Un Lun Dun
Author: China Miéville
Publication Date: 2/13/07
Publisher: Del Rey

Blurb(GR): What is Un Lun Dun?  It is London through the looking glass, an urban Wonderland  of strange delights where all the lost and broken things of London end up . . . and  some of its lost and broken people, too–including Brokkenbroll, boss of the broken umbrellas; Obaday Fing, a tailor whose head is an enormous pin cushion, and an empty  milk carton called Curdle.  Un Lun Dun is a place where words are alive, a jungle  lurks behind the door of an ordinary house, carnivorous giraffes stalk the streets,  and a dark cloud dreams of burning the world. It is a city awaiting its hero, whose  coming was prophesied long ago, set down for all time in the pages of a talking book.
 
When twelve-year-old Zanna and her friend Deeba find a secret entrance leading out  of London and into this strange city, it seems that the ancient prophecy is coming  true at last. But then things begin to go shockingly wrong.

Review:

Wow.  How do I describe this book?  It’s on the one hand a bit of an ode to all of the quest based, parallel world containing fantasies that have come before:   The Wizard of Oz, Narnia, Mary Poppins, Alice in Wonderland, most of Neil Gaiman’s catalogue, hell even Harry Potter.  On the other hand, it undermines the typical tenets of these books in a way that’s a bit of a fuck you to the whole genre.  It also manages to transcend both of these things and become a decent quest based, parallel world containing fantasy itself.  It’s fun, playful, and sometimes just downright silly.  I wish that I could morph into Will Ferrell as James Lipton right now and declare it delightful.  There are a few things that I could have done without, but for the most part I really enjoyed this book.

It all starts when Susanna “Zanna” and her BFF Deeba notice a few strange things around their estate:  A fox looks at them gravely, Zanna’s face appears in a cloud, a flattering graffito proclaims “Zanna For Ever!,” and odd people start recognizing Zanna around the town and calling her “Shwazzy.”  One night Zanna and Deeba follow a spying broken umbrella unbrella and discover a way into London’s “abcity” – Unlondon.  Soon Zanna is discovering that she’s a hero of great prophecy, destined to save Unlondon from a powerful enemy.  But everything gets turned on its ear when Zanna falls to the enemy and loses her memory.  Now it’s up to the Unheroes to save the day.

The city of Unlondon is wonderfully described in all its breathtaking, peculiar detail. It’s a feast for the imagination...the kind of feast where there are about twelve different utensils that you’ve never seen before, and every course is comprised of something that you didn’t even know could be classified as a food.  There are so many parts of the city that I fell in love with:  the donut sun, the book of prophecies (who was written by idiots), the killer giraffes, the binjas, the extreme librarians, the utterlings, CURDLE!  Some of the inanimate objects in this book have more personality than human characters I’ve spent time with.  But there were a few times that I felt like it was just a bit…ham-fisted.   Like the character that is essentially a bunch of fish trapped in a diving suit named…Skool.  Get it?  Skool! 

Or the main villain:  I was intrigued by his insatiable drive to consume more and more information, but I couldn’t help the feeling that I was essentially reading a book starring the villain of the silly (but environmentally conscious!) nineties animated film, Ferngully: the Last Rainforest. 

I also really don’t love the Ungun.  I absolutely adore everytime Deeba goes against “the rules” by bypassing the prophecies or outwitting some of the bad guys.  But the Ungun just seems like such a magical panacea of a weapon.  I don’t like easy solutions in fantasy novels, and I wish that this was one of the tenets that he had chosen to subvert in this book.

It’s really hard to know who to recommend this book for.  I think that a subset of the reading population will think that it’s the best thing since sliced bread. Another set will think that it’s absolutely crazytrain.  I guess if you enjoy bizarre/absurd fantasy and like playing with words, I would say give this a try.

Perfect Musical Pairing

Radiohead – Subterranean Homesick Alien

When I recently read The City & The C, it struck me as dense and hard to get into, but it really grew on me and I love the big ideas it contains.  This book is like a much younger, more accessible, but also more shallow version of that book (if you subtract a noir mystery and add in a fantasy funhouse mirror).  Radiohead’s Ok Computer is also much more accessible and popular than some of their later albums.  This song is about feeling bored and restless with your surroundings – so much so that you want anything to happen, even something drastic.  

