Review: You

I will read just about any novel a that involves video games. Frankly, the gold standard on the subject, Ready Player One by Ernie Cline, has potentially ruined the genre, simply because it is just so damn good. That doesn't mean I won't keep reading, though.

So without knowing too much about You by Austin Grossman other than something vague about video games, I was eager to read it. And jumping into a world of video game development set in Boston in the '90s, I was intrigued. 

And yet somehow, I found that it took me more than a week to read. I don't normally read that slowly, except when a book can't hold my attention. I was rooting for this one all along, but it just didn't do it for me.

The biggest flaw in this book was the concept that gave it its title. Every once in a while, the reader is treated to a section written in second person ("you") describing the play of the video game. I really like the idea of this, because video games are usually about immersing yourself in a world (sights, sounds, actions, feelings, etc) enough to make you feel like you're really there. But in the book, I felt less immersed in the world than rushed through it. The narrator, Russell, is the one playing through the games, but I felt less like I was looking over his shoulder and more like he was telling me about it after the fact. Add to the fact that occasionally the second person reads like it's from the point of view of yet another character, the deceased genius behind the video game company, and I was really lost. Without these second-person interludes, this book would have been much, much stronger.

If you enjoy video games, then this would be a fun but not earth-shattering read. If you're not already a gamer, this is not going to make you one, and frankly, might just confuse you.

Review: A Long Long Sleep

I've always been a big fan of retellings of myths and fairy tales. These stories have survived for generations because they're just plain good, but a little modernization doesn't hurt either. Cinder, a favorite of mine from this year, is a retelling of Cinderella.

A Long Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan is the latest retelling I've enjoyed (it was published in 2011), although it really just uses the story of Sleeping Beauty as a jumping off place instead of a story outline. Rosalinda has spent over 60 years in a cryogenic-like stass tube, accidentally shoved into a corner of her apartment building's basement. When she's awakened (also by accident), she must come to terms with the fact that everyone she loved is gone, as well as a world that is so vastly different than her own.

Sheehan's writing is beautiful, and she captures Rose's struggles in a very real way. There is pain and joy, wonder and horror, dark and light throughout the book. The beginning is perhaps a little slow, but that's because Rose, who is narrating, is just waking up from years of sleep - she needs a little time to get her emotions running again. I found myself flying through the second half of the book, with Rose's struggles affecting me almost physically. Yes, there were definitely some tears.

Since A Long Long Sleep is Sheehan's first novel, I'm eagerly awaiting whatever else she comes out with, fairy tale retelling or no. I can only hope it's as good as her first.

Review: Cinder

How many YA books have done the retelling of a fairy tale thing before? And how many times has it actually worked? Happily (but maybe not happily ever after), Cinder is a rare exception to the cut-and-paste story retelling formula.

In this book, Meyer takes the well-worn story of Cinderella and places it in a future filled with robots and cyborgs, a very nasty plague, and a cold and menacing queen from the Moon. My first response on hearing the premise was that this was absurd and would surely be a flop. Man, was I wrong! All of these elements add enough of a new twist so that I wasn't concerned about waiting for the moment when this or that might happen.

Cinder, our half-human, half-robot protagonist, is more than you would expect from a story like this (where the original material often gets muted to bare, meaningless bones). She's not just a servant girl to an ungrateful woman - she's smart and strong and can keep her wits about her, even when she's meeting the prince, and yet she's vulnerable and uncertain about what is happening to her. The truth about exactly who Cinder is becomes glaringly obvious well before she figures it out instead, but instead of this annoying me, it left me cheering Cinder on, wanting her to move on until she could figure it out herself.

While Cinder is clearly being marketed as Book One of the Lunar Chronicles (giving a little away there, no?), it would be obvious even without that information that this is just the first step in a series of novels. The story follows the Cinderella tale very closely, but it makes enough jumps and breaks to be its own thing. But the way the story ends leaves me unclear of where it's going to go next (and I'm actually happy about this). I've chatted with a few people, and the obvious thought is that Meyer will tackle a different fairy tale the next time through, but however she presents the story, I'll be there to read it.

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Review: After the Apocalypse

After reading an intensely positive review of this short story collection on i09, I was intrigued enough to order a copy. There are so many post-apocalyptic stories out there, and After the Apocalypse sounded right up my alley.

