Kidliterate

THE ASTONISHING LIFE OF OCTAVIAN NOTHING: TRAITOR TO THE NATION, VOLUMES 1 and 2 by M.T. Anderson

So of course I'd heard of Octavian Nothing. But it was just one of those books (two volumes, actually, but really one book, in my mind) that I'd never gotten around to reading. But I've been catching up on John Green's archives after going crazy for his Looking for Alaska, and I took what he wrote about it to heart, and I checked out both volumes to take with me over Thanksgiving. Many hours in airplanes and the backs of cars and some 900 pages later, I am done.

It is hard to know where to begin when talking about Octavian Nothing. I guess the first thing I'd like to say is that the less you read about it in advance, the better. (I won't be giving away anything here, not even the most basic summary.) I've started to avoid reviews and even book jacket blurbs of books before reading them. I can't tell you how much it's enriched my reading experiences lately. Even a one-line summary often gives away too much.

So ... Octavian Nothing. It carried me away. It just took me out of my body and mind and placed me squarely on Octavian's journey with him. It was a sucker punch to my gut and my heart. People would ask me what the book was about, from family members around the fireplace to strangers standing nearby at baggage claim, and I felt at a loss. The first volume takes its sweet time in letting the story unfold, and before I was really sure what was going on, I said, "I'm not really sure. But it feels -- sinister." And it did feel sinister, a lot of the time. It felt shocking and horrifying and terrifying and sad. But it also felt hopeful and moving and ultimately profound. This book is profound. It just -- is.

It's not only a thoroughly engrossing and gripping and epic story with characters who spring to life with an insane degree of vividness, it's a book about ideas. About science and faith. About the nature of humanity. About good and evil. About revolution. About freedom. I don't even know how to explain it. I will never be able to do it justice. This book just crushed me, and it took my breath away. I don't say that lightly.

It also made me laugh out loud sometimes, even though you'd never describe it as "funny." But there is humor -- not often, certainly, but every now and then, and lightness. There has to be, otherwise you might pull the covers over your head while reading and never come out again.

But you see -- that's the thing. You will come out, because you will want to keep reading. You probably won't be able to put this book down. It's not a page turner in the sense that the words fly by you -- the words are hard, and strange, and there's a rhythm/syntax to them that feels unfamiliar and takes some getting used to when you first start reading. (At least it did for me.) But it definitely became a page turner for me -- at first just so I could figure out what in the hell was going on, and ultimately so I could find out what would be Octavian's fate. And everyone else's in the story that I soon fell in love with. (Or hated passionately.) 

Volume two definitely moves at a faster clip than volume one, but just be patient. It is all worth the wait. God, this book -- what a book. I found myself wondering time and again how this book was ever marketed for teens. Obviously it has been, and successfully -- bestseller, multiple prestigious awards, and so forth. The author himself has said he intended it for older teens, and I definitely think that's the perfect audience for this book. It's dark and frightening and violent, but it's also totally a coming of age story -- and it is, at its heart, so much about the questions older teens sometimes ask themselves as they find their ways in the world:

• What does it mean to be brave?
• What does it mean to be free?
• What are my special gifts?
• How will I ever become my own person?
• Why are we here?
• Does God exist?
• Does good exist?
• How can human beings treat other human beings like this?
• How will I survive this loss?
• Is war the answer?
• What is the value of a single life?

I also ask myself if I would have picked it up and read it as a teen. I think I might have, but I think it would have only been at someone's urging. The urging that we hear that so often rocks our worlds: "Read this book. Don't give up, even if it's tough at first. You will love it. It will change you." I guess that's what I'm trying to say right now.

LIAR by Justine Larbalestier

Oh, unreliable narrators, how I love you. LIAR's protagonist, Micah, is the ultimate unreliable narrator, and I have been blown away by her.

I can't tell you much about this book, because just about anything I say will be a spoiler. I'm not going to tell you much more than the jacket does. Micah tells us immediately that she is a liar. She tells us that she is going to tell us, the readers, the truth. She promises. She says she means it. She lies.

Or does she?

