting The Little Mermaid (this ain’t no redheaded Disney movie, y’all) for a new generation, Elizabeth Fama has successfully escaped the curse of the tired old “girl/boy-falls-for-vampire/werewolf/fallen angel/zombie” formula.
Such Wicked Intent by Kenneth Oppel
There are handful of authors who never disappoint me, and Kenneth Oppel is one of them. This splendid sequel to This Dark Endeavor proved to be just as satisfying, if not even a bit more so, than its predecessor. Victor’s twin Konrad is barely cold in his grave before the young Frankenstein is trying to raise him from the dead. Of course, for any one else this would be utter madness, but Victor’s hubris knows no bounds. He’s sure that if he just had the right formula, he could defy even Death. Led by enigmatic clues that appear in a self portrait of his famous ancestor Wilhelm Frankestein, Victor finds his way into a shadow world of his family’s vast mansion where his brother still lives. Accompanied by his cousin-crush Elizabeth and best friend Henry, Victor travels to this strange purgatory frequently to search for a way to bring Konrad back to life. But what he doesn’t know is that there is malevolent presence that is invested in not only keeping his beloved brother right where he is, but drawing Victor, Elizabeth and Henry closer and closer to death as well. If I tell anymore, it will give too much away, but the way Oppel inventively reinterprets the classic Frankenstein monster will just floor you. Perfect pacing, non-stop action and complicated characters make Oppel’s writing an absolute pleasure to read. I adore brilliant, headstrong, jealous Victor and his raging ego. And Cousin Elizabeth is no shrinking violet, regularly kicking Victor to the curb every time he tries to convince her that it is really him and not his dead twin she is in love with. While you could easily read this title without having paged through the first one, why would you? And since SWI won’t be coming to a library, bookstore or e-reader near you until August 2012, you have plenty of time to go back to the beginning of this fantastic Frankenstein re-boot!
The Diviners by Libba Bray
Sometimes you read a book and you say, “That’s my book.” It seems like the author wrote it just for you, that everything in it was created for your amusement and suspense and pleasure. It is intimate and wonderful and you want to tell everyone you know about it and keep it all to yourself at the same time. I know many of you have felt that way about this book, and this one and this one. And that is how I feel about Diviners by the diabolically funny and utterly fabulous Libba Bray. This is SO my book. It is full of everything awesome and scary and merry and sweet. It is set in the Roaring Twenties in a swanky, swaggering New York City and features a collection of complex, confused teens with mysterious powers, who, one by one, realize that their destiny is to fight an ancient evil that is rising up in their very midst. (My favorite started out as unapologetic party girl Evie, but oh, you are gonna have such a crush on dance hall Theta and moody poet Memphis as well) There is both a haunted house AND a haunted museum. There’s a serial killer who steals body parts and a terrifying religious cult baying for blood. There are speakeasys and rent parties. It is about both big things like Manifest Destiny and little things like sparkly headbands. You get a front row seat to the Harlem Renaissance and a balcony chair to the Ziegfeld Follies. And the frights aren’t just lame-o gross-outs, but deep psychological chills that get under your skin (although there are some pretty good gross-outs, and someone does lose their skin). There’s a diversity of character that without message or pretense, makes you understand that America is and always has been a melting pot and that characters of color or of various sexual orientation can be an intregal part of a story without their background being THE story. There is romance (but not too much), gore (but not too much), loads of suspense and even a Model-T car chase. All things I adore (who knew I loved Model-T car chases but it turns out that I DO). All things I can’t believe are in the same epic voluminous book that despite being over 500 pages is as tight as a proverbial drum. And the only reason that I’m not in deep mourning at having finished it and at never being able to read it again for the first time is that it is just the FIRST BOOK IN A NEW SERIES. THERE WILL BE MORE. And I’m already a hot mess of anticipation for book 2. An exquisitely written, sumptuous affair of a novel that you will want to pull up around your ears and roll around in like a flapper’s mink stole. I can’t wait for you to discover that this is YOUR BOOK TOO when it comes to a library, bookstore or e-reader near you. On your way to the library, check out this hilarious video of LB acting out the first scene of The Diviners with action figures. (Yes, I know. You thought you couldn’t love her more and now YOU DO.)
Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers
In 1485 Brittany, seventeen-year-old Ismae is rescued from an arranged marriage to a brutish pig farmer by a hedge witch who recognizes Ismae for who she is: a daughter of Mortain, god of Death. She is bundled off to the convent of St. Mortain, where is she trained by killer nuns to become a first rate assassin who specializes in poisons. She swears utter obedience to the convent and it’s hard core Mother Superior in exchange for a new life free from the demands of men. Once her education is complete, her first assignment is to pose as the mistress of a high-ranking advisor named Duval in the court of Brittany’s young duchess Anne, whose rule is being challenged by many powerful enemies. The convent is closely aligned to the duchess; her fate may well become theirs.  So Ismae’s job is two-fold: to report to the Mother Superior everything she observes at court that may threaten the duchess, but also to spy on Duval, who the Mother suspects may be a traitor. This is all fine by Ismae, who’s been chomping at the bit to get out into the field and murder some deserving villain. But before long she is caught up in complicated court politics and suddenly things don’t seem quite so black and white. She finds herself questioning the Mother Superior’s directions and forming dangerous opinions of her own. But worst of all? She thinks she might be falling for the very man she has been assigned to spy on. When the dreaded order to murder someone close to her comes by crow from the convent, Ismae has a terrible choice to make: maintain her allegiance to the organization that saved her life, or throw away the only security she has ever known to follow her treacherous heart. This epic supernatural hist. fic. went on a touch too long for me as an adult reader, but I suspect the voluminous length will be no problem for you teen folk, who seem to never want a good book to end. And make no mistake, this is a very good book, full of backstabbing politics, duplicitous double crosses and back-room-deals gone bad. I liked it best when Ismae was efficiently going about her killing business. The assassination scenes are so riveting and suspenseful, you’ll find yourself guiltily paging ahead to the next murder. I found the poison bits especially intriguing, and was fascinated when Ismae was cataloging her toxic library of potions and filing away how each poison worked and what awful symptoms the victim could expect to suffer. And tucked between the swoony romance and stone cold killings, there’s also meaty themes about gender and class in the Middle Ages, and the very limited ways women were allowed to function in society. Even the royal duchess Anne who Ismae is fighting to protect has no real authority but is just a pawn being pulled back and forth between groups of powerful men who don’t care about her but only want what she represents. If historical fiction has been your poison in the past, then I highly recommend this terrific tome as the antidote.
The Book of Blood and Shadow by Robin Wasserman
Mousy Nora can’t believe her luck when super cute Chris and his equally shiny girlfriend Adriane adopt her into their exclusive circle at Chapman prep. Even though she sometimes feels like a third wheel, it’s worth it to be able to call Chris her best friend. Then after graduation, Chris scores a cool after school job for them at his nearby college: using their mad Latin skillz to help a crabby old professor translate a coded book known as the Voynich Manuscript that supposedly holds the secrets to the universe if they can decipher it’s “incomprehensible symbols…broken only by elaborate illustrations of flowers and animals and astronomical phenomena that apparently have no counterpart in the real world.†Chris and Chris’s roommate Max work on The Book while Nora tries her hand at translating the accompanying letters of Elizabeth Weston, whose stepfather was an alchemist who claimed to have broken the code. As the long nights of translating commence, Nora finds herself falling for quiet, shy Max, whose geeky love of Latin and history matches her own, and soon the two are as lip locked as Chris and Adriane. But when Nora takes one of Elizabeth’s letters from the professor’s office without permission, she accidentally sets into motion a chain of events that ends in the horrific murder of one of her closest friends, and the ultimate betrayal of another. Nora has unwittingly unlocked a dark door to the past that now opened, will not be closed until someone–maybe even herself–has paid in blood. If you are a fan of The Da Vinci Code
The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi
Mahalia and Mouse are “war maggots,†children orphaned by the violent and ever changing civil war that has ravaged the bleak futuristic landscape of the United States eastern coast, and caused the Chinese peacekeepers to cut their losses and flee. They find temporary safety and shelter with Doctor Mahfouz, a kind physician who works hard helping their small village of civilian survivors stay alive. But when the United Patriot Front, a ragged gang of young men and child soldiers, invade Banyan Town while on the hunt for an escaped genetically engineered canine soldier named Tool (one of my all-time favorite characters), Mahalia and Mouse are dragged back into the danger and chaos of the civil war that destroyed their families and took Mahalia’s hand. In this dark companion novel to the Printz award- winning Ship Breaker, Paolo Bacigalupi paints a terrifying picture of a future that looks frighteningly similar to recent conflicts involving child soldiers in countries like Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda. Though Bacigalupi’s precise, crisp prose and masterful plotting was as excellent as expected, I had a very hard time finishing this book because Mahalia and Mouse’s situation is so grim, the violence they endure is so pervasive, and any hope they find is brutally snatched away. But I know my reaction is no doubt what the author intended. Because if the readers of this book, and others that chronicle the real lives of child soldiers, are inspired to take action as a result of what they have read, then maybe someday the global epidemic of war and violence against children will end. A piercing, powerful book that will sear itself on your heart and soul.
