The Pirate's Wish (The Assassin's Curse #2)
Author: Cassandra Rose Clarke
Publication Date: 6/4/2013
Publisher: Strange Chemistry
[Goodreads|Amazon]

Blurb(GR): After setting out to break the curse that binds them together, the pirate Ananna and the assassin Naji find themselves stranded on an enchanted island in the north with nothing but a sword, their wits, and the secret to breaking the curse: complete three impossible tasks. With the help of their friend Marjani and a rather unusual ally, Ananna and Naji make their way south again, seeking what seems to be beyond their reach.

Unfortunately, Naji has enemies from the shadowy world known as the Mists, and Ananna must still face the repercussions of going up against the Pirate Confederation. Together, Naji and Ananna must break the curse, escape their enemies — and come to terms with their growing romantic attraction.

Review:

Above all else, this is a pretty satisfying conclusion to a story that began not so long ago with one runaway pirate bride on a camel.  I thought I would have to wait a whole year to find out how the dreaded Assassin’s Curse was dealt with, but lo – the internet is generous to me.  I read this book in about four noncontiguous hours of metro riding and would have happily holed up with it somewhere if I’d had the chance.  It was a quick, enjoyable read.  However, this second installment was not as enjoyable as the first for me, for a variety of reasons. 

This second half of the duology starts off pretty much exactly where the first left us – with Ananna and Naji trapped on a mysterious magical island and bound by an impossible curse.  As with all impossible curses, the cure involves three impossible feats – one of which is true love’s first kiss (naturally!).  Poor, scrappy Ananna knows that it would be all too easy to complete that particular feat, but Naji is still delightfully clueless about her feelings.  However, once a rather feisty manticore enters the picture, bent on curing Naji so she can have a tasty meal of non-cursed blood magician meat, things really get cracking.

I went into this thing expecting the final resolution (and mostly the kiss) to get pushed off (realistically or artificially – by any means necessary) until the very end.  After all, the romance novels I know and sometimes love are notorious for dragging out final declarations and for placing undue emphasis on THE FIRST KISS.  Here is how the average plot structure of a romance novel looks like to me:

Note the slow building tension, the climactic declaration scene, the HEA, and of course – the unnecessary epilogue where we’ll probably see the heroine blissfully happy with two precocious kids and a lust-filled marriage.

I must say that I was shocked when that didn’t happen!  I have to give Clarke major kudos for punching my expectations in the face and surprising me many times in this book.  I mean, not only did she give me yet another talking cat (close enough) for my collection, she let the heroine claim the first kiss in the beginning chapters AND learn to be an independent badass lady by the end of the book.  However, weirdly enough I think that some of the things I admired about the book’s nonconformity to romance novel standards actually ended up lessening my overall enjoyment of the book.  The plot of The Pirate’s Wish felt something like this:

While I applauded the kiss coming so early in the story, the pages and pages of angst which occurred after the kiss did start to feel tiresome to me.  The battles (always occurring just in time to prevent something important from happening) were small and unexciting.  The cures for the curse felt anticlimactic and unimaginative (and sometimes rather silly: see talking sharks).  And the huge romantic declaration, which is something I’d usually rather skip, was largely MISSING from this book.  I didn’t need a huge gushfest by any means, but I did need SOMETHING.  I needed some small glimpse into Naji’s head, to be able to understand why he would want to be with Ananna.  Sure, maybe Ananna is an independent woman who doesn’t need a ton of assurances or any proof of Naji’s love…but I guess I needed it.  And I think she deserved to have it.  How strong and independent is she really, if she can't even ask for what she needs from him?  Also, can I just say that I was sorely disappointed that Naji's bratty ex didn't make a reappearance for some good old-fashioned comeuppance, courtesy of Ananna?

However, I did really like that the ending was left open and only partially resolved and I also liked the lack of a completely gushy-mushy HEA slash epilogue.  This was a bit of a let-down for me after the brilliance of The Assassin’s Curse, but it was still a fun ride.


Perfect Musical Pairing
Heart - I Didn't Want to Need You

This series is still satisfying, like the perfect pop song.  And best of all, there's no more waiting required because it's a duology!  I'm hoping she writes a spin-off series or two, but until then here's my tribute to Ananna and Naji from Heart.