4/5 Stars

The Spectacular Now
Author: Tim Tharp
Publication Date: 11/11/08
Publisher: Knopf Books For Young Readers

Blurb(GR): SUTTER KEELY. HE’S the guy you want at your party. He’ll get everyone dancing. He’ll get everyone in your parents’ pool. Okay, so he’s not exactly a shining academic star. He has no plans for college and will probably end up folding men’s shirts for a living. But there are plenty of ladies in town, and with the help of Dean Martin and Seagram’s V.O., life’s pretty fabuloso, actually.

Until the morning he wakes up on a random front lawn, and he meets Aimee. Aimee’s clueless. Aimee is a social disaster. Aimee needs help, and it’s up to the Sutterman to show Aimee a splendiferous time and then let her go forth and prosper. But Aimee’s not like other girls, and before long he’s in way over his head. For the first time in his life, he has the power to make a difference in someone else’s life—or ruin it forever.

Review:

I’m not sure if this book would have affected me quite as much if I didn’t know this boy.  He is one of the people that I love the most on this planet, and he shares more DNA with me than anyone else.  He’s intelligent, effortlessly popular, charming, kind, and entertaining.  He has a big heart, fragile and exposed.   We once spent hours in our backyard collecting slugs and setting them up in their very own tree stump castle.  Once when he was facing a spanking, we schemed and plotted, arming ourselves with sticks for weapons.  We were thick as thieves.  But we all deal with the stress and trauma of childhood in different ways; we all have our coping mechanisms.  As we grew up we fumbled our way down different roads, which led us further and further apart.  I learned how to live inside my own skin, fired to hardness like pottery.  He learned to smother everything under a chemically induced happiness.

I think that’s the most heartbreaking thing about Sutter Keely – he’s smothering himself.  I can so easily feel the pain seeping out of the cracks in his bonhomie:  when he reflects on all the girls that like him, but never seem to love him; when he thinks about how much better off his father is, now that he’s no longer living with his mother; when he tells the mother of a lost child, “Your son is hurting.  He misses his Dad.”  He can so clearly see the pain of others, but he can’t see his own grief, disappointment, and heartbreak at all.  He’s the shoulder everyone likes to cry on, and he can’t see a friend in pain without trying to fix it, but he has no ability to fix himself.

I think that this is one of the most accurate portrayals of addiction that I’ve read.  So many books tend to gloss over it, or go in the other direction and become “issue” books, and completely forget that addicts are still people.  This book captures so much of the essence of addiction, and the first person narration lets us in on all of the bullshit he feeds himself to cope with the loneliness and self-hatred.

I know that the ending seems dark, but I found a bit of hope in this story.  Aimee and Sutter are two lost kids, and while there are moments of honesty and beauty in their relationship, they cannot build anything solid when they are both dealing (or not dealing) with so many internal battles.  Sutter’s method of ending things seems incredibly
realistic to me: both selfless and selfish at the same time, and suffused with his heartbreaking lack of self-worth.  I’d like to find hope in Sutter’s increasing lows.  Pain like that can’t be contained forever, and I do feel that despite the ending, he has begun to see certain things more clearly. That may be just because I’d like to hope that my brother can get better someday, though.

Perfect Musical Pairing
Bright Eyes – Landlocked Blues

So many parts of this song remind me of this book: the questionable security of the future, isolation, the liquid cure, the “one quotable phrase, ‘if you love something give it away."

4/5 Stars

The Reckoning (Darkest Powers, #3)
Author: Kelley Armstrong
Publication Date: 4/6/10
Publisher: Harper Collins

Blurb (GR): Only two weeks ago, life was all too predictable. But that was before I saw my first ghost. Now along with my supernatural friends Tori, Derek, and Simon, I'm on the run from the Edison Group, which genetically altered us as part of their sinister experiment. We're hiding in a safe house that might not be as safe as it seems. We'll be gone soon anyway, back to rescue those we'd left behind and take out the Edison Group . . . or so we hope.

Review:

I love Kelley Armstrong. I love her adult "Women of the Otherworld" series. I do not love her YA books, I think they are just OK reads, with overabundance of action but lacking actual plot and satisfying story resolutions. The same applies to this final book in the Chloe Saunders trilogy.

Most likely, if you enjoyed "The Summoning" and "The Awakening," I expect you will like "The Reckoning," because it's basically more of the same - the same running around scenarios with little story progression. Just like in the first two books, the majority of the story is devoted to the same hiding from the bad guys, figuring out if the good guys are actually good, trying to learn the nature of the Genesis project and... that's it. Although this book takes place mostly in the same house, there is the same going back and forth, planning and discussing escapes, just like in the previous two books. The story goes around in circles coming back to the Edison group each time. The novel is entertaining, but the constant action/walking around/scheming eventually gets tiresome. Some characters' miraculous appearances are surprising. Considering the villains are so quick to kill off kids, why some meddling adults are left alive and free is a mystery to me.

