Review: Sanctuary

Wicked Lovely (Desert Tales Vol. 1): Sanctuary - Melissa Marr

This is the first part of a story (parallel to the books, not a retelling) about Rika, one of the girls who came before Ash in the long line of humans that Summer King Keenan tried to make his curse-breaking Queen.  After being released from her part in the game by the next in line, Donia, she retreated to the desert to hide from the faerie courts and the cold.  Now she likes to invisibly follow around a handsome human boy.  But he gets tangled up in faerie politics when she makes herself visible to save his life.

I am comfortable with the visual language of most comics, but not so comfortable with manga, and this book (published by Tokyopop) was often visually difficult for me to follow.  Also, and maybe it’s just more of my biases showing, I thought this skewed younger than the series it’s connected to but don’t think it has much appeal other than to readers of Wicked Lovely.  I think one of Marr’s strengths is at constructing secondary characters, but this ultimately feels like more of a cynical marketing ploy than a true story expanding her world.

Playing Catch-Up

Tap and Gown – Diana Peterfreund

Just as promised, Amy finally stopped acting like an idiot about her kidnapping in this book.  But it took her way too long to stop acting like an idiot about her relationship with Jamie.  I did not love-love-love this the way I did the earlier books in the series, but it also didn’t make me angry like those books sometimes did.  I think I’m ready to move on from Amy, but am very happy that as I do, I have a soon-to-be-released YA book of Peterfreund’s to look forward to.  I think, like Fire below, that my passionate crush on this series did this volume in it no favors.

Fragile Eternity – Melissa Marr

I don’t think I ever recorded here the related novel in this series, Ink Exchange, which I really liked.  But I loved this one and Wicked Lovely.  The plot goes to surprising places and I didn’t even mind that the budding romance of the first book was no longer as budding or romantic (which allowed the plot to move forward and the relationship to mature).  If I ever read another modern Fairie story again it’ll just be because I’m chasing after the appeal of this one.

Fire – Kristin Cashore

I know I’m pretty much alone in liking Graceling more, but I keep reminding people that it’s only because of how much of a crush I have on that book and not because this isn’t a stronger book.  I agree that this probably is.  And it tackles the male gaze, which is one of my favorite things ever to think about.  But I love the way that Cashore writes banter and sexual tension and those were missing from this book.  So I’ll just anxiously await whatever bits of Katsa and Po I’m given in her next book.

Once was Lost – Sara Zarr

I don’t personally find faith interesting, but I find Zarr interesting enough to go along for the ride when she explores it.

Catching Fire – Suzanne Collins

I’m sad that the first book in the series lived up to my expectations but this couldn’t handle the pressure.  I didn’t hate it, or even dislike it, I just hate that I only liked it.  The spoilery text of an email I sent to a friend in white text:

But one of my biggest frustrations with Catching Fire was the pacing of her “radicalization.”  That she was intuitive enough to read intention into the timing of the gifts she was receiving in the arena, but not to understand that her pin had become a symbol of the resistance.  And that an organized resistance was clearly forming but that it took her until the end to see it.  And I didn’t buy that the resistance would trust using her without her knowledge to go well, when that clearly didn’t work out for the government the first time around.  I did like the way she adjusted to the arena, that she realized things were going on that she didn’t understand and went with it.  I just felt more manipulated by the plotting of this story than the first one.

Lips Touch: Three Times – Laini Taylor

This book had the great premise of three fairytale love/forbidden desire stories that hinge on a kiss  and ended up being so much better than I expected while not really fulfilling the promise of the hook.  Another instance where David Levithan lied to me (I’m writing this bottom-up, see the review below) but I’m happier this time to have listened to him anway.  And as much as like Jim Di Bartolo’s illustrations, I don’t like the cover design.  Because it’s a much more serious, even grown-up, book than it seems.  And yes, each story in some way revolves around a kiss and the manifestation of physical desire, but I often related more to the other wishes and dreams of the characters.  The third story is an epic love story crammed into 110 pages that improbably has you siding with the evil witch-type by the end.  I’m not entirely sure how that narrative flip was even accomplished, but it was very skillful.  The first two stories have their charms, but the last is the one that really wowed me.  I don’t know if I’ve ever bought myself a real copy of a book after having read the ARC, but in this instance I might just for the illustrations.