3/5 stars

Happy Spring (except for all of you in the Midwest, where apparently it’s still winter…guess that groundhog wasn’t kidding around)!  Here are the updates for last week, plus a few from the week before that we simply couldn’t leave behind!

A bunch of awards and best-of lists were announced, including:

• The Hugo Award nominees (winners to be announced this fall).

• The Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year nominees.

• The YALSA 2013 Teens Top Ten nominees.

• Oh, and hey – there’s actually a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction this year!
  

The ALA also released its 2013 State of America’s Libraries report, which has both hopeful and disheartening news and also includes a list of the most challenged books in 2012.  As the tough economic times encourage more and more people to turn to libraries, they also "encourage" more and more budget cuts for those much-needed libraries, which is unfortunate.  Check out this excellent infographic from CityTownInfo about American’s libraries, which illustrates the problem very well.  It always shocks me how many dedicated readers don’t take advantage of their libraries for print and digital books (as the infographic shows, only 31% of Americans are aware that they can get ebooks from libraries at all).  

There was some good news for New York Public Libraries this week – Simon & Schuster announced that for the first time they will allow digital copies of their books to be checked out and purchased from the NYPL system, on a one-year trial basis.  It remains to be seen whether S&S will expand its partnership to other libraries, or whether the idea of selling ebooks through libraries will be a successful one.  

In other very exciting library news, the Digital Public Library of America launched last week.

Many of you are already aware of this, but every year Sync offers free young adult audiobooks, paired thematically with classic audiobooks – two each week throughout the summer months.  This year’s selections were announced last week and there are a TON of great books coming up.  Check it out and sign up for your free audios!

There were a few interesting bits of news to come out of the London Book Fair last week, including this great keynote speech given by Neil Gaiman (summarized by Publisher’s Weekly).  I love it when smart people in the industry realize that we should embrace change instead of just running around shrieking about it in panic.  I also saw this little story (from The Guardian) about a very futuristic ebook which was debuted at the fair.  In a re-release of the classic mystery The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan, publisher Faber & Faber has reportedly created a “fully-immersive product” which includes:

In fun news:

• I know all of you were probably huddled around your smartphones as soon as the Catching Fire trailer was released last week, but here it is so you can watch it again (for the 9th time).

A  month or two ago, Heidi from Bunbury in the Stacks and Alyssa from Books Take You Places convinced me to try the Fables graphic novel series by Bill Willingham. Boy, am I ever glad they did. I usually trust those two with fantasy recommendations, but with this one they just hit it out of the park. I put the first few on hold at the library and as of last month, I’ve read all eighteen trade paperbacks to catch up with the series. Honestly, I was a complete newbie when it came to graphic novels so I did not know where to go after I found out how much I liked them. I am a bit embarrassed to say that I basically thought my brother and several of my guy friends from college were pretty lame for reading comic books. I chuckled at my younger sister for watching Sailor Moon and reading some manga. This post is basically me doing an intervention on myself:

Dear Flannery, 

You were a complete idiot. Comics and graphic novels are amazing, or at least they can be. You were stupid to ever think people who read them were not really reading and anyone else who still thinks something along those lines is also an idiot. There might not be as much text going on but when done right, there is just as much story, the characters have just as much (if not more) personality, and you get the absolute bonus of seeing a visualization of so many aspects of a book.  

Sincerely,
Flannery

But I’ll head back to Fables for now, so you can see if this series might also work for you.