In fact, the first story of the bunch, The Naturalist, hooked me right away. It takes place in a zombie preserve, where felons are sent to serve out their sentences (as long as they can survive the zombies that wander around the area). However, the big questions of why the zombies were kept in the preserve and why the prisoners were sent there were never answered, leaving me feeling a bit dissatisfied at the end.

My dissatisfaction continued with the rest of the stories in the book. Some had hooks as strong as the first (a huge Chinese corporation that could change the world but basically works on a feudal system, a woman who volunteers for medical testing, people who can inexplicably fly and all want to go to France), while others left me with no desire to continue after only a few paragraphs. In fact, there wasn't all that much apocalypse to speak of either. Maybe I would have been happier if the collection had had a different name?

That being said, I really like Maureen McHugh's writing, just not her stories. She has an eloquent way of describing these screwed-up worlds without using exposition. Instead, details are peppered here and there throughout the story that build the world brick by brick. I would get a little bored, and then there would be only a sentence or two that intrigued me enough to continue. I may seek out more of McHugh's work in the future to see if I enjoy it without the expectations put upon it by such a positive review.


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Review: Steampunk!

I'm a big fan of steampunk. I'm not sure when I came across it, or how, but I love the visual aesthetic of it. However I found it, I'm sure I found images well before I found stories. And from the visuals, it's a bit hard to understand the full breadth of the genre.

Steampunk stories cover a wide array of topics and themes. Some are more historical, and some take place in a future that seems strange. Some are born out of Victorian London, and others call the wild west home (while still others take place on space ships or foreign worlds). There is so much that can be considered steampunk that an anthology of steampunk stories can sometimes feel disjointed. *Cough* Steampunk *Cough*

Steampunk!, edited by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant, unfortunately suffers from this, but at least it gets off to one hell of a start. The first half or so of the book is filled with very strong stories that each take a stab at their own version of steampunk. Cory Doctorow's "Clockwork Fagin," about a bunch of kids in an orphanage, was by far my favorite of the group. I also really loved Cassandra Clare's "Some Fortunate Future Day," Delia Sherman's "The Ghost of Cwmlech Manor," and Libba Bray's "The Last Ride of the Glory Girls" (which I'm pretty sure was influenced by my beloved Firefly).

Some of the stories seemed not-so-steampunk, but I still enjoyed them. Kelly Link's "The Summer People" was my favorite of this bunch, owing very little to the steampunk genre apart from some mechanical toys that "the summer people" create.

This anthology has been published as a YA book (because it's from children's publisher Candlewick), but it's pretty perfect for anyone who likes steampunk. The only thing that would mark it YA is that many of the main characters are teens, but that shouldn't hamper an adult from reading along.

3/5 stars

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Review: The Map of Time

The time travel continues in a much more literary form with The Map of Time. After Ruby Red, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (which is not exactly time travel but does involve traveling through time... what?), and Hourglass, I wasn't sure if I wanted any more of this genre. (And yes, I have read other things with no time travel in between that I haven't written about yet.) But this sounded so different, I couldn't wait to jump in.

"Set in Victorian London with characters real and imagined, The Map of Time is a page-turner that boasts a triple play of intertwined plots in which a skeptical H.G. Wells is called upon to investigate purported incidents of time travel and to save lives and literary classics, including Dracula and The Time Machine, from being wiped from existence." I have to be honest, I didn't read this bit from the back of the book before I started reading the book. I had been given an even briefer description - Victorian London is in a time-travel fervor after H.G. Wells writes The Time Machine - and was already sold. I'm a big fan of the steampunk sub-genre, and this hinted to having a bit of that aesthetic.

In reality, this book is not one narrative but three, although they do all intertwine and feature H.G. Wells as a main character. And the way author Felix J. Palma handles the idea of time travel in a society with far fewer technologies than our own is masterful. Whether it's the man who wants to save the woman he loved from being killed or the boy who loves a girl and wants to stop her from doing something destructive, these characters approach time travel from very real and, often, very personal perspectives. I especially liked how Palma touched upon the idea of paradoxes repeatedly, because the ideas of changing the past or meeting yourself in the past are something that have to guide the storytelling when dealing with shifting timelines.