Shiver – Maggie Stiefvater

Ultimately, I don’t think I liked this book.  At Day of Dialog, David Levithan swore up and down that this book transcended the otherworldly creatures (werewolves in this case) genre but I don’t think it does.  I think it was just okay with hints of being something wonderful.  Maybe someone else will read this and see what I’m missing.  There’s another story of doomed love that this reminds me of, but I can’t figure out what. *UPDATE.  The Universe just handed this to me on a plate: The Time Traveler’s Wife. It’s got the same “when will he disappear..possibly forever” tension.* It is very moody and atmospheric, but I never became fully invested in it.

Ash – Malinda Lo

Other than the lesbian love story aspect of this, it’s a pretty traditionally told Cinderella story.  The Fairy Godfather is actually a tricky, non-altruistic fairy, and it’s here and with the love story, where Lo carves her own space, that the book is the most successful.

Juliet, Naked – Nick Hornby

Technically this book has no business being here, as it has zero teen appeal, but I really enjoyed it.  And will stretch and say that it explores the flip side of the “Nick and Norah” music-obsessed-teen coin.  But it’s all about being a grown up, the disapointments and compromises and joys, and how not even a rock star can escape that.  This is the first Hornby book in years that I’ve enjoyed as much as I wanted to.

Scott Pilgrim vs.the Universe – Brian Lee O’Malley

I didn’t mind that Scott’s life kind of falls apart during this volume, I guess I’m turning into a cold-hearted grown up who didn’t expect his slacker lifestyle to be sustainable.  The cover is also very shiny and pretty.

Gregor the Overlander and Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane – Suzanne Collins

I’d been interested in this series ever since reading Hunger Games, but didn’t want to read a library copy because the paperback is both cheaply printed and very popular.  So I finally bought my own copy and once I’d finished, went out and immediately bought the second, which I read in one sitting.  I think the strength of these is Gregor.  He’s really likeable and resourceful.  And if too many of the books in this roundup feature kids who are destined to save the world, having a character who doesn’t act too stupid about the whole thing helps the over-used conceit go down easier.  I’m a little bit worried, and will have to be careful not to get too spoilery, that Collins may rely to heavily on formula with her plots.  These two books both follow similar arcs and this worry of mine is related to the aspect of Catching Fire that I wasn’t too impressed by.  I really wish these were collected in one volume, something with higher quality paper, so that you could easily read the whole saga in one go.

Blackbringer (Dreamdark) - Laini Taylor

I’m upset because I thought the sequel to this was already out but will instead have to wait until September for it.  So while that’s lame, I really enjoyed the story.  I like the way it maintained internal logic really well, how the strength of the god character was used to trick it, how the evil character was as much an important part of fairy history as anyone, how it feels like a complete story while making you want more, and how it might have the first fairy world I’d actually want to live in.  It would be really easy for me to talk about appreciating this book for all of the pitfalls it avoided, but that’s not very exciting.  This books seems to have initially been marketed as middle grade but then as YA for the paperback edition.  Which is funny, because I think it’s an easy sell to adults as well.

Review: Water Baby

Water Baby – Ross Campbell

One of Brody’s legs was bitten off by a shark while she was surfing.  Now she sits around in bad-ass, skimpy outfits feeling sorry for herself and dreaming of shape-shifting sharks.  Her best friend has been trying to take care of her and things are going well enough until Brody’s no-good-ex Jake shows up and pukes all over the apartment.  So Brody decides to drive him back home to New York.  So…not a whole lot happens, outside of the shark attack at the beginning of the story.  But the way that Brody is tough and damaged and unknowable is appealing enough along with the strength of the portrayal of her relationships to make this a worthwhile read.