Micah's boyfriend is brutally killed, and the series of lies that she has spun over the course of her life begin to pile up on top of her. She tells us a series of stories, each one beginning with a promise that this is the truth this time - yes, it really is. You are constantly torn between believing her and not believing her. Between loving her and hating her. And while you are torn, you are turning pages like a giant freak, racing and racing and racing to get to the end. Racing to try to figure out what is true and what isn't.

This book? Is (insert massive string of expletives here) awesome. This book is everything everyone has said it is. This book, with its much more accurate cover, is sitting on the shelf at my store waiting for me to sell it. Now that I have finally read it, I shall.

A couple of quibbles. The profanity is extremely erratic, and seems to show up mostly in the last quarter. I wish it had just been left out altogether OR been more consistent throughout. Also, just a few different word choices when describing sexual acts would have allowed me to handsell this to more teens; as it is it definitely skews to the upper end of the YA range. (At least in an independent bookseller handselling category.) Those quibbles are entirely from a bookseller perspective. As a reader? I wouldn't change a word. Larbalestier is doing a signing at my former employer, and I am incredibly sad that I won't be there for it. (Come to St. Louis!) But I'm definitely getting a hardcover copy signed, because I want this one on my shelf for keeps.

LOOKING FOR ALASKA by John Green

I bought Looking for Alaska by John Green at a recent book festival because it had a nice shiny round gold Printz Award sticker on the cover that gleamed up at me invitingly from the rows of books on the table. At the cash register, two college-aged cashiers, a boy and a girl, gasped in unison, "We love this book!" They sighed, they clutched their hearts. The girl said, "I get so jealous when someone gets to read a really great book for the first time." I thought to myself, "Self, these are your people," and I instantly trusted their judgment.

(If you're one of the few people left on earth who hasn't read this book, I encourage you to pick it up without reading about it first. This is one where being spoiler-free is key. Trust me. Don't read reviews, don't read about the book on the author's website, don't Google anything about the book. Just read it.)

I won't spoil this book for you. What I can tell you about it is this: It's about an 11th grader who leaves home to attend boarding school, by choice. In his words: "I came here looking for a Great Perhaps, for real friends and a more-than-minor life."

He finds the Great Perhaps he is seeking in many forms -- in a roommate named The Colonel, who quickly becomes his first Real Friend, and who nicknames him "Pudge" because he's so skinny. In taking up covert sessions of smoking cigarettes and drinking Strawberry Hill. In thinking deeply for the first time about world religions and what happens to us when we die. In eating fried burritos and being the victim and mastermind of complicated pranks. In seeking to identify what is the most important question humans beings must answer, and in trying to figure out how to answer it. In wondering how we get through life's labyrinth of suffering. And in meeting a girl named Alaska, who changes everything.

I spent a lot of time when reading this book trying to picture Alaska in my mind. It felt important somehow. The only image I could settle on was an intellectual version of Kim Kelly on Freaks and Geeks. She smokes too much and drinks too much and sometimes seems to be filled with sorrow and rage.

I was bothered by the fact that I wasn't sure if I really liked Alaska, and it's hard when you think you might dislike the person your hero loves the most. But then I realized that maybe I wasn't supposed to like Alaska all the time ... she can be obnoxious and mean, after all. But she is also brilliant and loyal and wildly adventurous and fun. She's a real person, wounded and angry and wonderful and lost, and of course Pudge loves her. As he explains, "She taught me everything I knew about crawfish and kissing and pink wine and poetry. She made me different."

When I look back on this book, I see moments and images in my mind. I see the Colonel climbing into Pudge's bottom bunk with him when he returns, freezing, from a very long walk. (Not in a seductive way, in a "I just need to be next to my friend who can help warm me up" kind of way.) I see firecrackers being set off in the night and a group of friends making a ritual out of throwing cigarettes into a stream. I see blue hair and a boy in a fox hat and a vase of white tulips and the tears of a strict dean of students and the wheezing breaths of an ancient teacher talking about how what different religions share are messages of radical hope.

Above all, this is a story of friendship. What really got me in the heart was the relationship between Pudge and the Colonel. They just love each other, and they have each other's backs, and they're not afraid to admit this and always come back to this truth no matter how profound their struggles. This portrayal of male adolescent friendship was so moving to me.

