Plot: While ferrying a plane through France, ATA pilot and amateur poet Rose Justice is captured by Nazis. She is sent to the notorious women’s concentration camp known as Ravensbruck along with some French political prisoners. In the camp she is subject to torture, deprivation and random cruelty but manages to hold on to hope through the friendship and loyalty of her fellow prisoners. But will she be able to bear witness to the horrors of Ravensbruck and find justice for her fallen friends?

This review was based on an ARC received at BEA 2013.

Rose Under Fire is a companion book to last year’s amazing Code Name Verity. Maddie, from the first book, appears, there are more brave female pilots and it takes place during WWII but otherwise it is a completely different book. It is just as good – though perhaps more troubling – but very different. (But if I had to pick a favorite, I would have to reluctantly say Code Name Verity… a well written unreliable narrator gets me every time.)

Rose narrates the story. The first two sections, covering the time before and during her incarceration, are written in diary style while the third, covering the trials is a newspaper article. This gives an uncomfortable proximity to the events, one that I think is absolutely necessary for this kind of narrative. But Rose is a poet, as well as a pilot, and the novel is also full of her poetry. Some are beautiful, terrible poems about life in the camp and others are simple, painfully nostalgic rhymes about home. Though her story is fictional, Rose voice is authentic and her circumstances real and carefully researched.

The simple, matter of fact (and sometimes even funny) way that Rose describes the atrocities of Ravensbruck (the hunger, the violence, the hopelessness, the death), makes them, if anything, more horrifying. “Though I don’t know,” she says of one of her first friends in the camp, “if her hair ever grew back before they gassed her” (p 121). But it was the plight of the Rabbits, young Polish girls subjected to barbaric medical experiments, turned my stomach. These are images that will stick with me for a long, long time. For though the angry, sometimes nasty young Roza and sweet, artistic Karolina are fictional, the book pays tribute to the real Rabbits who were tortured at Ravensbruck: their names are printed in the background of the title page.

There are so many memorable characters in this book, I couldn’t do them justice. All are complex and even the best of them are forced to do things that we would consider uncivilized or unforgivable in order to survive. Would you be able to prop up the corpses of your fallen friends in order to fool the SS guards counting you? They are also capable of surprising acts of loyalty and generosity… even characters that should be enemies. Rose is a brave, intelligent young woman but her survival is not entirely due to courage. Some of it stubbornness and some is what Wein poetically calls “controlled flight into terrain”: she simply has no other choice but to fly blindly into danger.

This is not an easy book but it is well worth it the pain.

Rose Under Fire will be released in September 2013 and contains an ample bibliography for those who want to learn more about the horrors of Ravensbruck.

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A Devil and her Love Song

• Kurosu, now nicknamed Eros, continues to try to win Maria’s heart, much to Shin’s annoyance. But when Shin decides to return to music and show his true feelings for Maria. Of course, everything goes wrong. This a unique, charming and beautifully drawn shoujo manga. I look forward to every volume.

Jane, le renard et moi (French) by Isabelle Arsenault and Fanny Britt

• A simple, beautiful graphic novel about a young girl plagued by bullying. She is saved by the story of Jane Eyre (parts of which are weaved into the narrative), a friendly wolf at camp and by friendship. Britt’s illustrations are absolutely beautiful and though the story can be harsh and hits very close to home for many of us, it is gently and beautifully told. Highly recommended.

Slam Dunk, volume 28 by Takehiko Inoue

• Hanamichi is now the one person who can turn the game around and win his team the national championship. The excitement and intensity is still there and I honestly love this series but I have to wonder how many more volumes Inoue can keep a single game going. Seeing as the series finishes at volume 31, my guess is 3 more.

Skip Beat, volume 31 by Yoshiki Nakamura

• Ren’s role as the serial killer BJ is bringing out his darker side and memories he would rather forget. Only Kyoko can save him from himself. Meanwhile she is starting work on a new TV show and is being pursued by an increasing number of men… though she still hasn’t noticed. This manga is as much fun as ever but I’m looking forward to the Cain Heel/BJ storyline wrapping up.