Sea Hearts (Australia) or The Brides of Rollrock Island (UK, US) by Margo Lanagan
On Rollrock island, all the mams look alike—tall and slender, with big dark eyes and long dark hair. They sing strange songs and they line their windowsills with shells and sea grass. Their anxious husbands and sons do everything they can to distract them from the melancholy that rises up within them whenever they stand at the edge of the sea, but they can never fully erase the pain that fills their women’s deep dark eyes as they gaze longingly out at the waves. Even as a little girl, Misskaella was never really accepted by the rest of the Rollrock folk with her odd features and power to see behind reality’s thin veil. So when she discovers her ability to convert the seals that gather on Rollrock’s shore into beautiful women, she quickly utilizes it to bring the village men to their knees. Bewitched by the seal maids, the fishermen are powerless to resist their passive charms, and under their enchantment, the men eventually abandon or drive away all the strong-willed, decisive “land†women from the tiny island community. Only mad Misskeella is left, knitting the mams seaweed blankets and perversely enjoying the wretched society she has created where no one who truly understands the sacrifice the mams are making for their families is happy. But one boy can bear the sadness no longer. And his actions cause another quiet revolution on Rollrock that will alter the island yet again in ways that not even the witch Misskaella can control.
Master fantasy author Margo Lanagan takes the legend of the selkie and uses it to adroitly illuminate the darkest corners of the human heart. Rich themes of loyalty, acceptance, betrayal and revenge emerge from her exquisite prose that is itself a dazzling wonder. Each section is voiced by a different player in this tragedy, and uncovers another layer in a story that is less a romance and more about mother love. The sons of Rollrock broke my heart. When you are born with one foot on land and one in the sea, how do you decide your destiny? Which parent do you stand by when to help one will destroy the other? Once the boys know the secret sorrow of their mams’ cast-off seal skins, they can’t unknow it, and it kills them: “They were not costumes; they were peeled-off parts of our mothers; without them, how could our mams be themselves, their real selves, their under-sea selves, the selves they were born into? They walked about on land with no protection, from the cold or from our dads falling in love with them, or from us boys needing them morning and night.” Like Misskaella’s magic, Lanagan’s elegant prose is transformative–I promise you will be a different person after having experienced it. When I look back at her body of work, the consistency of her genius is stunning, and each title that comes out is my new favorite. Sea Hearts is no exception. Put this sublimely sad tome on your must-read list NOW. Coming to a library, bookstore or e-reader near you September 2012. (But if you simply can’t wait, this book has already been published in Australia and the UK.)
Starters by Lissa Price
“It had been a long time since I’d been happy. A long time since life was just lip gloss and music and silly girlfriends. A long time since my biggest concerns were whether there would be a test or if I’d forgotten my homework. I was aiming for more like safe, free and alive.” Since the Spore Wars killed her parents and all the other healthiest members of the population, leaving only teens (Starters) and elderly people with extended life spans (Enders) to form an uneasy alliance, Callie is trying to keep herself and her little brother Tyler alive. The new world is hostile to Starters without family. They fight each other for food, live illegally in abandoned buildings, and are thrown into forced work camps if they are unlucky enough to run into Marshals on the street. Without an Ender sponsor, most Starters die of starvation or disease. The only way Starters can escape this wretched existence is to loan themselves to Prime Destinations, a shady technology company that allows wealthy Enders to “rent” the nubile young bodies of Starters. After being forced out of her squat and losing the few possessions she has left, Callie decides she has no choice but to rent her body in order to make enough money to get her and Tyler off the streets. Though she’s assured that her body will be unharmed and there is no S-E-X allowed during her rental, Callie is still worried about the chip that must be implanted in her head in order for the procedure to take place. Callie goes to sleep as planned, and all seems to be well. But when she wakes up on the sticky floor of a dance club several days before her rental is supposed to end, it is clear something has gone terribly wrong. What has happened to her renter? And why is suddenly able to hear voices in her head? This dystopian thriller is a page turner of the highest level that once you start, you won’t be able to put down. The premise feels frighteningly real, and debut author author Lissa Price keeps you guessing at the end of every cliffhanging chapter. You won’t be able to help looking down at your own bod and wondering what it would feel like if someone else was driving!