It's also about how drastically your life can change in the course of a single year and how opening yourself to new experiences and people can rock your world in the most wonderful and terrible ways. In reading a little more about it, I've learned that along with its many accolades, the book has been challenged as "pornographic," which I dismiss as patently ridiculous. 

So there's drinking, smoking, and sexuality ... welcome to high school. This book is so much more than that. I'd happily slap this book into the hand of any teenager, or even any tween, because in addition to being a great read, it teaches what I think are some invaluable lessons: that the most important questions are the hardest to answer, that some mysteries can't be solved, and that life is beautiful and ugly and always infinitely worth living.

LOOKING AHEAD: Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can ' t Have by Allen Zadoff

Sometimes, an "issue" book is simply an "issue" book.  The protagonist is a cutter.  On drugs.  Pregnant.  Homeless.  Abused.  Et cetera.  The book revolves entirely around said issue, and things progress much in the same manner as an after-school special (which, come to think of it, do they even make those anymore?).  These books often serve as cautionary tales rather than actual stories, where plot trumps character and message trumps style. It would be wrong to categorize FOOD, GIRLS, AND OTHER THINGS I CAN'T HAVE as simply a book on obesity.  While Andrew Zansky, the novel's protagonist, does weigh in at 307 pounds, his weight is simply one facet of his struggle as a teenage misfit.  He isn't the fattest kid in school; he's the second fattest.  He isn't friendless; he's got Eytan, skinny as Andrew is big.  When Andrew meets new girl April, he's instantly smitten, but he tells her he's a jock, which is a complete lie.  In an effort to impress her, he tries to make a soccer goal during gym class, and he ends up putting a few kids in the emergency room...and he loses his gym shorts in the process.  Utterly embarassed, Andrew expects to sink to the very bottom of the social plane after this fiasco, but a chance encounter with O, the star quarterback of the football team, changes everything.  Instead of joining Model UN with Eytan, Andrew decides to try out for football (where April is coincidentally going out for cheerleader).  Andrew goes from being the fat kid to becoming the secret weapon of the team, and he suddenly finds himself invited to parties, and even getting private football lessons from O (in exchange for tutoring).  His crush on April only intensifies when he discovers that she too was once heavy, and she has further altered herself through tinted contacts and teeth whitening in an attempt to become pretty. What I love about Andrew is that as a narrator, he's emotionally available.  Yes, he's a teenage boy who thinks about sex constantly and is distracted by breasts and makes "your mom" jokes and stuffs his face to cover up his sadness over his parents' divorce.  Yet he is honest in presenting himself, and that vulnerability makes the reader root for him all the more, as he is surrounded by false faces and ulterior motives.  This isn't a novel about Andrew going from a size 48 to a 32 and getting the girl and winning the big game.  It's about a kid who realizes that there is a space between the person he is and the person he wants to be.  It's about a boy truly becoming a man as he stands in the shadow of his cowardly father.  It's about someone who tries something new, falls down a lot, reaches for things he can't have (or shouldn't have) and eventually discovers that perhaps the path that those around him choose to tread--the path that says do whatever it takes to be who others want you to be--is not the path for him.  I also appreciate the fact that his high school is populated by kids of various backgrounds--Latino, Korean, Jewish, African American, Chinese--and that ethnicity affects way these characters definte themselves. Author Allen Zadoff makes his YA debut here; he wrote a memoir called HUNGRY about his own journey from obesity to a healthy weight.  Andrew, unlike Zadoff, does not emerge from the fat cocoon a skinny butterfly.  He's still very big as the novel ends.  That, however, isn't really the point.  What matters is that Andrew faces some of the demons in his life--from bullies to mini bagels--and he makes choices.  One of my favorite authors, Gary Schmidt, says that writing for young people is all about characters making decisions, and that is why this novel works so well.  Andrew wants things, and he is denied them, and yet he has the courage to try for them anyway.  That is the stuff of good fiction, particularly teen fiction, and that is why I heartily recommend this book. Preorder the book from an independent bookstore!