Bill Willingham has imagined a world inside of our world, where characters from fables and folklore exist alongside us. The “Mundies” (us) are unaware that a section of New York City is actually Fabletown, with (at the beginning of the series) Old King Cole as mayor, Bigby (the Big Bad) Wolf as sheriff, and Snow White as head administrator. There is a farm in upstate New York where all the non-human Fables or those who are unable to blend into normal society live, from the three blind mice to Baloo and Sheer Kahn from Kipling’s The Jungle Book to Orwell’s maniacal pigs from Animal Farm. Willingham writes the entire series so the voices remain constant and for the most part, the artistry is consistent. Because each of the trade paperbacks compiles several of the issues, there are usually several smaller story arcs and one or more larger arcs going on in the 250-odd pages in each installment. The first edition, Legends in Exile, opens with Jack (of all the Tales—Jack Horner, Jack Be Nimble, Jack Frost, etc.) alerting Bigby that Rose Red, Snow White’s sister, has disappeared. Her apartment is completely ransacked and covered in blood. We are introduced to several characters as the mystery unfolds and I actually found the mystery to be far less predictable than some so-called mystery novels I have read in the past.  But in the larger scheme of the series, the first installment is probably somewhere in the middle of the spectrum in terms of quality, in my opinion. It must be hard to introduce a rather bottomless cast of characters while solving a crime in such a contained amount of space and text so I just went with it, but I can see how it might be a challenge to keep up with everyone and always know what's going on. In addition, the sense of humor and occasional swearing and sexual content might not appeal to some fairy tale fans. (One of the library copies I read had the sex scenes ripped out, bahaha. I hope there is a tween boy somewhere with them folded up under his pillow.) As the series went on, I was more and more invested in the characters, their backstories, and their interconnections to the point that I was giddy when I saw issues devoted to certain characters and audibly groaned when I saw others pop up. (If you're wondering, I love the cubs, Bigby, Flycatcher, and Rose Red and I don't really care about Pinocchio, Gepetto, Jack, Beauty and the Beast, or Bluebeard.)

It is hard to review an entire series, as I do not want to give any spoilers away, but I will say that my favorite installments of the eighteen have been March of the Wooden Soldiers (#4), which deals with an impending war in the Fable Homelands, The Good Prince (#10), which deals with the Frog Prince, and Rose Red (#15), which tells about a lot of said character’s background. The only total miss for me was in Volume 16, The Great Fables Crossover, when Willingham attempted to bring Jack’s offshoot series (unsurprisingly called Jack of Fables) and the regular Fables together. Jack’s character is a womanizer, a schmoozing con-man and oftentimes a total jackass. A lot of readers seem to dislike him or love him. I  am generally apathetic  but I would rather read about no less than thirty other Fables before I read about him so I have only read the first Jack of Fables installment. (The (Nearly) Great Escape) The crossover edition was hard to enjoy as readers unfamiliar with the storylines in Jack’s series (read: me) have no idea what was going on. Characters in that series made less sense to me even after I read one installment—there seems to be another hidden Fable community containing the usual fairy tale-ish characters, but also Literals, characters who are part of the writing process—the Pathetic Fallacy, Revise,  Genres etc. I had/have a harder time getting my head around the idea of those characters existing alongside the Fables in the real world. As in a few other books I’ve read in the past, most notably Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series, Fables are kept alive by their popularity. A popular Fable is harder to kill and more likely to come back to life, whereas a lesser known Fable might disappear forever. It is confusing to me where characters like Revise and the Genres come from and who, if anyone, is perpetuating their existence. 

At its worst, Fables volumes are three star reads, but it is very consistently four star (and even five star) fun reading for me. I cannot wait for the next trade paperback to come out. Or, perhaps I should just suck it up and venture into a comic book store for the first time in my life. If you are looking for an entry point to read graphic novels, this was mine and it absolutely got me hooked. I do not recommend just picking up any later installment as you will miss character and story development and I imagine you would be pretty lost. Start at the beginning and give it two editions before you decide on whether to continue. In other news, stay tuned for several posts about the eighty or ninety graphic novels I've read so far this year since starting this series. No joke. 

Here's my roundup of ratings for each installment (and a few offshoot books):

Under the Light (Light, #2)
Author: Lauta Whitcomb
Publication Date: 5/14/2013
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
[Goodreads|Amazon]

Blurb: Helen needed a body to be with her beloved and Jenny needed to escape from hers before her spirit was broken. It was wicked, borrowing it, but love drives even the gentlest soul to desperate acts.

When Jenny returns to her body, she finds that someone has been living her life while she was away. She doesn’t remember being Billy’s lover or defying her family. But now she is faced with the consequences. And Helen, who has returned to warn Jenny—to help her—finds herself trapped, haunting the girl she wished to save.