Fortunately, "The Reckoning" is more like "The Summoning" in terms of plot, there is a more defined high point/climax in the novel, where "The Awakening" was 90% running without any resolution. In addition, there is also more "meat" to the story - I enjoyed learning more about the project the kids are a part of and about everyone's powers. I also liked the budding romance between Chloe and Derek, their relationship is written well, it is healthy (unlike many portrayed in YA literature) and the teens themselves feel real and not in the least annoying. For us, fans of Armstrong's adult books, there is a nice surprise too - a tiny bridge to her "Women of the Otherworld" series.

The rest - well, the book is more entertaining than the 2nd in the trilogy, but ultimately it is not as satisfying as Armstrong's adult novels which all have definitive endings and completed story arcs. Even this final book in the trilogy leaves the story wide open for more sequels with many loose ends left unexplored (I wish to at least know why Chloe's necklace changes colors). I still believe (as I did after finishing the 1st book in the trilogy), that this trilogy has just enough story for one good YA novel, but instead is unwisely stretched into a series. I will however most likely read the next book in the Dark Powers - "The Gathering," because in spite of the flaws, Armstrong's books are better than 90% of the YA literature out there.

3/5 stars

The Awakening (Darkest Powers, #2)
Kelley Armstrong:
Publication Date: 4/28/09
Publisher: Harper Collins

Blurb (GR):  Chloe Saunders is on the run and raising hell. Literally.

Chloe Saunders is not your average supernatural teenager. Genetically altered at birth by a sinister team of scientists, she can barely control her terrifying powers. Now the team that created her has decided it's time to end the experiment. Permanently.

Now Chloe is running for her life along with a charming sorcerer, a troubled werewolf and a temperamental young witch. Together they have a chance for freedom - but can Chloe trust her new friends?

Review:

The second book in "Darkest Powers" trilogy starts where the first one left off - Chloe is at the research institute and contemplating escape. What follows is pretty much Chloe's and her friends' journey to get to the person who might be able to help them find Derek's and Simon's father (which is I suppose is what this trilogy is about, but I am not sure at this point).

The first book in the trilogy was undoubtedly drawn out and artificially extended, but this second book sure beats that. While "The Summoning" had at least some semblance of a story (specifically, the discovery of the true nature of Lyle House), "The Awakening" is truly 400 pages of filler. Almost nothing is added to the main story arc - only 3 pages describing the purpose of the experiments on supernaturals and the idea that Derek's and Simon's father can be found with the help of his friend - Andrew. The rest of the book is pretty much limited to: hiding in various warehouses (150 pages), hiding in an abandoned house (50 pages), riding a bus to Andrew's house (150 pages), and finally meeting Andrew (10 pages). "The Awakening" truly has no climax of any sort. It reads as a boring series of events that serve no purpose but to develop the characters, which is fine, when not used so shamelessly to fill pages and pages at the expense of the real plot. There are some nice Derek/Chloe moments, and only these moments save the book from being a complete waste of time.

If I had hopes that the trilogy would pick up after a rather slow first book, I don't have them any more. The second book proved to be as boring of a read as the first one, and even worse. This is a pity, because Armstrong knows how to write an engaging and tightly plotted book. This Darkest Powers "trilogy" however is a shameless attempt to extend 250 pages of story into 3 books 400 pages each.

I am not sure if I will ever get back to this series. I expect I will not be able to remember much about it even a month later.

2/5 stars

The Summoning (Darkest Powers, #1)
Author: Kelley Armstrong
Publication Date: 7/1/08
Publisher: Harper Collins

Blurb (GR): After years of frequent moves following her mother’s death, Chloe Saunders’s life is finally settling down. She is attending art school, pursuing her dreams of becoming a director, making friends, and meeting boys. Her biggest concern is that she’s not developing as fast as her friends are. But when puberty does hit, it brings more than hormone surges. Chloe starts seeing ghosts–everywhere, demanding her attention. After she suffers a breakdown, her devoted aunt Lauren gets her into a highly recommended group home.