MUCHACHO by LouAnne Johnson

Secrets are, by nature, phenomenally interesting.  (Also, they're far better when they belong to someone else and you overhear them.)  It's why we love James Bond and Alex Rider and Sydney Bristow and Jason Bourne...secrets are their livelihood.  It's also why we love novels, because the act of reading fiction in itself is a form of spying, at least in part.  I like a character with a secret, and I like it more when it's something unexpected.  Usually revealing a narrator's secret in a review would be called a spoiler, but in the case of Eddie Corazon in MUCHACHO, passing on his secret will only do one thing:  make you want to read this book more.  Eddie Corazon, juvenile delinquent, is a secret reader. If somebody asks me do I like to read, I say, "Yeah," and then I give them a look that tells them they better not ask me what I like to read because this ain't Oprah's book club. Eddie lives in small-town New Mexico with his family, which includes a large group of cousins, some of which are in and out of jail on a regular basis.  His family has lived in New Mexico for three hundred years--his abuelo says, "We didn't cross the border, mijo.  The border crossed us." He's had some issues with the school system, and he's enrolled instead in Bright Horizons alternative school, where the students pride themselves on getting rid of teachers in record time.  The lure of his cousins' illegal lifestyle is strong, but he's promised his mother he will get a diploma.  While Eddie privately devours The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and the collected works of Sherman Alexie, he feigns apathy in his classes and refuses to engage, even though his mind is constantly wrestling with the issues he'll face once he graduates.  What kind of future can he possibly achieve when even the brightest kids from his neighborhood can't go to college?  Why bother getting a minimum-wage job when he could make easy money now selling with his cousins? Everything changes on the day Eddie starts taking ballroom dancing to fulfill his fine arts credits, and because his teacher tells him, "You'll meet lots of girls."  He is partnered with Lupe, a new girl at Bright Horizons, and he is initially drawn by her looks and the sweet smell of her hair, but upon speaking with her over lunch, he discovers she is brilliant, and funny, and unlike any other girl he's ever met.  Lupe dreams of being a doctor, and slowly, Lupe's own desires for a future of her own choosing fuel Eddie's passion to be more than what he is.  He decides to write her a poem:  I wish I could be Lupe's rosary/ so she could hold me in her hands/ and tangle me up in her fingers/ and press me to her lips/ and pray me into being a good man/ one bead at a time. Eddie is no longer simply a secret reader; he becomes a secret writer.  His poems are scattered throughout MUCHACHO, and they lend a wonderful intimate quality to the story.  What I love about Eddie's character is that despite the front he has to maintain for his peers, his family, and sometimes even for Lupe, as we read his story from his point of view, he's actually being open with us.  His voice is sincere, and he bares his thoughts and emotions to us as readers, because he can't bare them to anyone else in his world.  We become his confessional, and it is a privilege to spend time with him on the page.  His journey is not an easy one, and a misstep with his cousin leads to confrontation with Lupe's father, and Eddie is faced with a choice about the kind of man he wants to be.  Without revealing any crucial plot elements, I will say there are a few wonderful scenes in the book set at Black Cat Books and Coffee, which is a real independent bookstore in Truth or Consequences, NM.  My hope is that teens and adults alike will read MUCHACHO, because Eddie's story is so compelling, and its telling so lovely, that it shouldn't be missed.  There is so much beauty revealed in the midst of his chaos, and there are amazing connections to be made across social and racial boundaries.  This is exactly the sort of book that should be read in 11th and 12th grade, but very rarely is.  This is the kind of book that Eddie himself would like to read, and one that librarians and teachers and parents and volunteers should slip into the hands of the secret readers in their lives. Note from Melissa: I am fairly desperate to read this book myself, and am ordering it at work tomorrow. Order this book from an independent bookstore!

SLEEPAWAY GIRLS by Jen Calonita

(I wish this review was better timed, as this book takes place in the summer and was in fact published in May, but I love camp books year-round and I hope some of you do too.)

Ah, camp books. How I love you!

Sam's best friend Mal is revolting head over disgusting heels in love for the first time. Loathe to spend her summer playing third wheel to Malomark (her name for them - ha!), she applies to be a CIT (that's counselor-in-training) at Whispering Pines Camp. She promises Mel that she'll make her tons of their trademark video messages to one another, and soon enough she's off for her first summer at camp ever.