Sleeping Moon, volume 1 by Kano Miyamoto

• Akihito returns to his ancestral home to uncover the secret of the curse plaguing his family, one that leads all directly descended males to an early grave. He finds ghosts, time slips and two attractive young men. Miyamoto is one of my favorite BL writers and this story promises to be interesting though it took me a bit of time to get into it. Readers hoping for romance or more will have to be patient however, very little happens in this volume.

The Transformers: Robots in Disguise, volume 3 by John Barber

• What was even happening in this volume? The first issue is about Orion Pax (who you might know as Optimus Prime) is caught on a planet in some kind of time loop and… oh, you just try to figure it out. After that it is back to the politics and the election that Starscream might actually win. The shit is about to hit the fan on Cybertron. And Arcee kicks some serious ass. Not the best volume of Robots in Disguise but it seems to be going in interesting places.

Plot: Flora is a cynical young girl who loves super hero comics. One day she saves a squirrel from a vacuum cleaner and through this heroic act becomes sidekick like the ones in her beloved stories. Ulysses’ near-death experience gives him super-squirrel powers: he has super strength, can fly and can type poetry. He explores the world with his young friend, defeats evil cats and must confront his arch nemesis: Flora’s mom.

This review was based on an ARC received at BEA 2013. I did not see the final illustrations.

This novel mixes short chapters and hilarious comics (some of the expressions, like Ulysses’ joy at lifting a vacuum cleaner over his head, are absolutely priceless). They complement rather than illustrate each other. This is a format that the kids at my library adore. DiCamillo and Campbell pull it off flawlessly.

Flora is a unique and interesting character in a world populated by hilariously strange people. She calls herself a cynic but this is simply how she copes with her parent’s divorce and her mother’s emotional distance, to keep from hoping. “Do not hope,” she says again and again, “observe.” She is constantly quoting from Terrible Things Can Happen to You, an exaggerated safety column from her comics that guide her actions. William Spiver (do not call him William or Billy) is just as odd, too serious for his age, spouting facts and claiming temporary blindness, though, like Flora, his silly behaviour hides deep pain. There are many others but I was especially charmed by Dr. Meecham who constantly hopes for miracles, no matter how unlikely. But as odd as the characters are, the joke is never on them; they are funny and endearing.

Though this is a laugh out loud tale, it addresses some serious issues: family, loss, friendship and love. The themes of sight ( ex. William Spiver’s blindness) and names (ex. Flora’s father introduces himself constantly and lives in a building owned by a man and terrorized by a cat both named Mr. Klaus) recur throughout the novel and the book would be worth rereading to figure out what DiCamillo is trying to say about them.

This book is a real pleasure for readers of all ages.

Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures will be released in September 2013. If I am not mistaken, the illustrations should be in colour. I look forward to seeing it!

2013 (#)

This review was based on an ARC received at BEA 2013.

If you haven’t read the first book in The Raven Cycle, The Raven Boys, go do that now. I’ll wait.

Done? Good. …I feel like I’ve done this gag before. Oh well, the point is that I love this series more than I can express in words. You could have pried the ARC of The Dream Thieves from my cold dead hands. It has everything I could want in a book: complex, quirky characters, witty dialogue, magical mysteries, life or death situations (including lots of exciting street racing!) and heartbreaking romance. I L.O.V.E. it. One of my favorite fantasy YA series out there, bar none.

If The Raven Boys was about Gansey’s obsessive quest for a lost Welsh king (a storyline that has not been completely abandoned, fear not), The Dream Thieves is about the wild, mysterious Ronan and his many secrets. First among these is his strange power to bring things back from dreams, but this is not his only secret, and far from the most shocking. I’ll let you discover them along with Ronan; it’s a wild ride. Meanwhile Adam is dealing with the terrible choice he made at the end of the last book and Blue is struggling with her feelings for the boys, never able to forget that if she kisses her true love, he will die. There are a lot of hurt feelings and life-altering decisions. And I’d like to say that all turns out well in the end but that remains to be seen. (Noah has a rather small role in this book but I need to mention him because I love him and he has the most adorable scene with Blue halfway through the book.)

