I just received two Advance Readers Copies, both from Penguin Young Readers Group! Exciting. They are Hold Still by Nina LaCour, and The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson.

Some summaries from the back covers:

HOLD STILL — That night Ingrid told Caitling, I’ll go wherever you go. But by dawn Ingrid, and her promise, were gone, and Caitlin was alone. Ingrid’s suicide immobilizes Caitlin, leaving her unsure of her place in a new life she hardly recognizes. A life without the art, the laughter, the music, the joy that she shared with her best friend.

But Ingrid left more than a memory behind. Devastating and hopeful, playful and hopeless. In words and drawings, Ingrid documented a painful farewell in her jounral–just for Caitlin. Journeying through Ingrid’s final days, Caitlin fights back through unspeakable loss to find renewed hope.

A breakthrough new voice in fiction, Nina LaCour brings the changing seasons of Caitlin’s first year without Ingrid to the page with indelible emotion and honesty.

THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE — When her fiery older sister Bailey dies abruptly, seventeen-year-old Lennie, bookworm and band geek, is catapulted to center stage of her own life–and, despite her nonexistent history with boys, suddenly finds herself struggling to balance two. Toby was Bailey’s boyfriend; his grief mirrors Lenni’s own. Joe is the new boy in town, a transplant from Pairs whose nearly magical grin is matched only by his musical talent. For Lennie, they’re the sun and the moon; one boy takes her out of her sorrow, the other comforts her in it. But just like their celestial counterparts, they can’t collide without the whole wide world exploding.

Both of these novels seem to be sort of middle/junior high level books dealing with more serious subjects.

Reviews soon.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Ice Land combines the gods of Norse mythology with the everyday lives of ordinary humans living in Iceland around 1000 CE, and the story itself was just as lovely as the paperback cover.

Fulla is coming into her own as a young woman living on her moderately wealthy grandfather’s farm. She’s pretty and she knows the practical things like making a meal and riding a horse. Looming in her near future is a betrothal which, as Icelandic society dictates, will be decided by her grandfather, since both her parents are dead. But this isn’t what Fulla wants.

She craves the unexpected. Each day, she rides her horse across pock-marked fields of blackened lava to the hot pool, her servant Helga two strides behind. And each day, she prays her life will somehow burst its narrow banks.

But the gods do not listen

Her future was set out long ago, like runes carved in stone. She will reach the age of consent, marry a man of her grandfather’s choosing, and bear him as many sons as she can endure. She will watch her boys grow into stout young men, learn to wield the sword and axe, and die violent deaths. Just as her father did.

Her father, Jarl, died in a land dispute against their neighbor, another large farm-owner named Skallagrim. This fighting and dueling has been going on for as long as Fulla can remember, and her grandfather, Hogni, has become bitter about the conflict, wishing only to enjoy his dwindling days as an old man.

Fulla encounters Vili, son of the enemy Skallagrim clan, through several escapades and a bond forms between the two young people, an impossible bond because of their shared history and the fact that Fulla will soon be betrothed and married to a man of her grandfather’s choosing.

In an alternating narrative, Freya, the famous Norse goddess of love, hears a prophecy and travels to the land of the dwarves in order to search out a mysterious golden necklace which will supposedly help her with a looming and deadly catastrophe: the volcano Hekla has been rumbling and causing earthquakes in the land of Asgard, and promises destruction in the near future. Freya has loved and lost in her own time, and knows that her race, the race of the “gods,” is a petty, jealous, and shallow group. Christianity is growing on Iceland, and the old gods are getting pushed backed.

I wasn’t entirely sure what exactly Ice Land would be all about–the summary provided on the back wasn’t very descriptive–and I admit, shallowly, that I picked it up because the cover was pretty, and also because I haven’t had much exposure to Norse mythology and I thought it would be interesting to learn something about it.

I feel like, all in all, the plot itself wasn’t spectacular–not particularly adventurous or exciting, but the characters themselves and Tobin’s writing created a different world. Tobin follows that writer’s maxim, “Show, don’t tell,” perfectly. She didn’t have to say “Fulla is a teenager and can be a little bit rebellious, but she’s also fairly intelligent and practical, she observes the world around her and understands a lot.” Tobin showed it through her narrative which allows the reader to get to know the characters as people, and not as little bits of text printed on a page. She did this with all the characters, and also with the way she described Icelandic culture and life.