When she arrives at Whispering Pines she learns a few important things: she's the only CIT who's never been a Whispering Pines camper OR a camper at all; there's a really hot fellow CIT named Hunter, who begins flirting with her almost immediately; her mother and the camp director seem uncomfortably (to Sam) attracted to one another; and for some reason, the camp director's queen bee CIT daughter, Ashley, seems to develop an instant dislike for her. That could have something to do with the fact that Sam receives the most coveted CIT post: she'll be spending her summer working with Ashley's sister, Alexis.

If nothing else, it will certainly make for an interesting summer.

Sam makes fast friends with three fellow CITs who are also on Ashley's bad side, and those friendships help her forget - at least for brief periods of time - that she's getting no video messages from Mal. That hottie Hunter seems to be more than a bit of a player. That Ashley seems determined to ruin Sam's summer and reputation at any cost.

I love Sam. She's so imperfect. What gives Ashley's vendetta against her an extra dramatic edge is that Sam is more than a bit of a mess.  She's too much of a people pleaser. She can be incredibly wishy-washy. She's completely blind to the player-ness of Hunter (at least for awhile). And, because she's a camp virgin, she has a whole lot to learn.

I think everyone's experienced "in the trenches" friendships. Friendships that develop fast and hard because you're thrown together in some way - in the cast of a play, for example, or on the same dorm floor at college. I think it's hard to portray those friendships realistically, because sometimes, even in real life, they feel a little unrealistic. They happen so quickly. Sometimes you don't have that much in common, or maybe you wouldn't be friends if you met anywhere else. It's because of the circumstances that you bond, and after that bond forms, it doesn't much matter how alike you are. You've become alike.

Calonita does an excellent job of making Sam's camp friendships realistic.  Even though I never went to camp, I felt a familiar pang while reading about their conversations and their pranks and their arguments because that's the kind of relationships I had with my high school theatre friends. I'm guessing some of my pang was that I was dying to go to camp when I was younger, despite the fact that I hate campING, but no one really did that where I grew up.  I think I was mostly dying to jump into a camp book rather than attend actual camp. But part of me will always wonder what would have been if I had been able to go to sleepaway camp, and that part of me will continue to seek out books that take place there. This? Is a good one.

Buy this book from an independent bookstore!

LOOKING AHEAD: The Demon King by Cinda Williams Chima

Several years back, a certain bookseller named Melissa grabbed my arm and said, "Sarah!  You've got to read this!  Now!"  She handed me the galley for THE WARRIOR HEIR, and I put it on my to-be-read pile.  As usual, Melissa was dead-on.  From the moment I started WARRIOR HEIR, I knew this was an author I was going to be reading for a long time to come.  The HEIR books finished up last year, and it's one of the best contemporary fantasy trilogies I can name.  When I heard Ms. Chima was trying her hand at high fantasy, I was very excited, but a little nervous.  High fantasy is one of those genres where the story either really works, or really doesn't, and I've read my share of both sorts.  It's always difficult when an author you love starts a new project, and you hope you'll love it as much as her older work, but there's a tiny trepidation in the back of your mind that you won't. Here's the bottom line:  THE DEMON KING rocks. High fantasy is often driven by plot, but at the end of the day, if you don't fall in love with the main protagonists, it's game over.  There's certainly plenty of plot to be had here, from scheming wizards to political chicanery, from street lord wars to ethnic blood feuds, and there's a rich thousand year history that serves as a glittering backdrop for it all.  While the worldbuilding is lovely, what really seals the deal are her main characters.  Han, a former thief, is trying to reform his criminal ways and take care of his mother and sister.  While riding with his friend Dancer, a clan boy, they encounter a group of wizards setting fire to the grassland.  They engage in a bit of a scuffle, and Han takes an amulet from charmcaster Micah Bayar, who is a bit like the Draco to Han's Harry.  The amulet turns out to be more than just a family heirloom, as it exhibits terrifying power, and Han knows he must keep it out of the Bayars' hands. As Han struggles to figure out what to do with the amulet, the princess heir of the Fells, Raisa, is in the midst of her own personal turmoil.  Her mother, the Queen, is becoming more and more distant, making strange decisions on her behalf, and she is torn between Micah Bayar's forbidden affections (the princess cannot marry a wizard) and the attention of her handsome friend Amon, who is a member of her personal guard.  As she lived for several years among her father's clan, she feels cloistered and trapped inside the palace walls, and makes a concerted effort to find out what's happening in her queendom behind the facade.  Raisa hopes to be like her legendary ancestor, Hanalea, who saved the world by slaying the Demon King.  Her coming of age ceremony looms, however, and that means a potential political marriage, which is a loathsome idea for her. The novel follows the stories of Han and Raisa, usually swapping every other chapter between their points of view, and somehow Ms. Chima manages to weave their tales together in such a way that five hundred pages simply fly by.  Both Han and Raisa are on a journey to become the adults they are meant to be, and both must find out, often at a price, whom they can trust.  Along the way, Han and Raisa are surrounded by a host of secondary characters, from clansman to princes, and although the supporting cast is quite large, they all fit seamlessly into the framework, making the world of the seven realms seem all the more believable.  Raisa and Han are both in relationships of some romantic degree at various points in the story, and while mature themes are alluded to, there is no explicit content.  (That said, I believe this belongs in the young adult category; make of that what you will.)  My only complaint is that I'm going to have to wait another year for the next installment of this trilogy!  I am thrilled to have a new Chima series to recommend to my customers, and very grateful that both she and Hyperion books have put forth such a strong offering to the high fantasy lovers of the world. Preorder THE DEMON KING from an independent bookstore!