There are also a few new characters. Kavinsky is the main antagonist: he is all of Ronan’s crazy, dangerous impulses taken to the extreme. He is what Ronan might have become without Gansey, I suspect, and they are alike in some surprising ways. But most interesting to me is the enigmatic and surprisingly sympathetic hit man known simply as Mr. Gray. He is pragmatic and very good at what he does. And he does some truly terrible things, without apology. But Stiefvater gives him a few human touches, a moral compass of sorts and a tragic past. I couldn’t help but like him.

Meanwhile Stiefvater’s use of language is so unique and beautiful, I kept reading sections aloud to the nearest victim… I mean friend! My boyfriend probably thinks he’s read it at this point and my copy of the book is full of post-it notes. Here are a few random examples that caught my eye:

Blue was a fanciful but sensible thing, like a platypus, or one of those sandwiches that had been cut into circles for a fancy tea party. (p. 78)

He was polite like tentacles were polite, testing the surface carefully, checking to see how it reacted to his presence. (p. 204)

Once he had been stabbed with a screwdriver – Phillips head, bright blue handle – and falling in love with Maura Sargent was exactly the same. (p 290)

When I read Stiefvater’s books, I’m reminded that writing can be a beautiful craft. I can imagine her choosing every word with care for maximum impact.

I also need to take a moment to talk about this gorgeous cover. The raven on the first volume was magnificent but Ronan on this cover is perfectly captured and he takes my breath away. Could I get this for my wall please?

The Dream Thieves comes out on September 17th 2013. And as with the first book, Stiefvater has left me desperate for more.

2013 (#)

This review was based on an ARC received at BEA 2013.

If you are a huge fan of Ship Breaker and The Drowned Cities, as I am, you should know that Bacigalupi’s new novel is a bit different. Zombie Baseball Beatdown is a middle grade novel, for one, and it isn’t afraid to be a bit ridiculous.

Rabi and his friends face bullies, zombies (human and bovine), cops and slimy lawyers with nothing but their guts, baseball bats and, of course, their braaaaiiiiins. There are more than enough investigations, chase scenes and zombie beatdowns to please any action fan. The whole thing culminates to an epic scene where the entire baseball team is confronted with hordes of zombies and Rabi must use his tactical genius to get them out of it. And if Bacigalupi goes over the top sometimes? It’s all the more fun for it.

But it isn’t all fun and games. Through his zombie cows, Bacigalupi forces kids to think of the foods they eat and how it is produced. And at the center of the novel is the problem of how illegal immigrants from Mexico are treated in the U.S. Miguel and his family face racism, harsh working conditions, blackmail and ultimately deportation. “When someone broke in and stole your stuff, you were supposed to call the cops. But what did you do when the cops broke in and stole your family?” (p. 63)

This is a great book for preteen boys: it is filled with action, sports, comic book references and gory zombie fun but it will also make them think. I had a good laugh, both at the story and at the horrified looks my colleagues gave the cover.

2013 (#)

This was another great BEA. I saw a few people that I only see when I go and met some new awesome book-loving people. If you ended up here after meeting me in line, welcome!

Some highlights of the show:

• Getting up at 6 am to stand in line to get in… Ok, that’s not a highlight, more of a tradition.
• Meeting some of my favorite authors, including Kendare Blake, Diana Peterfreund, David Levithan, Gene Luen Yang, Oliver Jeffers, Elizabeth Wein, Paolo Bacigalupi and Robin Wasserman (sadly not Holly Black).
• I actually met Oliver Jeffers twice! After also meeting him in Toronto in January… I may be stalking him a little.
• Robyn Schneider is as smiley and friendly as on Youtube.
• I met Grumpy Cat! She may have had the longest line at BEA.
• I met Elizabeth Wein by accident at the Disney booth. (Me (seeing someone holding an arc): “Are you already giving out Rose Under Fire?!” Staff member: “Um… no… that’s the author.”) She was nice, and wearing a spitfire necklace.
• Chatting with strangers in line.
• I got a balloon dog. I named him Charlie.
• Spotting Mo Willems at Penn Station while waiting for my train. Almost screaming his name like he’s a rock star.
• Bringing home over 100lbs of books. (One of my suitcases broke and could no longer be pulled. I have a very nice boyfriend.)