Sometimes the alternating narrative thing doesn’t work out too well for me–usually I become more interested in one than the other. But in this case I enjoyed how everything was very balanced and and came together really well. Fulla and Freya both kept me interested.

Here was a great bit from Freya, Norse goddess of love:

Cats, I decided, had certain advantages over men. They were loyal without being sycophantic, independent without being absent, and affectionate without being rapacious. That they choke up balls of fur and leave dead rodents at my feet is unfortunate. But it is not grounds for divorce.

I was very engrossed by Ice Land, it was beautiful and mythical and I will be reading more from Betsy Tobin in the future.

Currently reading:
Year of the Griffin by Diana Wynne Jones (re read)
Ice Land by Betsy Tobin (new, recently published)

I leave for college in a few days and will have to leave my local library system (where I get 98% of books) and my own bookshelves. I stopped in at Half-Price Books today and picked up 5 paperbacks for $4 total, don’t know how long they will last!

I hope to finish reading & reviewing the two above before I leave.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Zoe was born into a world of floods. All the land on earth is slowly being eaten up by the rising sea–her parents tell her things were not always like this: people didn’t used to have to scavenge in broken buildings for food, there used to be land all around, land so far as the eye could see, where you could walk for days on end and not reach the ocean. On the little island of Norwich, which is becoming smaller and smaller every day, Zoe and her parents try to live a normal life. Zoe’s dad teaches her to row, something he tells her might come in use one day.

Their small family tries to leave the island on the last supply ship to come from the “mainland,” but in the confusion and melee, Zoe is left behind on Norwich. Time passes and things get more and more desperate for Zoe living on her own, but one miraculous day she finds a boat–more precious than gold and diamonds in her world. She manages to escape Norwich and rows towards where she believes the mainland, and her parents, might be.

However, Zoe ends up on Eel island, a little lump of land even smaller than Norwich. The “eels,” as they call themselves, are a bunch of raggedy kids led by a charismatic boy named Dooby–things are even more savage and uncilivized here, and Zoe despairs of ever finding her parents again…

Sedgwick writes speculatively about the future of the earth after global warming, and its effect on ordinary citizens in the UK. His style is very simplistic and a little eerie, especially concerning the subject manner. This also a re-read, I think I first read it when I was younger, and was going through my apocalyptic, end-of-the-world, doomsday and hellfire reading phase. It’s very short, about a hundred pages.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Imagine a vacation through a fantasy world, where you and your fellow tourists are led through a magical land by a Wizard Guide, one who can actually do magic and has a great long beard, as all wizards are supposed to. On the way, you get to meet bloodthirsty pirates, listen to wisdom from great Dragons, fight an Epic Battle, get attacked by Winged Minions, encounter a Glamorous Enchantress, and finally meet and defeat the terrible Dark Lord! At the end of your tour, you can travel through a portal back to your own universe of cars, technology, and jobs.  Sounds fun, right?

Mr. Chesney’s Pilgrim Parties bring people from our own world into an alternate universe where they can experience the traditional trappings of Fantasy. However, it’s all just a great act.

Derk is a wizard–but he’s not a very good one by your traditional definitions. Not great at conjuring illusions are doing normal wizardly stuff–but he’s good at magical genetic engineering, and he has 7 children with his wife, a witch named Mara. Two are human, and five of them are griffins. Unfortunately for Derk, this year he has been chosen to play the part of the Dark Lord, and according to the rules set by Mr. Chesney, he must raise a devestating Army of Evil (who are actually bespelled criminals donated by the country of England), turn his cozy house into a Dark Citadel, and summon an evil demon, all for the entertainment of the tourists. His human son, Blade, has been chosen to be a Wizard Guide, and his wife to be the Glamorous Enchantress. Everyone must play their parts, or risk the wrath of Mr. Chesney.

The Pilgrim Party tours are devestating to Derk’s world–farmland is trampled, villages are destroyed, and for some odd reason all of the magic in his universe is steadily draining away. Everybody hates Mr. Chesney, but no one can do anything about it because he is backed by a great and powerful demon.

Derk and his family must try to complete their tasks and at the same time find a way out of this horrible mess. Unfortunately Derk is laid out in a coma after a nasty encounter with a fire-breathing dragon, and his kids must shoulder the burden of the Dark Lord’s job.