In this captivating companion novel to A Certain Slant of Light, the love story between Jenny and Billy begins out-of-body—where they can fly and move the stars--and continues into the tumultuous realm of the living, where they are torn away from each other even as they slowly remember their spirits falling in love.

Review:

How much recapping do you like in your sequels/companion novels? It appears that even I, a reader with a very short memory for details, have my limits. If a sequel verges on being 50% recap of its preceding story, then what's the point of its existence, really?

I remember A Certain Slant of Light to be a lovely, elegant, sensual and gently unsettling ghost story. (It's been years since I read it though, in fact, it was one of my first YA reads after, naturally, Twilight, so I can't be held fully accountable for my memories of it until I reread it, ok?) Under the Light is equally elegantly written. Laura Whitcomb published books on writing and indeed she knows what she is talking about, her prose is lovely, in my opinion. The last chapter is just gorgeous. But the plot, the plot! Where art thou?

The premise of Under the Light is that we follow up on Jenny and Billy once their bodies, previously possessed by Helen and James, are returned to them. A Certain Slant of Light left Jenny and Billy in quite a bind (possibly a pregnancy? ooh-la-la!), so I see how it would be interesting to see how they deal with their difficulties and with the realization that their bodies were inhabited and used by ghostly lovers. But so much of this new novel is taken up by Helen, who in this book returns to see Jenny through her ordeal, and Helen's recapping of what she and James did in the previous book, that there is hardly any space in this rather slight tome left to develop Jenny and Billy's story. This book thoroughly lacks in new material and good conflict. There are almost no new revelations or new developments. Jenny and Billy finding out what happened to their bodies? But WE already know! Any new stories with Jenny's parents? Hardly! Getting to know Billy a bit better? Eh, a bit. It seems, everything exciting happened in the first book, and this follow-up just ties some loose ends, and barely offers anything more. We do learn about Billy's reasons for abandoning his body, however this plot line is fairly insignificant and short. The way I see it, the novel would have been better if Helen weren't in it at all. She is fairly useless as a helper anyway.

In the end, the only thing that Under the Light achieves is make you want to reread A Certain Slant of Light. I recommend you all do the same and don't bother with this companion. I feel that A Certain Slant of Light is a better book if it is experienced as a standalone.

3/5 stars

The Lucy Variations
Author: Sara Zarr
Publication Date: 5/7/2013
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
[Goodreads|Amazon]

Blurb: Lucy Beck-Moreau once had a promising future as a concert pianist. The right people knew her name, her performances were booked months in advance, and her future seemed certain.

That was all before she turned fourteen.

Now, at sixteen, it's over. A death, and a betrayal, led her to walk away. That leaves her talented ten-year-old brother, Gus, to shoulder the full weight of the Beck-Moreau family expectations. Then Gus gets a new piano teacher who is young, kind, and interested in helping Lucy rekindle her love of piano -- on her own terms. But when you're used to performing for sold-out audiences and world-famous critics, can you ever learn to play just for yourself?

National Book Award finalist Sara Zarr takes readers inside the exclusive world of privileged San Francisco families, top junior music competitions, and intense mentorships. The Lucy Variations is a story of one girl's struggle to reclaim her love of music and herself. It's about finding joy again, even when things don't go according to plan. Because life isn't a performance, and everyone deserves the chance to make a few mistakes along the way.

Reviews:

I love Sara Zarr's writing and I always will.  At my very first book club meeting with the fabulous ladies of Fairfax Forever YA, I listed her as one of my favorite YA authors (this after being told that I would be judged based on my answers).  I even got my club to go rogue one month and read Sara Zarr's How To Save A Life instead of the Forever YA selection.  I love that Sara Zarr’s novels will always find a way to reach right under my rib cage and rip out my heart, no matter how little I initially relate to any of her characters.  Her characters always, always find a way to get under my skin.  Sigh.  So why didn’t that happen with The Lucy Variations?  When I wanted to feel connected, I felt unconcerned.  When I wanted to feel the massive gut punch of Sara Zarr, I felt a fluttery twinge.  When I wanted to swoon, I cringed.  Unfortunately, I think a lot of the reason for my lackluster feelings lies in her use of the third person point of view, something that’s new for her.  Some authors are able to use third person to great effect, in a way that still feels very personal (Stacia Kane, I am looking at you).  The third person narration in The Lucy Variations feels distanced and impersonal.  Worse, it sometimes feels overly summarized in that way that says there isn’t enough action and dialogue.