Some reactions to finding out I’m Canadian:

• “That reminds me that I want to meet Gordon Korman. Is he here?” (Yes he was there.)
• “Montreal is beautiful! But I couldn’t live there. I’m from Texas, it would kill me.”
• “That’s sooooo far.” (Not really)
• “Oh, I like poutine!”
• “My cousin is a librarian in Ottawa, do you know him?” (No, there are almost 400 librarians working in my library; I don’t even know all of them.)
• “I wish our malls were underground.” (Yeah, that’s cool… but New York’s subway is way better.)
• And an employee at The Empire State Building was adorably excited to be able to talk to me in French.

The 10 BEA books I’m most excited about reading:

• Across a Star-Swept Sea by Diana Peterfreund
• Antigoddess by Kendare Blake
• The Beginning of Everything by Robyn Schneider
• The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black
• The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater
• Invisibility by Andrea Cramer and David Levithan
• The Lost Kingdom by Matthew J. Kirby
• Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein
• The Song of the Quarkbeast by Jasper Fford
• Zombie Baseball Beatdown by Paolo Bacigalupi

This review was based on an ARC received at BEA 2013.

I was so excited about this book. It takes place in the same universe as For Darkness Shows the Stars, which was one of my favorite books of 2012. Last year’s novel was a sci-fi reinterpretation of Persuasion; Across a Star-Swept Sea is a gender swapped Scarlet Pimpernel, a story that I don’t know as well but you cannot go wrong with a Reign of Terror and a daredevil spy. Throw in some amazing characters, medical ethics, politics and romance and I was completely riveted.

Persis is an amazing character. She is brilliant – the novel begins with an assignment she wrote for school – politically motivated, adventurous and a skilled liar. Her motivations are complex and the decisions she has to make are hard. Fortunately she has surrounded herself with skilled, intelligent friends. Meanwhile Justen is the perfect match for her: intelligent and socially conscious but also tormented by a discovery that he made that changed the world (I was reminded of Einstein and the atomic bomb). The whole takes place on a pair of beautiful, artificial, Polynesian islands and is filled to the brim with undercover missions and dangerous rescues. The novel also ponders the ethics of genetic manipulation and cycles of revenge and it is peppered with references to classic literature that will put a grin on any book nerd’s face. I loved it. There is no more to it than that.

Fans of For Darkness Shows the Stars will be happy to know that Elliot, Kai and their friends make an appearance towards the end of the novel.

Across a Star-Swept Sea is due out in October and I highly recommend you buy it. Meanwhile the only thing that I want to know is this: Will there be another novel in this universe and when can I read it?

2013 (#)

Plot: Poppy, Alica and Zack have been friends forever and they have been playing their game for almost as long. In it pirates, thieves and mermaids go on adventures under the malevolent eye of the Great Queen, an old china doll locked in Poppy’s mother’s cabinet. But they are growing up and Zack’s father is pressuring him to give up the game. When all of Zach’s action figures, including William the Blade, are lost, he cannot bring himself to tell the girls why he can’t play anymore. But the Queen has one last quest for the trio: she is possessed by the ghost of a dead girl and the friends must travel to her grave to put her to rest.

I know that a story about an evil doll made out of little girl bones is going to give me nightmares, but what can I say? I can’t resist a Holly Black novel. I always find myself caught up in the narrative and falling in love with her characters.

Though it has a heroic fantasy plot – with arduous travel, pirated ships and haunted artifacts – ancient curses – this is really a novel about growing up and about stories. Poppy, Alice and Zach are on the cusp of adolescence, still friends and still enthralled by their game but beginning to discover other things. Poppy is terrified of this change, of losing her friends, of being left behind. I have to quote Black here because she says it so well: “I hate that everyone calls it growing up but it feels like dying.” (p. 200) She reacts with anger and with a story more complex and magical than ever.