I thought this was when it got most interesting. I highly enjoyed it when Jones began writing about Derk’s human and griffin children, running around trying to plan an Epic Battle against the Forces of Good (who are outnumbered, but still required to win according to the Mr. Chesney’s rules). There was a lot of understated humor and each of the chidlren has their own distinct personality. Shona, the eldest, is incredibly bossy and wants to become a Bard and play music for the rest of her life. Kit is a black griffin, arrogant, aggressive, and really enjoys planning the Epic Battle. Blade, Derk’s human son, runs around trying to keep everything together–he’s in his mid-teens I guess, and has to grow a beard for his job as Wizard Guide. Good thing he has magic to accomplish this for him. Callette is creative and techy, Lydda loves to cook , and Elda is the baby.

The Dark Lord of Derkholm is a re-read for me, part of my DWJ binge, and has a pseudo-sequel, Year of the Griffin, which focuses mostly on Elda 8 years after the events of Derkholm. I also plan on re-reading that soon, I faintly remember that I liked it more than Derkhom, which is saying a lot because I quite enjoyed this one. It’s hard to explain why I like Diana Wynne Jones’ writing so much–its just the way everything happens, and then comes together in the end. It’s funny and original and you don’t read anything like it anywhere else.

Rating: 8 out of 10

I first read Howl’s Moving Castle in the 3rd or 4th grade, can’t really remember, and after reading House of Many Ways, reviewed in the previous post, I wanted to read it again! In reality this is probably the third or fourth time I’ve re-read it…

Sophie Hatter is doomed to a normal and boring life. As the eldest of three girls, she knows that her future will not include a charming prince, fabulous riches, or any magical ability–as everyone knows from the old fairytales, adventures are always left to the youngest of 3 siblings. Even worse, her family is actually quite prosperous, not poor and hungry like all the stories say one must be in order to go on a quest and having a happy ending. Her stepmother Fanny, really isn’t the least bit evil, and treats Sophie as if she were her own natural daughter.

Things change when Sophie’s father dies and leaves some debt to his family; in order to keep everything running, Fanny sends the two younger girls out to apprenticeships–Lettie (the 2nd oldest sister) to a bakery, and Martha (the youngest, and the one with the most chance of making her fortune) to a witch named Mrs. Fairfax in order to learn magic. Sophie stays on  at the family’s hat shop, where she makes hats all day and generally lives a dull existence. She starts talking to her hats in order to pass the time, and her hats eventually become extremely popular. Popular enough to attract the attention of the Witch of the Waste, who sweeps in and places a curse on Sophie, turning her in to an old lady!

Sophie leaves town, afriad her family will see her in this state, and catches a ride on the mysterious flying castle of the Wizard Howl, who is known to be extremely evil and partial to eating the hearts and souls of beautiful young girls. She  meets Michael, Howl’s apprentice, and Calcier, the fire demon who keeps the castle running. Sophie learns that the castle isn’t really a castle at all, but it has a magic door with a special colored knob–each color, when turned, lets the door open onto different locations.

The Wizard Howl himself is a dilemma; he’s vain, self-centered, and seems to completely ignore Sophie for the first few days she stays on in the castle, claiming to be an old cleaning lady. He spends all his time chasing girls, and dropping them the minute they start returning his interest. But at the same time he is kind to poor townspeople needing magical spells, and has a connection to a strange mysterious place called Wales, England…

Sophie soon finds out that other things are going wrong in the world–the King’s brother and Royal Wizard have gone missing, and the Witch of the Waste is making trouble for everyone. Then there’s her own old-lady curse that needs figuring out.

I’m on a Diana-Wynne-Jones binge right now, after reading House of Many Ways. I finished Howl’s Moving Castle in a few hours, and am currently reading The Dark Lord of Derkholm.

I really enjoyed Howl’s Moving Castle, I do everytime I read it, and it’s a good mix of humor, adventure, and all the crazy original ideas that Jones comes up with. She also has a way of pulling everything together really well in the end. Minor characters you briefly hear about in the beginning turn out to have connections to the larger plot and end up being more important than you realized.

Hayao Miyazaki, remarkable Japanese animator, made a film based on Jones’ book, also titled Howl’s Moving Castle. When I first heard that Miyazaki, film-genius, and Jones, writing-genius, were basically making a joint creation, I thought it was the best thing ever. I enjoyed the movie too, even though it didn’t completely follow Jones’ original plot. This was the first time I’d re-read it since seeing the movie, and a lot of the movie images and voices turned up while I was reading.

