The dark, dangerous, and desirable

Throughout all my time as a reader, I have found just a few writers that seem to have almost a mystical prowess; that grab their readers attention immediately, and hold them in a trance from the beginning to the end of their novels. Among these spell-casters, Holly Black stands out as one of the best.

I’ve raved over every Holly Black book I’ve ever picked up. I read ‘The Spiderwick Chronicles’ as a teenager and was entranced. I read ‘Doll Bones’ for a class in college and loved every moment of it. And ‘The Coldest Girl in Coldtown’ is one of my favorite vampire novels of all time, and I read a lot of vampire novels.

Even with her prodigious repertoire of YA and children’s novels, nothing quite compares to her newest release, ‘The Cruel Prince’ a spellbinding tale of the unseen fairy realm.

The book centers on Jude, a mortal girl taken from her home at the age of seven when her parents are killed by a red-cap, Madoc. She and her twin sister, Taryn, along with her older sister, Vivienne, are taken from their mortal home and into the fairy realm. Vivienne is Madoc’s daughter, and, feeling a sense of obligation to his late wife, he raises Jude and Taryn as his own as well.

As ever, Black’s fairy world is less frolicking-through-the-meadow and much more dark and murderous. The everlasting fey of the Fairy Court are both beautiful and perilous. Black’s world is one where danger lurks around every corner, but the danger is enticing, enchanting. A beautiful river flows through the forest, but in the river lurks bloodthirsty kelpies. A golden fairy fruit will taste incredible to a mortal, and poison them at the same time. This dark and fantastical world pulls the reader directly into it, both enchanting and horrifying at the same time.

It is a story of a scrappy main character with a shifty moral code. Perhaps the best thing about her is her mortality. Jude is human, though she longs to be fey. Because she is human, though, she makes human choices, taking actions that surprise even herself. She is spurred on by her parents death and a desire to be in control of herself; The Folk can ‘glamour’ humans, or make them do their bidding. Her desires lead her to lie, cheat, and spy in the Fairy Court’s own version of Game of Thrones.

The rich tale of politics and betrayal gives this story a backdrop of intrigue. And while Princes fight for their place on the throne, Jude takes on problems of her own: her sisters secret suitor, her own fairy lover, and an enemy, Prince Cardan. Jude and Cardan have a chemistry of their own; much like the rest of the book, what is dark and dangerous is also desirable.

It is a spellbinding work, guaranteed to pull you directly into a perilous and exquisite world. Black is a compelling writer who, like the creatures she writes about, will truly hold you under her spell.

This Savage Reviewer

In the past, I have spoiled myself on subscription boxes of adorable, bookish merchandise. The company that I use is Owl Crate, a monthly, Young Adult subscription box. They send all sorts of fun merchandise and a YA novel.

The last book I received was ‘The Serpent King’, a book to which I gave very high praise.

This month, I was less enthused.

‘This Savage Song’ by Victoria Schwab was, for the most part, a frustrating read. The story was interesting, and, toward the end, even compelling. But I often read for style, and the style choices Schwab made were sloppy and made me often set the book aside, too frustrated to read any more.

The following is me nit-picking. If you want to hear what I liked about the book, you can skip ahead a paragraph.

PRONOUNS. They exist for a reason. When there are only two characters interacting through pretty much 80 percent of a book, and one of them is a boy and the other is a girl, you can use the words “he” and “she” and the reader will still know who you’re talking about. Schwab names Kate and August, the two main characters with every action they do, every thought that they think. I was so frustrated that I finally counted how many proper nouns I saw on one page. 8. Three paragraphs. 18 sentences. 8 Kates and Augusts. As I said, it is a nitpicky thing, but something that separates a good book from a mediocre book.

And this book could be a good book, I think. The central conflict is compelling, the characters complicated and interesting.  It is set in an apocalyptic future where acts of violence create literal monsters: the Malchai, who eat blood, the Corsai, literal shadows with teeth that rip their victims apart, and the Sunai, the most mysterious of monsters, who steal souls with a song. Kate Harker is the daughter of a Mafia King Pin, whose mobsters are literal monsters. August is a Sunai who just wants to be a normal person.

Sounds great, right? As I said, it is compelling. I fought through annoying style choices and found my way to the meat of the story. It examines good and evil in an interesting way, looks at what it is to be human. And begs the question: are humans the real monsters?