Review: Scott Pilgrim

Scott Pilgrim Vols 1-4 – Bryan Lee O’Malley

Scott Pilgram is tough, for a guy from Canada.  But if he wants to date Ramona he’s going to have to take out all of her evil ex-boyfriends first.  And they’ve got superpowers.

I read the first volume of this awhile ago and liked it fine, which meant everyone around me thought I was crazy because liking it fine isn’t how you’re supposed to feel about Scott Pilgrim.  With the movie eventually coming out, and the intense love all of my friends have for this, I thought I should give it another shot.  And I enjoyed it a lot more this time around.  It’s silly and sarcastic and breaks down the fourth wall to pretend it’s a videogame a lot.  Scott is equally appealing and appalling, definitely the kind of manchild the media loves to rage about so much these days.

The fifth volume is just now available.

Review: Kin

Kin (Book 1 of The Good Neighbors) – Holly Black and Ted Naifeh

This is a story about the dark side of faerie and how they want to take over our world.  The only person who can stop it was raised as a human by her human father and faerie mother.  But now her mother is missing, and that mystery seems more important than stopping her grandfather from taking over the world.

I think I’m annoyed at this book for being the first in a series and for not telling me the complete story. I want the complete story and don’t feel satisfied with the amount of story I was given here. The art is amazing though. I especially love the way Rue, the main character is drawn and feel compelled enough by the depiction to care about the character.

Review: Emiko Superstar

Emiko Superstar – Mariko Tamaki, illus by Steve Rolston

Emiko’s story starts off with a gigantic girl crush on a vibrant mess of a performance artist which leads her to a weekly rave/art collective.  She forces herself out of her shell and makes a name for herself, but in the process exploits and takes for granted the people around her.  She tries on a subculture for size, and some of it sticks but some of it is just for show.

I don’t think it was until the end of this comic that I realized the author had also written Skim.  The characters are very different types of outsiders, but I can still see some similarities.  It’s interesting to compare their differences, this one being much more a story about a teenager for teenagers, and Skim being a more contemplative story about a teenager for adults.  More stuff happens in this one, and Emiko is more easily relatable than Skim was.

But at its heart, it’s still the story of a teenager who doesn’t fit in trying to figure out who her friends are and if there’s a place for her anywhere.  She doesn’t always do the right or the good thing, but even when her motives are selfish, she’s not a monster.  Also, it’s nice when Minx books were written by women and have female characters who actually seem like real teenage girls.

Review: New York Four

The New York Four – Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly

I still have enough hope that books in the now-defunct Minx line will either be interesting or interesting failures to pick them up as they trickle into the library. I liked what little of Wood’s DMZ I’ve read, and I obviously like to read books set in New York. But for all that, the only thing this book has going for it is its art. The depictions of New York are realistically detailed and as far as I can tell, spot-on accurate. I found everything else about it insufferable. It comes across like a morality play about technology (don’t forsake the real world for an online, ersatz one) and young-womanhood, but written by a middle-aged man (who, at least in this instance, seems to be of the school that writing interesting female characters is nothing more than throwing together collections of “quirky” traits.) The sum is that instead of being relatable, none even approach likable or mysterious (as he seems to be going for with a couple of them). I also found the NY 101 asides patronizing and unnecessary. Or maybe I’m just bristling at the characterization of my neighborhood and borough: “Park Slope, Brooklyn. (NY 101: As good as Brooklyn gets)” The plot is also a bit all over the place, theoretically because it’ll be part of a series (which may continue even though Minx isn’t), but I don’t believe these characters enough to find out what’s really going on with them.

Review: Skim

Skim – Mariko and Jillian Tamaki

Kim, nicknamed Skim “because she’s not,” is a very disaffected teenager. She’s flirting with Wicca and her female art teacher. Everything else is cause for scorn, especially her school’s overreaction to the suicide of a student’s boyfriend. Kim comes under extra scrutiny from her friends and guidance counselors, especially once she starts mooning around after her teacher.