Howl’s Moving Castle also has a pseudo-sequel, called Castle in the Air. Also good, and involves some of the characters from the first book.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Charmain Baker has been brought up to be a “respectable” young woman by her mother, which means she has no experience with housework, real life, or that most vulgar and low-class of things: magic. Her great-uncle William, however, just so happens to be the Royal Wizard of High Norland, and after falling ill, calls in Charmain to look after his tiny cottage and his even tinier dog, Waif, while he is off with the elves, being treated for his mysterious sickness.

Charmain soon realizes that Great-Uncle William’s tiny little cottage is more magical than it originally seemed–for instance, in in order to get to the bathroom from the living room, one must open the door between the living room and kitchen, and immediately take a sharp left into the doorframe. Other hidden parts of the house are connected to the past, and one hallway leads directly to the Royal Mansion where the King and Princess live. A magical house with doors that lead mysterious places might sound a little familiar to fans of Diana Wynne Jones’ writing, with good reason, as the characters of Howl’s Moving Castle (Sophie, Calcifer, and Howl himself as well as a new addition to their family) make a decent cameo and are heavily involved in the plot.

The plot reveals itself as Charmain slowly finds out that not all is well in her country of High Norland–a disgusting and extremely dangerous creature called the Lubbock prowls the meadows outside town, and for some reason the gold in the Royal Treasury keeps disappearing. The King has become so poor that he must sell of many of the royal portraits and pictures that used to line the hallways of the Royal Mansion. Sophie, a famous witch, has been called in to help solve the problem, and she brings with her Calcifer the fire demon, her son Morgan, and a small, beautifully angelic, golden-haired boy who calls himself “Twinkle” and claims that “Thophie ith my auntie.”

I have really liked Diana Wynne Jones’ writing every since I first picked up her books in elementary school, and House of Many Ways was a great example of her storytelling. There was adventure, mystery, magic, and a good amount of humor when Sophie and her family showed up. I really identified with Charmain as her favorite activities are reading and eating–me too. But in the beginning I actually didn’t like her all that much, which I think the author may have done on purpose…? She is a little spoiled, a little lazy–but I believe most of it comes from having such a sheltered lifestyle.

Great, fun read.

Rating: 7 out of 10
Summary: Melke is a wraith, able to walk unseen. Feared by all, hunted and hated, she has lost everything–except her younger brother. Now she is forced to do the unthinkable: in exchange for her brother’s freedom, she must use her magical gift to steal.

Melke’s thieving has devastating consequences. The stolen necklace was strung with tears, and without it Bastian sal Vere can’t break the curse that is destroying his family–a curse that will reach its brutal climax at the next full moon. He strikes a desperate bargain with Melke: a healer to save her brother’s life, in return for the necklace.

But undoing her crime may cost Melke her own life. The necklace is deep within a salamander’s den, a place of flame and pain that no thief has ever returned from. And time is running short. The moon grows full, and someone must face the creature that laid the curse and suffer its terrible vengeance.

My Thoughts: I picked this up after reading Emily Gee’s other novel The Laurentine Spy, which I read and enjoyed previously.

Thief was much in the same vein–adventure and new worlds and fast pacing, with a little bit of romance and desperation thrown in. It was a great story and good way to escape normal life for a little while.

One problem I had is something I tend to pick on with some books… the “perfect” character. I thought Liana, the sister of our main male protagonist, was incredibly perfect, unbelievably so, a little one-dimensional. She’s beautiful, kind, nice, understanding, un-prejudiced, and she has an amazing healing ability! She was also very damsel-in-distress. I much preferred the main character, Melke, who had to overcome lots of obstacles in the novel and made mistakes, like any real person does.

There is mature content (sexual violence) in this novel, however, which I actually wasn’t expecting at first. And I don’t agree 100% with how Gee dealt with it, her characters’ reactions to it… but anyway.

The actual cover looks a little better than the one I have in this post, the image quality and the colors are kind of off and slightly demented here, not sure why.

Rating: 7 out of 10
Release Date: September 29
Summary: When Elspeth Noblin dies of cancer, she leaves her London apartment to her twin nieces, Julia and Valentina. These two American girls never met their English aunt, only knew that their mother, too, was a twin, and Elspeth her sister. Julia and Valentina are semi-normal American teenagers–with seemingly little interest in college, finding jobs, or anything outside their cozy home in the suburbs of Chicago, and with an abnormally intense attachment to one another.