But for 250 pages, I had to muddle through chapter by chapter, getting more and more frustrated by the mediocre writing, nearly throwing my book in anguish when Schwab hid our two main characters in a restaurant kitchen and said August rammed “some sort of kitchen tool through the door handles,” to keep out the Malchai. Has the author never been in a kitchen? She couldn’t say ladle? Or whisk? Or spatula?

It is little things like this that grow more and more off-putting in YA novels. The story is there, but the style isn’t. It has been the case with more and more of the new YA books I pick up: ‘A Study in Charlotte,’ ‘The Lunar Chronicles’ ‘The Haunting of Sunshine Girl.’

When I read a book, I want the whole package, story and style. Although I have heard good things about Schwab’s other books, I will not be picking up another.

Changing Destiny

There are a few books that I’ve come across in my time that I’ve clutched to my chest, tears running down my face, and felt  a brief moment where I know I’ll never find anything that will quite compare.

“The Serpent King” by Jeff Zentner is one of them.

Wow, this book was incredible. Zentner tells the story of three teens; Dill, a singer and songwriter with a dark past; Travis, a literally enormous boy who is a total softy as well as a fantasy nerd, and has his own family secrets; and Lydia, an up-and-coming fashion blogger with big dreams.

The three explore the dangerous territory of high school together, but the reader is given peeks of their lives when they are alone. Dill’s father, a signs minister who handled snakes and drank poison with his congregation, was imprisoned for child pornography.
He carries the name Dillard Early, the same as his father’s and father’s father, and throughout the book, he wonders if perhaps the name itself is a curse; if he maybe carries on more than just the name.

Travis, six-foot-six and 280 pound teddy bear, lives in the fictional world of a series of books called Bloodfall. It is a welcome escape from a verbally and often physically abusive father. Throughout the book, Travis finds his moments of bravery and learns to stand up for himself and the people he love, like Dill and Lydia, and, especially, his mother.

Lydia meanwhile, carves out a persona for herself online. She is a starkly independent and driven young woman, an excellent heroine for the story. However, she is not perfect. Her blog is an edited and fictional version of her life, where she never mentions her two best friends and yearns for the big city life. This causes problems between her and Dill, who loathes to think of his world without Lydia in it.

The book takes a tragic twist that makes them face their oncoming future, which, after a brief period of darkness, looks brighter and more beautiful by the end of the book.

This book is about being brave, about growing up, and about changing your own destiny. Zentner is a spectacular writer, weaving poetry into his prose. He describes the most beautiful moments, and the most heart-wrenching moments in incredible detail.

When I finish a book and feel changed, I know it was worth it. This book was a spectacular read. I hope others read it and feel the same.

Just another YA novel

The phrase “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover,” is total baloney. It’s not a secret that I love books. And I don’t just love them for the words inside. I find books aesthetically pleasing. Therefore, I am bound to pick up a book based on its cover. I like a nice font, pretty colors, loud patterns.

I’ve been steeped, lately, in the bookstagram community, a place where I see photo after photo of beautiful books. I have been particularly drawn, lately, to the Lunar chronicles, which were recommended to me years back.

I finally talked myself into reading ‘Cinder,’ the first book in the series after several people told me that I’d love it. In fact, I did have an affair with this popular YA novel, but I will say that “love” is not a word I would use in our relationship.

All things said, I can see why the series is popular. The story was certainly entertaining. It is easy to read, which makes it difficult to put down.

However, it was also difficult to get into. I wasn’t grabbed by it, or compelled. I saw the inevitable love story immediately (which, granted, I knew about going in), and I was unimpressed with the vague, futuristic world that had been created.

Going forward, I began to enjoy the characters more. I found myself sympathetic toward Prince Charming (a.k.a. Kai), and more supportive of Cinder’s stubborn will. Cinder, a cyborg servant in her step-mother’s home, plans to escape her life. Meanwhile, people are dying of a futuristic plague and she is somehow immune.  Even the mad scientist, a doctor named Erland who experiments on her, becomes almost endearing.

It is easy to get caught up in the story as it takes a few sudden, heart-wrenching turns. And the story really gets going when the Evil Queen (a.k.a. Queen Levana) enters the picture. She is the Queen of a race that has evolved on the moon. They are advanced to the point where they can control other people’s minds, and the vain queen uses her power to control an entire society too scared of her to rebel.