A Web of Air by Philip Reeve
It’s been two years since Fever Crumb fled post-apocalyptic London and the Order of Engineers after finding out she had some dubious memories rolling around in her head that weren’t hers. But don’t let’s spoil that story, which starts here. In this second volume of the Fever Crumb series, Fever has taken a job with Persimmon’s Electric Lyceum, a mobile theater that desperately needs her lighting expertise and has provided a safe haven for Ruan and Fern, the two orphan children that she took under her rational wing. When the Lyceum stops over in the temperate vacation city of Mayda-at-the-World’s-End to stage a performance, Fever discovers quite by accident a mad young inventor named Arlo Thursday who claims to have rediscovered the ancient secret of heavier-than-air travel. But in world where big cities like London are becoming mobile military fortresses, with the only possible threats coming from above, such ideas are dangerous. Nevertheless, Fever’s engineering brain can’t help but fall in love with Arlo’s brilliant plans, and maybe even a little bit with Arlo. But when she uncovers a London-based plot to suppress air travel at all costs, Fever must decide whether to listen to her logical head or her traitorous heart when it comes to deciding Arlo’s fate. Upon finishing this book in one breathless evening, I have to ask: How do you do it, Philip Reeve? How do you write such inspired, edge of your seat adventure stories with exceptional world building that just seems to happen in throw away descriptions (Mayda is a city of funiculars, houses built on the side of cliffs that move up and down on rails using water ballasts–LOVE) and original characters that I’m deeply concerned for by page 10 that are less than 300 pages long? HOW? Start with Fever Crumb
The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin
Bad luck seems to be dogging Mara Dyer wherever she goes. First, she loses her best friend, boyfriend and his sister in a freak building collapse that she alone survives. Then, after her family moves to Miami to help Mara’s post-traumatic stress over the accident, she attracts the unwanted attention of her new school’s alpha bee-yatch, Anna, who is furious that gorgeous alterna-boy candy Noah has focused his laser lover eyes on Mara instead of her. In addition, Mara is seeing lots of scary things that aren’t really there, like the gray face of her dead boyfriend, who actually wasn’t all that nice. Oh, and did I mention that people she doesn’t like are also starting to drop dead around her? What’s happening to Mara? Is she really going crazy, like her psychologist mom believes? Or is there something, shall we say, more supernatural at work? It’s only when Mara and Noah begin to dig deep into the horror movie that has become her life that Mara discovers that the personal destruction that surrounds her is springing from a place that is disturbingly close to home. Unfortunately, just as all is revealed, the book ends on an abrupt cliffhanger. There had better be a sequel, or heads are going to roll! Though this thriller was a little too long for me, newbie author Michelle Hodkin’s prose is ridiculously addictive and I couldn’t wait to find out what was going to happen next. Plus, I have to say, Noah is biggest dreamboat since Romeo. I was seriously swooning on every page –*fans self*  And if you want to swoon too, order up this hot chiller at your local library, bookstore or e-reader pronto!