LOOKING AHEAD: The Midnight Charter by David Whitley

There are days I go to collect the mail, and rather than the usual stack of bills, it's all requests from charities.  Children's charities, health-related charities, feminist charities, religious charities.  Each one is deserving, and each one shows real kindness to real people that I will never be able to help with my own two hands.  There are always far too many groups asking for money, and there are moments when it feels like the small checks I send from time to time are simply too insignificant to make any difference at all. Yet imagine a world with no charities at all.  This is a world where there are no free lunches, no good deed without recompense.  This is the kind of world where everything costs, and I mean everything.  It's the sort of place where you can sell your own child to buy medicine for yourself, or even sell your own emotions for food and lodging.  This is the city of Agora, and it's the setting for THE MIDNIGHT CHARTER, a compelling first novel.  Mark and Lily are two such inhabitants of Agora, and each of them have been sold.  When Mark wakes from an illness that nearly took his life, he discovers he is now owned by Dr. Theophilus.  The quiet doctor lives in a strange old house owned by his grandfather, Count Stelli, an astrologer.  Mark's presence in the house is a secret, as Count Stelli would never allow a plague survivor under his roof, and when the secret spills, it is Lily, the girl Count Stelli owns, who comes to his rescue.  Lily wants to see the world, and when Stelli kicks out his grandson, she goes with the doctor, and Mark takes her place as Coun Stelli's servant. The stars play a role in THE MIDNIGHT CHARTER, as Mark is trained by Count Stelli to make astrological predictions.  He learns the constellations, studies the charts, and learns from his Master's gruff, cruel ways.  On Agora Day, the celebration of the city's founding, Mark is called upon to make a prognostication before the crowds, and on that very same day, Lily decides to put a very daring plan into action.  While Mark attempts to predict the future using rather unorthodox methods, Lily does something that she's never done before.  She very deliberately and purposefully does something for the benefit of two others, and when they try to barter back the value of her kindness, she refuses.  Her rebellious act of kindness starts a ripple effect inside of her, and it becomes large enough that it spills out into the people around her, and a revolution of attitude begins to take root.  At the same time, Mark's predictions miraculously come true, and thus begins his meteoric rise to fame and power in Agora. Mark becomes the star rising up into the heavens, and Lily, the star falling low enough to see the hurt and need in her city.  Both stand poised to change Agora for good or for ill, and they are unaware they are being watched.  A secret society exists in Agora, one that owns a document with contents that can drive the reader to madness.  What is the Midnight Charter?  The answer may be more than Mark or Lily can bear to know. THE MIDNIGHT CHARTER does what all good speculative fiction does:  it makes us examine our own world through the lens of another.  This is a powerful debut, and one complicated enough to make both young adult and adult readers fall under its spell.  There is a richness of place in Agora, and yet one that is quietly frightening (Miss Devine's shop is enough to make me shudder!).  I have no idea where Mr. Whitley intends to take Mark and Lily once the book ends, but I do know I'm very interested to follow them into another book.  THE MIDNIGHT CHARTER will likely challenge you, but in keeping with Agora's bartering system, it will give you a truly unique story in return. Preorder THE MIDNIGHT CHARTER from an independent bookstore!