It is all around a good idea and a solid story. But it was also predictable. At one point, I noted “If this book surprises me, then I am going to be very surprised.”

Despite the beautiful cover, I wasn’t especially wowed by this book. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good YA read and a pretty cover. But I will, by no means, be recommending ‘Cinder’ as strongly as it was recommended to me.

The Dead Girls of Katie Alender’s world

Last week, I was eagerly awaiting a package from Amazon, a package that contained a book I had been excited to read for months. “The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall”, Katie Alender’s new young adult thriller. I was so excited to get my hands on this book that when I opened the package, I rubbed my face on it like a cat. But maybe that’s getting too personal.

After a ceremonius book smell (t.m.i. again?) I started reading. In an hour, I’d read fifty pages, then put it away for the night. The next day I finished it. Such is the power of Katie Alender.

What is it that makes her books so tantalizing? For starters, her spunky heroines. “Dead Girls” boasts Delia, a regular teenager with a chip on her back because her parents are overbearing. Delia inherits a house, but not just any house, a retired asylum for girls, nicknamed “Hysteria Hall.”

The Piven Institute, with it’s dark history of mistreating patients and mysterious deaths, is, unsurprisingly, very haunted. When Delia starts meeting ghostly inhabitants, she finds it stocked with girls of all kinds: a southern debutante, a flapper with a dark past, and a sad mother. She finds there are good ghosts and bad ghosts, and ghosts that are just plain pests. Despite the other occupants of the hourse, Delia is on a mission, determined to learn more about her Aunt Cordelia, whom she corresponded with only briefly years before she left her a haunted insane asylum.

Alender is a pro at suspense building, an excellent tactic that keeps her readers on the edge of their seat, ready for the next chapter. It’s a ghosts world in this book, and that means creepy creatures of all kinds, from the disfigured little girl who stalks Delia, to black smoke monsters.

All six books that Alender has written clearly take place in the same canon universe, a universe where ghosts lurk around every corner and spunky teenage heroines have to deal with them. In her “Bad Girls Don’t Die” series, Alexis comes across not only bad-tempered spirits, but a poltergeist. Not all of Alender’s ghosts are bad though. In “Famous Last Words” an angry ghost is trying to warn Willa of a murderer. Alexis, despite her run-ins with nasty ghosts, comes to be close with her dead frenemy who helps her out in times of crisis. The dead girls living in the Piven institute are a combination of the two, the best and the worst of the oogly-booglys. Five out of her six books also make mention to the author and ghost expert Walter Sawamura, tying all the books together. It is clear that Alender found her niche in hauntings.

In “Dead Girls” Delia gets the opportunity to save her little sister Janie from a horrible fate. But first, she has to unravel the house’s troubled past as it tries harder and harder to claim everyone she loves. It is thrilling, creepy, and touching, all things that I’ve come to expect from Alender’s excellent stories.

If you haven’t explored Alender’s haunted world yet, then I suggest you pick up “Dead Girls” and settle in for a few hours of ravenous reading.

The difference between a happy ending and an honest ending

I made it my personal goal this summer to read as many books about queer girls as possible. I was so excited to pick up “The Difference Between You and Me” by Madeleine George, a book about Jesse, a self-proclaimed weirdo and out dyke, who cuts her own hair with a pocket knife and wears huge clunky fishing boots; and Emily, who wears sweaters with pearl buttons, works three different internships, and is the president of student council.

Here we get the title of the book. They are two very different girls with only one thing in common; they are crazy about each other. They meet in secret once a week. As Emily says, they seem to have a chemical connection. They both lose themselves in the kisses of the other in their secret hiding spot.

All Jesse wants is for Emily to be her girlfriend. But Emily is in a serious relationship with her long term boyfriend and refuses to break-up with him.

Things get even more complicated when Jesse meets Esther and the two decide to protest against the dance that Emily is putting on, a dance that is sponsored by StarMart, a store like Walmart that is infamous for coming into small towns and shutting down all the small businesses within a matter of months.

A rift goes up between the two of them and heartbreak ensues.