And that’s the other thing: the story. Is the Queen really the ghost of Eleanore? Is she really talking to Poppy in her dreams and manifesting at inconvenient times? Or is she just an expression of their fear of growing up and their issues with their parents? Maybe both. There is no real answer (though there are several eerie hints to Eleanor’s ghostly presence). “Maybe all stories are true ones.” (p. 240) But either way the adventure the kids go on is real enough, and quite exciting… though not, as Zack quickly comes to realize, as glamorous as novels sometimes make them out to be.

And finally, as a librarian, I feel that the pink hair, yellow shoed librarian in this book needs a little shout out. She was great.

I”m hoping to meet Holly Black at BEA this week where they’ll be handing out copies of her next book, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown.

2013 (#)

Cesare

• I love Soryo; she is such a skilled, versatile mangaka. I fell in love with her good girl/motor-cycle-riding bad boy shojo Mars years ago and her sci-fi thriller Eternal Sabbat blew me away. Cesare is a smart detailed history, addressing the infamous Borgia family and the complicated Italian politics that surrounded them. The art is gorgeous and the intrigue enthralling. She continues to impress me.

Maus: A survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman

• I can’t believe how long it has taken me to read this classic. I guess I read so much about it that I felt like I had read it. But, of course, actually reading it is an entirely different experience. For those who don’t know, Maus chronicles Spiegelman’s father’s experiences during the holocaust (with the Jews represented as mice, the Germans as cats, the Poles as pigs, etc.). It is a hard and honest tale that pulls no punches. It also addresses Spiegelman’s creative process and his trouble reconciling his father’s courage and his difficult personality. I was reminded of Bechdel’s memoirs about her own father, Fun Home, not in its content but in its approach; I wonder if she was influenced by it.

Saturn Apartments, volume 7 by Hisae Iwaoka

• In the final volume of this quiet sci-fi series, everything finally comes to a head. The lower level residents of the rings circling earth are locked into their section after a fire. Class tensions are rising and only Mitsu’s planned trip to the surface of earth may bring hope to his people. This is a lovely conclusion to a good series, one that gives hope in the goodness of people without ignoring their flaws.

Scott Pilgrim, volume 3: Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness by Bryan Lee O’Malley

• I’m really impressed with this new, coloured edition of Scott Pilgrim. The huge manga fan that I am doesn’t think that everything needs colour but Nathan Fairbairn has done an amazing job. In this volume, Scott must face another of Ramona’s evil exes – a vegan with psychic powers, of course – and one of his own evil exes, Envy. Though it borders on the ludicrous at times, it’s all in good fun and has so many amusing manga and video game references.

Hiaasen’s newest middle grade novel is a bit different from Hoot, Flush and Scat but it is just as funny. It starts with the following memorable sentence: “Mickey Cray had been out of work ever since a dead iguana fell from a palm tree and hit him on the head.” As you can probably tell, the humour is a bit wicked but that’s just the way I like it. Hiaasen’s first three novels were environmental mysteries; I would sooner call this one an adventure, complete with kidnapping and wilderness survival, but Florida and its wildlife remain important characters (some highlights are Alice the alligator, Beulah the python and a very alarmed bat).

The human characters are as colourful as the animal ones. Wahoo’s father Mickey is passionate about animals, nearly fearless and has no patience for people and their stupidity. The TV star, Derek Badger, meanwhile is all ego, carelessness and stupid bravado (which gets him into many hilarious situations)… but he manages to redeem himself somewhat in the end. But Wahoo is the real star: he plays the diplomat between the quick tempered adults and is brave in a more quiet way than his father. Hiaasen also gives us another great female character in Tuna. She is smart – an amateur taxonomist – and has as much attitude as any of his heroines. Her difficult home life provides the secondary narrative of the novel: she joins Wahoo and his father on their job to escape her own abusive father. She and Wahoo develop a really touching rapport.

This was another fun read; I just flew through it, smiling constantly. I can’t wait to read Scat.

2013 (#)