The girls move to Elspeth’s flat, which borders Highgate Cemetery in London. They come to know the building’s other residents. There is Martin, a brilliant and charming crossword puzzle setter suffering from crippling Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; Marjike, Martin’s devoted but trapped wife; and Robert, Elspeth’s elusive lover, a scholar of the cemetery. As the girls become embroiled in the fraying lives of their aunt’s neighbors, they also discover that much is still alive in Highgate, including–perhaps–their aunt, who can’t seem to leave her old apartment and life behind.

My Thoughts: I just finished reading my ARC of this novel today, and I had very high expectations because I loved loved LOVED The Time Traveler’s Wife by Niffenegger, and I was really looking forward to reading her next book. Thanks to her agents I was able to get an advanced copy.

It took me a little while to get started on this one, but Ms. Niffenegger has the ability to sort of just enmesh you and absorb you into whatever she is writing about at the moment. There was a lot of old Victorian imagery (the Highgate Cemetery in London, a very central part of this novel), kind of soft and grey, just a little bit romantic, even though the story starts on a funeral, and a lot of that mood just permeated majority of the beginning of the book, so much that when certain modern things popped up, such as Julia or Valentina mentioning Google Earth or anything else really now, I got a little surprised. That was how prevalent the mood was.

I feel like nothing really got started until the middle or the end, and most of the story was just meandering along, following the daily lives of the twins and their neighbors. I really liked the side characters, especially the neighbors: Martin, suffering from OCD, and his absent wife, Marijke. The Little Kitten of Death.

The trials and tribulations of the twins themselves, Julia and Valentina, didn’t really catch me as much. I was sympathetic to their problems, but the plot twists regarding their story, and their famiy’s story, did not especially affect me–a few times it was a little anticlimatic.

Her Fearful Symmetry was more of an ode or a literary devotion to Highgate Cemetery itself–it read like a fascinating place, and I’m sure if I ever visit I’ll be just like one of the clueless picture-taking American tourists that Niffenegger describes as Robert guides tours through the cemetry. Therefore it was less like a plotted novel, which I guess Time Traveler’s Wife was, it was so meticulously plotted and planned and…. anyway.

I wasn’t amazed, which is perhaps a little unfair because, like I mentioned before, I had such high expectations. It didn’t matter too much, because I just like reading the author’s writing… transportive. Some lines she writes really get me, they either describe in the perfect words something I’ve felt before and never could say myself, or present something new that I haven’t thought of before.

Ghostly romantic… and lovely writing.

Rating: 7 out of 10
Summary: Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy.

He would be completely normal if he didn’t live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead.

There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy–an ancient Indigo Man beneath the hill, a gateway to a desert leading to an abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer.

But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod’s family . . .

Beloved master storyteller Neil Gaiman returns with a luminous new novel for the audience that embraced his New York Times bestselling modern classic Coraline. Magical, terrifying, and filled with breathtaking adventures, The Graveyard Book is sure to enthrall readers of all ages. (from bookjacket)

My Thoughts: This is classified as a book for children or whatever, but I really enjoyed it. I thought the whole idea and set-up was very original and intriguing–a boy raised by ghosts in a graveyard? I also like Gaiman’s writing style–I haven’t read too many of his other books, I kind of tried the first Sandman when I was younger but it was a little too scary for my taste–and I like how The Graveyard  Book sounded and felt a little like a fairy tale at times.

Bod grows up in the graveyard and learns all sorts of necessary and slightly ghostly things.

Bod studied hard, and asked questions. Tongiht Bod asked about Hauntings, getting more and more specific, which exasperated Mr. Pennyworth, who had never gone in for that sort of thing himself.

“How exactly do I make a cold spot in the air? he asked, and “I think I’ve got Fear down, but how do I take it all the way up to Terror?” and Mr. Pennyworth sighed and hurrumphed and did his best to explain, and it was gone four in the morning before they were done.

Just a little creepy, but kind of in a cute way. I liked Bod a lot, and how the book followed him growing up and figuring out things about his Graveyard world, and the real world outside. There’s also conflict and danger when he faces down his family’s killer, and there was a certain surprise and twist that I didn’t see coming at all.