Although I enjoyed this book and it’s quirky cast of characters, I wasn’t impressed with how Jesse ends up being made the heroine and Emily the bad-guy. Jesse, certainly learns a valuable lesson. She is happier being out than hiding in the closet with a pretty girl too afraid to come out of it. But the story is told from both girls perspectives. And Emily doesn’t get a chance to finish telling her side of the story.

I, personally, found this annoying being bisexual myself and seeing myself more in Emily than in Jesse. Though Jesse gets to learn valuable life lessons, Emily is left with nothing.

This is my only real complaint about the book. Otherwise it was funny and honest; a wonderful picture of a young queer girl growing up in our confusing world.

A fun, feminist find

It’s no secret that I think  reading is fun. It’s an activity that should be enjoyable. I like a book that makes me laugh out lout, a book that keeps me on my toes. I like my books to be fun.

I don’t know that I’ve ever had as much fun with a book as I did with “Beauty Queens” by Libba Bray.

In her book Bray strands fourteen girls on an island after a plane crash. These girls have to learn to fend for themselves when they realize no one is coming to rescue them. The girls have to learn to let go of petty pageant ideals in order to band together to survive. As they learn more about each other, they also start to learn more about themselves.

The book is sprinkled with a healthy amount of absurdity. While the girls are stranded on the island, they have no idea they’ve unwittingly become part of a grand plan between an evil Corporation and a lovestruck, gun-happy dictator who carries around a stuffed lemur and calls it his advisor. (Absurd, right?) Meanwhile, The Corporation is responsible for literally everything. It’s basically every evil corporation wrapped into one. The Corporation sells the beauty products the girls tote, they produce all the hottest television, and they make secret weapons. The Corporation hosts programs like “Captains Bodacious” a reality series about hot male pirates picking up girls in port, and “Your Blood is, Like, So Hot,” about a group of hemophiliacs “who lie around looking anemic and sexy.”

The goofy absurdity had me laughing out loud, but beneath the absurdity, there is a layer of truth. The Corporation hopes to brainwash a generation with television and then sell them their products. Reality peeks out through the absurd.

The most important reality in this book is that society places too much pressure on girls. And that’s where we get to the good stuff. As the girls fight for survival, they unlearn what The Corporation and their parents have been shoving into their heads. Tiara, for example, is fairly dumb. When she completely loses it and starts chopping her hair with a machete, she starts to share her pageant experience, she started when she was two weeks old. All her life, she’s been told that all she can be is pretty, because she’s not smart. With help from her friends on the  Island, she finds her talents in interior decorating, and learns about feminism.

Shanti, an Indian girl obsessed with winning lies about her heritage in order to get ahead. She obsesses about bringing down her competition, Nicole, a black girl saying “they’ll never let two brown girls into the top five.” The two have to work together to save themselves from quicksand, and in the process, Shanti confesses her lies to Nicole, while Nicole confesses that all she cares about is becoming a doctor. She only does pageants because her mother wants her to be a star.

Taylor, proud Miss Texas, continues to obsess over the pageant, even when the girls are stranded. Pageants were all she had after her mom left, and she was left feeling heart broken. Wanting to feel stronger than her mother, she worked tirelessly to make sure she was pageant perfect. She starts out as the bitch of the group, making the girls practice their dance numbers in the hot sun, rather than working on survival. Later on, she saves them countless times because of her iron will and need to impress.

Petra, who is still in transition to become a girl, gets found out when Tiara sees her bathing. Half of the girls accept her willingly, but several of the other girls have a difficult time understanding Petra’s feelings of dysphoria. In the end, she shows that she is proud to be trans, and the girls, and hot boys, accept her easily.

Mary Lou is obsessed with her purity ring, a fact which riles up her best friend Adina. Adina argues that sexuality is not just something for a man, but something that a woman should embrace for herself. After she loses her ring, Mary Lou takes some time to get to know her sexuality a little bit better, while also getting to know a hot revolutionary.

The girls come away with a better understanding of what it is to be a woman. Mary Lou comments “Maybe girls need an island to find themselves. Maybe they need a place where no one’s watching them so they can be who they really are.”

Away from the strict gaze of society that holds impossible standards over their heads, the girls discover themselves. And though  their adventures were a little absurd, the reader comes away with a whole host of new ideas about what it is to be a girl living in today’s corporate run society. While learning about the 14 beauty queens, I learned a little more about myself.

And what could be more fun than that?