LOOKING AHEAD: Incarceron by Catherine Fisher

note from Melissa: it's not so obvious who's writing each review here, because I'm using this crappy template that I can't adjust and haven't had a chance to meddle with a better one.  Each post is tagged at the bottom with the author's name. The majority are by me, but they're not all by me, and Sarah in particular is stepping up her game and I don't want to get all the credit! There are times I read books and I want to slap myself upside the head and say, "Why didn't I think of that?"  There are also times I read books and I think to myself, "I would never have come up with that in a million years."  INCARCERON is one of the latter.  The sheer originality of concept in this novel is breathtaking, and I'm going to have to be careful with this review so as not to spoil the beauty of it for you. The story begins with Finn, who lives inside Incarceron.  Incareron is, without a doubt, the most perfect prison concieved; it has no passages in or out, and in its centuries-long history, only one man is rumored to have ever escaped.  Finn clings to the belief that somehow he did not begin his life inside Incarceron like everyone else there, and his intermittent fits of visions give him brief glimpses of another life.  It's difficult to know what to believe, however, because Incarceron isn't just a building.  Incaceron is alive, and it determines the fates of the creatures that live within it.  Are his visions real, or are they simply falsehoods, another way that Incarceron tortures him? Claudia lives in splendor under the watchful, cruel eye of her father, the Warden of Incarceron.  Though she is intrigued by her father's vocation, she has never seen Incarceron herself.  Quietly defiant of the rules of her house, Claudia spends much of her time with the sickly Jared, a Sapient (think scholar), and they have concocted a scheme to sneak into the Warden's study in the hopes of understanding what it is exactly that he does.  While their heist works, and Claudia is able to steal a strange key from her father's desk, the Warden is at work on his own plans, and he has made arrangements for his daughter's marriage. Their worlds meet when Finn steals a crystal key in Incarceron, which is an exact match of Claudia's.  Through the keys, they can hear each other speak, and Claudia discovers through Finn that Incarceron is not the paradise her government told her it is.  She promises to help him escape, but her time is running out, as her impending marriage will essentially seal her within its own kind of prison.  A lovely addition to the main plot are the small boxed quotes that begin each chapter, which are excerpts from songs, poems, and secret documents regarding Incarceron.  My favorites were the legends about Sappique, who is the only prisoner said to have escaped.  INCARCERON is layered like a dark, twisted flower, and as the petals turn back and you come to the secrets at its center, you'll likely do the same double take I did.  I literally had to go back and reread the sentences at the moment of revelation regarding Incareron itself, because I couldn't believe what I was reading.  Like all good first novels in a trilogy, INCARCERON can only take us so far, and we now await the next part of the tale, but I am anxious to see where Ms. Fisher takes Finn and Claudia after the conclusion.  Highly recommended for young adult readers of both fantasy and sci-fi, and I believe fans of THE HUNGER GAMES would find much to love here. Preorder INCARCERON from an independent bookstore!