The black and white illustrations remind me of 1960’s children’s books and they lend an otherwise self-serious story a sense of fun. You feel for Kim, but don’t pity her. She’s struggling, but not weak. It took me awhile to get into the story, but in the end, I really enjoyed it.

Review: Breaking Up

Breaking Up – Aimee Friedman, illus. by Christine Norrie

At the start of their Junior Year (at a stand in for New York’s LaGuardia Arts) four friends begin to drift apart as their priorities and personalities change. Told from the perspective of artistic Chloe, the comic is meant to be a visual and textual record of the year created by her after the fact. Her beautiful best friend MacKenzie is hell bent on popularity and will do everything in her power to make sure her current group of friends don’t mess that up for her. So when Chloe begins a friendship with handsome but geeky Adam, MacKenzie immediately puts “mean girl” pressure on her to break it off.  As each of the girls try to seek their own path, the group pressures them in turn to stick to the status quo.  Chloe feels the most pressure to conform and begins lying to and avoiding her friends.

I was attracted to this book by its art: heavy black lines, nice mix of boxes and larger illustrations escaping boxes. And while reading it, I was impressed by the wit of those drawings and how much they added to the story.  And I was really impressed by how sophisticated the book’s portrayal of teenage, female friendship is.  Chloe is the narrator (and “author”) and one can sympathize with why she does what she does, but she still shares in the blame for everything that goes wrong.  There is romance, for all of the girls, but their friendship is the focus of the story.

One off note is that this is called “a Fashion High Graphic Novel.”  Fashion High is what Chloe and her friends call her arty and fashion obsessed school, but it’s not a school that deals with fashion (there is one of those in New York) and it’s not the focus of the book.  It seems only like a cynical marketing ploy.  Though if it means there will be more, I’m happy.

I’ve had people tell me that they can’t tell if I actually like the books I’ve reviewed, and that’s probably because I’ve only moderately enjoyed most of them.  And only disliked one or two.  So I will explicitly state, I really really enjoyed this book.  I think it’s a great readalike for fans of P.L.A.I.N. Janes and other Minx books.  Two of the professional reviews that I’ve seen have put it as appropriate for 15 and up or grades 6-8.  I would split the difference and say 12 and up.  Some of these kids are having sex, and making out is pictured a few times, but I know a nine-year-old who claims to have enjoyed it.

Review: Rapunzel’s Revenge

Rapunzel’s Revenge – Shannon and Dean Hale, illus. by Nathan Hale

Rapunzel has been raised in a castle-fortress by her evil, witchy mother, and mayor of the world, Gothel. When she realizes that the world beyond the castle walls is dying, and that her real mother is a slave in Gothel’s mines, she threatens to run away. Instead, she ends up locked in a towering tree. When her hair grows long enough for her to escape, she joins forces with Jack and his goose that he keeps waiting on to lay some golden eggs. They survive a series of Pecos Bill style adventures due to her ability to lasso and whip things with her 20-foot-long braid of hair. These adventures take place as they try to work their way back to Gothel’s castle to reunite with Rapunzel’s mother and free the world from Gothel’s tyranny.

This book is a librarian and a parent’s dream. Rapunzel is completely kick-ass and a true feminist hero. But it’s also a funny and engaging story that doesn’t seem as if it’s trying to teach a lesson. Jack’s not white, and neither are a lot of the characters, good guys and bad guys alike. Rapunzel is pretty, but isn’t interested in being conventionally so and she looks like Pipi Longstocking for the first half of the book. Revenge incorporates a lot of different elements of fairy tale and folklore and turns the conventions of the genres on their heads. But it also understands what is fundamentally appealing about them, and uses those elements to its advantage. There’s even a jackalope. And Jack still has one of his magic beans.

Now I’m just waiting to hear from my husband what his interest in this book is (I found it in a pile of new books on our kitchen table) and why he brought it home. Maybe he’d heard about the kick-ass teenage heroine? I know that’s one of his favorites.