The Monstrumologist: Isle of Blood by Rick Yancey
The third book in the crazy good and wonderfully gruesome Monstrumologist series takes plucky young protagonist Will Henry to a far darker place than ever before, and this time it’s not the monsters outside he fears so much as the monster within. After receiving a mysterious package that contains a grisly nest made of shredded human tissue and bone, Will and Dr. Warthrop are launched on a grim new quest to find and capture Typhoeus magnificum, The Father of All Monsters. This mysterious beast has never been seen, and its only calling cards are the flesh nests it makes of its victims and it’s corrosive spit that if touched, turns men into cannibalistic zombies. Every monstrumologist who has tried to track it down it down has never been seen or heard from again. Naturally, Warthrop has second thoughts about taking Will Henry on such a dangerous mission, and ends up leaving him with his mentor Dr. von Helrung in New York. But when von Helrung receives word that Warthrop is dead, Will Henry decides to take matters into his own young hands and find out the truth—even if it means losing his life. Sailing from America to darkest Africa and meeting such literary luminaries as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (you didn’t know he was such a fan of monstrumology, did you?) and Arthur Rimbaud (with an encore appearance of fan favorite, the dastardly Jack Kearns) along the way, Will’s gripping globetrotting journey is nothing compared to the long bleak road he is walking within. As Warthrop slowly begins to give his humanity more airtime than his burning ambition in this most excellent third volume, Will disturbingly begins to slide the other way. “I thought I knew the cost of service to the one whose path lies in the darkness. I did not.” Always pure of heart in the past, now Will finds himself committing not one but two desperate and irrevocable acts that will have consequences he can’t quite understand, but that the world weary Warthrop knows all too well. Will has always served as Warthrop’s moral compass (“You are the one thing that keeps me humanâ€) but now it may be the egotistical but ultimately good doctor’s turn to help Will expunge the darkness that has begun to take deep root in his soul. Oh, how I love these books! Oh, how I wish there was a real Society for the Advancement of the Science of Monstrumology, and that I could sit down and have Darjeeling tea with Will and Dr. Warthrop! Like The Historian
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness, illustrated by Jim Kay and inspired by Siobhan Dowd
What would you do if you had a fear that was bigger than you were? Run away? Hide? Or would you call for help? Thirteen-year-old Conor is keeping a terrible secret about his mother’s illness, one that is so awful he doesn’t dare speak it aloud. So when a giant monster shows up outside his window one night and threatens him, he isn’t even scared. Because no monster is equal to the rage and sorrow he has locked away inside. But when the monster tells Conor that the reason it’s there is because Conor called it, he doesn’t understand. How could he have brought the monster without knowing? And is the monster there to help or to hurt him? As the monster continues to make its nightly visits and Conor’s mother gets sicker, Conor becomes desperate to put an end to the mystery of the monster’s presence. When the truth is finally revealed, it is both wonderful and terrible. This intriguing modern day fable about the lies we tell ourselves in order to survive tragedy was actually thought up by British author and activist Siobhan Dowd, who died before she could complete it. It was then passed into the hands of her colleague Patrick Ness, who in his own words, “took it and ran with it.†The result is a lyrical, melancholy tale, lushly illustrated with haunting images by debut illustrator Jim Kay, that provides no easy answer to the question of human suffering, but is full of hope nevertheless.
The Name of the Star: Shades of London, bk. 1 by Maureen Johnson
Aurora (Rory) Deveaux is definitely a Louisiana catfish out of water. Due to her professor parents’ European sabbatical, the gawky Southern teen has just started her senior year at a tony English boarding school called Wexford in the heart of London. Small town Rory couldn’t be more different than her brisk British classmates, and struggles at first to fit in. But soon she is surrounded by new friends and even starts a mild flirtation with Jerome, the cute prefect from the boy’s dorm. Rory’s getting along so well that even the news that a serial killer who models himself after Jack the Ripper is on the loose in London seems more interesting than scary. Until a body shows up on Wexford’s supposedly safe school grounds, and Rory is the only one to see a strange man hovering nearby. Suddenly Rory finds herself at the heart of a terrifying investigation that has even the police baffled. The new Ripper leaves no trace, and even the many closed circuit cameras that are everywhere in London can’t seem to capture him. How can Rory see what the cameras can’t? And what does that mean when it comes to keeping herself and her friends safe from the Ripper’s knife? To say anymore would ruin the shocking secret at the heart of this romantic thriller that starts out like a traditional boarding school romp and then morphs into something that is part horror, part mystery and all quirky, cool Maureen Johnson. Rory is full of heart and wit, and pitting her against the top serial killers of all time guarantees surprises, shivers and Johnson’s inevitable trademark sarcasm. By the end of book one, Rory discovers her true destiny and let’s just say it’s not a talent for needlework or languages. I can’t wait for the sequel of this projected trilogy! And you won’t be able to either after a Star comes to a library, bookstore or e-reader near you.
This Dark Endeavor by Kenneth Oppel
Literary Fun Fact: Victor Frankenstein had a twin! Well, at least Kenneth Oppel imagines so in this brilliant, twisted prequel to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
