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When people drive by an accident, or a house fire, or some other horror that routinely befalls our fellow human beings, we’re compelled to look. To stare. To seek out signs of lost normalcy, the life that was, the people as they were “before.”  It’s an uncontrollable urge to peer in, despite the fact that we’re aware of the suffering and pain wrapped up in the debris.  Andrew Smith‘s The Marbury Lens is one of those horrors that you can’t look away from, no matter how much you want to, no matter how gruesome the detail, no matter the pain twisting in your gut asRead More →

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I’m not sure what to say about Matt de la Pena’s The Living.  I’ve been wrestling with how to review this book for a couple of weeks now and I still haven’t really found a place to start.  The blurb on the back of the ARC says “genre-bending” and I think that’s the best I can come up with too; that’s not because I wasn’t engaged by the story, didn’t care about the characters, and wasn’t thinking about Shy and his unbelievable 8 days long after I closed the back cover, it’s just that The Living is . . . different. Shy’s taken a jobRead More →

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Sixteen-year-old Agnes Mochrie, aka Canny, stars as the protagonist in Elizabeth Knox’s new fantasy novel Mortal Fire.  This novel is set in 1959 in Southland, the same locale as the famous Dreamhunter Duet.  Canny, a Pacific Islander who attends Castlereagh Tech, is a math genius and the star of the school’s math team—a gender marvel for the time period.  But then, much about Canny is a marvel—from her massive, impassive, and queenly mother who presides over Canny’s life like an unexploded bomb to Canny’s admirable loyalty to her polio afflicted friend Marli. Readers are certain about the depth of Knox’s book early in, when Canny’sRead More →

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In a barren and dusty world, 17 year old Banyan is a tree builder.  Using metal, twinkle lights and other junk, he creates forests like there used to be more than a century ago, before The Darkness, before the locust plagues.  Barely surviving, Banyan travels from town to town working for rich people who want to recapture something of a world that no longer exists.  Before he disappeared, Banyan’s father was a master tree builder and he passed on an art with scrap that makes Banyan’s forests really something to see. Working for some “rich freaks”, Banyan unexpectedly meets a strange woman with a remarkable tattooRead More →

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Creative narration, as it colors perspective, can add to a book’s appeal.  Just as Death narrates Markus Zuzak’s The Book Thief, which offers a perspective on the Jewish holocaust, and God narrates Alan Lightman’s Mr. g, a hypothesis about the universe’s creation, the ghost of Jacob Grimm narrates Tom McNeal’s new book, Far Far Away. Although the story doesn’t begin “once upon a time” or “in a land far, far away,” McNeal’s recent release is a fairy tale. Set in the parochial village, Never Better, Far Far Away features heroes and heroines, villains and ogres, horrors and cruelties, as well as lessons for and truthsRead More →

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The way that we are treating our Earth is slowly but surely killing her. One day we are going to wake up and realize too late what our destructive behavior has done. In P.J. Hoover’s Solstice, Piper is living on an Earth that is feeling the full force of global warming. Her city of Austin, Texas, has done an adequate job of becoming used to the ever rising heat. Whether it is with misters that spray a cooling gel or glass domes that cover sections of the city when the heat surpasses 121 degrees, the city council is trying to save its citizens…or are they?Read More →

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In her newest book, Of Beast and Beauty, Stacey Jay has penned a fractured fairy tale that also functions as a cautionary one.  Although the core of the story is based on the familiar Beauty and the Beast plot, Jay moves the conflicts beyond the traditional to warn contemporary society about the effects of intolerance and divisive philosophies and policies. Somewhat satirical in her style, Jay creates a world in which the Dark Heart’s magic has gained control via an ancient curse, and the only way to undo the curse is for one Smooth Skin and one Monstrous to build a relationship unfreighted by expectationsRead More →

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The natural age progression occurs in everyone, in other words, we all get old. Usually, it just happens, it is a part of life, but imagine being forced to grow up, take care of multiple children, and fight a war you never prepared for, all the while you are worried about just surviving until morning. This is exactly what Dean and Alex Grieder experience in Emmy Laybourne’s Monument 14: Sky on Fire. The teenage brothers live in Monument, Colorado, one of many states that have recently been attacked by an air born virus that affects anyone with a blood type. The brothers and 12 othersRead More →

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Science has proven that cloning is possible with animals such as mice and sheep.  These types of experiments are done to help researchers find cures to diseases and learn more about extinct animals. However, is there an ethical line that should not be crossed between cloning and humans? Cat Patrick explores this 21st century dilemma in her new novel, The Originals. Lizzie, Ella, and Betsey Best have grown up as triplets. This suddenly changes when they discover the truth behind their identities and the secret their mom has hidden from them. The girls are not triplets, they are clones from “the original” girl who hasRead More →