At first, Lyle House seems a pretty okay place, except for Chloe’s small problem of fearing she might be facing a lifetime of mental illness. But as she gradually gets to know the other kids at the home–charming Simon and his ominous, unsmiling brother Derek, obnoxious Tori, and Rae, who has a “thing” for fire–Chloe begins to realize that there is something that binds them all together, and it isn’t your usual “problem kid” behavior. And together they discover that Lyle House is not your usual group home either…

Review:

"The Summoning" is the first YA novel written by Kelley Armstrong. It tells a story of Chloe, a 15-year old girl who suddenly finds herself capable of seeing ghosts. Only, of course, nobody believes her and she is quickly sent to a boarding house for disturbed kids for psychological evaluation. It turns out however, that the house and its inhabitants are not quite what they seem to be.

While this book was definitely a page turner, I was a little disappointed in it. I felt that the narration dragged quite a bit in the middle of this novel and the build-up to the climax of the story was too long with almost no payoff. This book definitely read as a part of a trilogy: it had a lot of loose ends and didn't really attempt to give a closure, even a temporary one.

I will continue reading this series because I am rather curious to see where the story goes and how the characters develop, but looking back, this is a type of book which is better to read once all parts of the series are out.

3/5 stars

Froi of the Exiles (Chronicles of Lumatere #2)
Author: Melina Marchetta
Publication Date: 3/13/12
Publisher: Candlewick Press

Blurb(GR):  From master storyteller Melina Marchetta comes an exhilarating new fantasy springing from her celebrated epic, Finnikin of the Rock.

Three years after the curse on Lumatere was lifted, Froi has found his home . . . or so he believes. Fiercely loyal to the Queen and Finnikin, Froi has been taken roughly and lovingly in hand by the Guard sworn to protect the royal family, and has learned to control his quick temper with a warrior's discipline. But when he is sent on a secretive mission to the kingdom of Charyn, nothing could have prepared him for what he finds in its surreal royal court. Soon he must unravel both the dark bonds of kinship and the mysteries of a half-mad princess in this barren and mysterious place. It is in Charyn that he will discover there is a song sleeping in his blood . . . and though Froi would rather not, the time has come to listen.

Review:

I always have a hard time reviewing these books: the ones that aren’t read so much as frantically consumed in a whirlwind of gluttonous book hedonism.  Afterward I feel like, “What just happened to me?  Yesterday is such a blur…a happy, sad, angry, intense blur.”So, I’ll just apologize now, because this review probably won’t be very coherent.

This book begins like a lot of Melina Marchetta books.  (In fact, I might say that all of her best books begin this way.)  There’s a mad jumble of names, events, and relationships spilled out in the first few chapters; it feels like not only a map (which is helpfully provided) but a family tree and a flow chart of some kind might be necessary to keep track of it all.  It’s confusing.  But, I am not some greenie; I am a Melina Marchetta veteran!  I know by now to just keep reading.  Sure enough, everything becomes clear (not to mention, extremely engrossing) in no time at all.

This book claims on the outside to be about Froi:  the young thief and exile who becomes a dedicated Lumateran in Finnikin of the Rock. And there’s no doubt that it is.  But of course, we can count on Melina Marchetta for so much more than that.  Every one of her books has a complete cast of consuming, vibrant characters and this book is no exception.  This book is written in third person but shifts between the perspectives of four different relationships.  So, as Froi takes up a dangerous errand and heads into Charyn, the notorious kingdom that once invaded Lumatere and incited a horrible curse, we also get to keep up with all his surrogate family left behind.  For all of the Finnikin of the Rock fans out there: rejoice!  You’ll get plenty of time with Finnikin, Isaboe, Lucian, Lady Beatriss, Trevanion, Tesadora, and…Jasmina.  I’m not going to tell you who that last one is; you’ll have to read this to find out!

I don’t even know where to start on the major themes of this book.  In a way, this book is about the many facets of romance: infatuation, lust, companionship, love, betrayal, understanding, redemption.  It’s also about identity, family, war, hatred, curses, misunderstandings, history, and perspectives.  This is one hefty book and I’m not just referring to its massive size. 

There were so many times where I thought, “No…she wouldn’t….”  But OF COURSE she would.  There were also times that I assumed dark and dreadful things and she surprised me with lightness and grace.  Everything that she writes just feels so true to life.  Life isn’t tragic and dark and it’s not easy and wonderful either, but it is both of these at once.  People aren’t just greedy or just good or just anything.  A whore can be a mother, a severely damaged girl can be a born ruler, an outcast can be a diplomat, a once violent boy can be a healer of women, and an “evil” kingdom is much more than the sum of its parts.

Perfect Musical Pairing
TV on the Radio – Family Tree