As much as I loved this book, which is a bestseller in Palma's native Spain, I had some trouble getting into it. Specifically, the paragraphs are loooong and overly-verbose, although I have a feeling that this was done on purpose to give the book a more Victorian feel. The very beginning, especially, when there is a whole page devoted to which kind of gun a character is going to use to kill himself, can get a bit tedious. Push on,though, like I did, and you'll be well-rewarded.

As a side note, H.G. Wells is a main character throughout this book, and it is mentioned frequently that all of London is so excited by time travel specifically because of his book The Time Machine. While it's quite possible to read this book without having read The Time Machine, I'll take a moment to plug the classic. It's really very short and easy to read, plus you'll sound smart when you say you've read it.

I never read many classics when I was younger (except what was forced upon me in school), so this one had escaped me until a few years ago. Then I discovered DailyLit, which feeds you classics in tiny bite-size pieces that are easy to digest. I had The Time Machine sent to my RSS reader (but you could get them emailed to you too), and in about a month, I had read the whole thing without trying. Best part: it's free. Really, do it. Even if you don't want to read The Time Machine (but you should), give DailyLit a try.

Also, The Map of Time has one of the coolest covers I've seen in a long time.

Check out the first chapter - in text or audio - on the book's website.

5/5 stars

Disclaimer: The advance copy of this book was provided to me for free from the publisher.

Review: Hourglass

More time travel. See? I'm betting on this being the Next Big Thing. Hourglass by Myra McEntire sounded more paranormal and less time travel on it's back cover, but I assure you, travel through time they do.

Emerson sees people from the past. Like, she's trying to walk through the front door of her apartment, and there's a real straight-off-the-plantation southern belle standing in her way. This started two years earlier, just before her parents were killed in a freak accident, and it's only gotten worse since. Thomas, Em's brother, keeps finding "specialists" to help her, but none of them actually have helped. But when Michael shows up and introduces Em to the Hourglass, she starts to fully understand what's happening to her.

**Here Be Spoilers** Emerson learns from Michael that her ability to see people from other times is actually a small part of her ability, which actually allows her to travel back in time. Michael himself can travel forward in time, and together, they make a perfect pair - like, a-love-greater-than-the-stars perfect. And Dr. Xavier's School - sorry, The Hourglass - is where all the mutants - ugh, sorry again, I mean people with the ability to manipulate time in some manner - learn to hone their skills. **There Be Spoilers**

Is this a ground-breaking novel? No. In fact, there are so many teen girl clichés in here that I got mad at myself at one point for enjoying this so much. But then I just stopped caring because, you know what? This is a fun book, and I was once a teenage girl, so I'm going to revel in the feeling of being 16 again. In fact, I'm pretty sure even if you were never a teen girl, you'll understand.

It's been a while since I was really smitten with a YA novel, but this one hit me full force and made me stay up all night to find out what happened. My only hope is that there are more books about Emerson and the Hourglass coming soon.

5/5 stars

Disclaimer: This book was provided by the publisher through my bookstore job.

Review: Ship Breaker

I've been hearing such amazing things about author Paolo Bacigalupi for a while now, and I walk by his novel The Windup Girl every day. When his YA novel Ship Breaker came up on the list for our YA book group, I was happy to have a reason to finally read him.

And can I say how happy I am that I did? Less than half-way through Ship Breaker, I had to buy a copy of Windup Girl because I loved his writing so much. His descriptions of a world in which the environment is battling back against us and people work in harsh conditions make everything seem disturbingly real.

Nailer, our protagonist, lives and works on a beach on the Louisiana coast, scuttling through ducts on a grounded oil tanker, dragging costly metals like copper back to the surface to sell. When a city killer storm (the kind of storm that has made this world rebuild New Orleans three times) rolls through and the beach community gets destroyed, Nailer and his friend Pima venture down the beach to see what washed up during the storm. What they find, though, is one of the nicest ships they've ever seen, a true bounty of scavengable material. Of course, they find something more precious than even they expected, and then Nailer is forced to leave the only home he's ever known to protect it.

There are many things going for this novel. First, the main character is a boy, so rare in well-written YA. Second, there are no creatures to deal with (genetically-designed half men aside), and the frighteningly real environment and plain human nature are the things that cause trouble. Third, this is a world that it is easy to imagine could come about, and thinking through how we could get from here to there is a great exercise for kids. There needs to be more of this in YA - good, straightforward sci-fi storytelling.

5/5 stars