LOOKING AHEAD: How To Say Goodbye In Robot by Natalie Standiford

There will never be another John Hughes movie. I am incredibly sad about this. However, books like this one - heirs to John Hughes' oeuvre in all of the very best ways - go a long way toward alleviating some of that sadness. This book may have the best title of any on the fall list. It's just darn catchy. Very memorable. I like the cover, too - I wish it were another bright color, because this book is really not a romance, but I'm honestly so grateful that it doesn't have a girl's face on it that I'm going to embrace the pink. (Actually, there aren't as many teen girl novels printed with pink covers as you'd think there were. And of those with pink covers, there are very, very few - if any - that are this good.) Not only does it have the best title on the fall list, but it's hands down one of my favorite fall books. Bea's father, a professor, accepts a new position at Johns Hopkins. This means that her family is moving from Ithaca, New York to Baltimore just in time for Bea to begin her senior year at a small private school where everyone, no doubt, had met in utero. She is not really looking forward to this, but is reacting to it and to the sudden weirdness in her parents' marriage with a fair amount of stoicism. The book opens with a fantastically odd scene where her mother discovers a gerbil trying to chew its way through their patio furniture right before they move. Her mother seems overly eager for Bea to embrace the gerbil (who Bea names Goebbels) as a new member of the family, and is distraught when it is found dead just a few hours later. When Bea does not share her distress, her mother tells her You're not a girl. You're a robot! Bea isn't bothered by this so much as she is bothered by the way her mother has been behaving. They'd moved lots of times, but this particular move seems to be the straw that's broken her mother's back. When Bea arrives at school the next morning, the girl (Anne) two seats away in Assembly is happy to see her. Finally I have a buffer between me and Ghost Boy, Anne says. She explains that Ghost Boy is Jonah, who's gone to school with her forever. In seventh grade someone started a rumor that he was dead, and when he showed up for school, the nickname sprang into use and never really went away. Jonah seems like a ghost of sorts to Bea - he speaks little, has no friends, sits alone at lunch. And yet Bea is drawn to him in a way she can't explain. To the bafflement of Anne and the other girls she gets to know, Bea and Jonah embark on one of THOSE friendships. The ones that start all of a sudden, usually in an odd sort of way (perhaps laced with some sarcastic or wry opening comments), gather strength quickly, and often implode. Usually more than once. Bea and Jonah begin when he tips her off to a late night radio show; when she listens, she learns that he is a regular caller. The world of this radio show becomes the first thing to bind them together and a thread that weaves through the rest of the book. As they learn more about one another - Jonah had a mentally handicapped twin who was killed in a car accident along with their mother; Bea's mother seems to be truly going off the deep end, becoming obsessed with chickens and falling over everything in sight -  they become closer. And then one night Jonah shares a secret with Bea - a secret that will bring them together and push them apart, cause them to both love and hate one another, and, ultimately, decide their future. I love the quirky yet intimate tone of Standiford's writing. She lets Bea let you in in some very interesting ways. One of my first occurs very early in the book. The night before school starts, Bea is suffering from insomnia, and deprived of the late night radio show she would listen to in Ithaca, begins instead to imagine herself dead. As a way to try to fall asleep. (This book just gets more awesome as it goes along. Who finds death soothing? Awesome Bea, that's who.) I used lots of different death scenarios. There was the classic funeral scene: lying in my open coffin, dead but more beautiful than I ever looked in life, like Snow White in her crystal bier. Everyone I knew would pass by to gaze at me and cry. They should have appreciated me while I was alive. The world as they knew it will never be the same. The last mourner was always a boy, whatever boy I had a crush on at the time. He'd be a wreck, totally destroyed by my death. When he saw me in my coffin, he'd suddenly realize that he'd loved me all along. The other kids in school, the fools who had ignored me all year, were wrong, so very wrong. The injustice of it would overwhelm Crush Boy, who'd run into the street and throw himself in front of a truck. It was all very satisfying. And Jonah...Jonah is the kind of character who seems like he's going to be a caricature before he even appears on the scene, thanks to how others view him. It is almost immediately obvious, however, that he is not. Standiford peels back Jonah's layers like an onion, and (just to continue the metaphor) with each subsequent layer Jonah becomes more insubstantial - but also, to Bea, more transparent. Their relationship feels so much more real than a lot of friendships in novels do. For me it was at times a little too real. I had a Jonah once. His name was Chris. Unfortunately he's gone now - the world ultimately ended up being too much for him to bear. But the oddness and the fierceness and the insight and the wit that he brought into my life have stayed with me. Jonah reminded me of Chris, and for that I am especially grateful that I read this book. But anyone who's ever had a Jonah knows that Jonahs can be hard to love and that Jonahs can hurt you deeply. Bea learns both of these things very quickly, but she also learns that the deepest friendships - the ones where you are so open that you allow yourself to be hurt - are the friendships that change you forever. I want more, more, more from this author. Preorder it from an independent bookstore!