Then they went over here.

Then she talked about this.

Then he left.

Know what I mean?  I want to know how they’re getting from place to place.  I want to see the movement.  I want to hear the conversation.  I need more description, dialogue, and action and less simple narration of events.

However, does this mean I will be abandoning Sara Zarr and striking her from my judgment-worthy list of favorite YA authors?  Hell no.  I can only speculate, but maybe this is Sara Zarr’s attempt at a new creative direction, something that I can only support.  Maybe this is the equivalent of her going up on stage and playing Philip Glass when we all expected to hear Bach.  It wasn’t a perfect, error-free rendition, but I appreciate her effort.  And I will keep reading and supporting whatever she decides to put out there.

3/5 stars

The Lucy Variations was, for me, a parade of unlikable characters. I do not necessarily need likable characters in a novel but I do need something to keep me going if I am not enjoying the characters, and that is usually a compelling story. What could have been a literary Searching for Bobby Fischer-esque rise and (at least quasi-) fall of a child prodigy ended up falling flat for me. Without Zarr's typical first-person narration, I missed hearing the main character's perspective throughout and from the outsider's view, I never truly understood how Lucy could not see her own situation for what it was. Instead, she was pretty insufferable to her friends and family and refused to problem solve so I was unable to sympathize with her character. Several families in Zarr's prior works have similar communication problems to the Beck-Moreaus of The Lucy Variations, but as I get farther and farther away from this book, the characters who resonated most for me were Lucy's younger brother and Lucy's best friend--the only two straight shooters in the novel. The rest of the characters had me turning page after page waiting, waiting, waiting for people to tell others what they were thinking or how they had hurt each other. 

In terms of the story, I was disappointed in the lack of resolution. The ending felt hurried and there were several loose ends--not "oh, I guess it could go either way and it's left up to interpretation" types of loose ends, more "why was this subplot even introduced if it was going nowhere?" types of loose ends. For example, the relationship between Lucy and her prior teacher felt like a speed bump in the story and I was not sure why it was included. And arguably the largest conflict in the book, that between Lucy and her grandfather, goes out with a fizzle. When it comes down to it, as a reader I felt that this novel was missing its emotional core, something Zarr is typically fantastic at cultivating, so I never really connected to the story, the characters, or the style. I'll still be first in line to read Zarr's next book, and in all likelihood, her next ten. 

**SPOILER**
How great would it have been if Lucy had sat down at the concert and played the song from her grandfather's record collection that reminded him of his late wife? That would've been a kick in the pants for him.
**END SPOILER**


3/5 stars

It appears the three of us are pretty much on the same page as to why this new Sara Zarr novel didn't work for us. Pardon me for repeating what has already been said.

Generally, it's a good thing when authors try to experiment and explore new points of view and styles of writing. But sometimes when they try something new, it just doesn't work as well as the old. This is the case with The Lucy Variations I think. The thing I disliked the most about this novel is its POV, specifically its 3rd person POV instead of Zarr's signature 1st. It was a challenge for the author herself (she talked about this in her blog post), and the challenge, in my opinion, not well met in this case. I am still scratching my head in an effort to understand why Zarr chose to write this new novel this way. 3rd person POV added nothing to the narrative (it is a very close 3rd person, with only Lucy's perspective used, we never get insight into any other character's mind) and added unnecessary feeling of detachment to the story.

As for everything else, while the book was still enjoyable to a degree, the plot felt a bit  stale. I never finished Virtuosity, but these two novels sound fairly similar - artistic girls in creative and personal crisis and all that . Whatever new and interesting Zarr had in her version - mainly Lucy's inappropriate relationships with older men - never materialized into anything tangible and punchy. Lucy's friends were a waste and underutilized in the plot, and so were many other plot lines which started out promising but ended wit.

All in all, The Lucy Variations is just an average read and by far Zarr's weakest. Fingers crossed, her next effort is better.

3/5 stars