Book Review

First Sentences in YA Lit, Answers

Posted on by Beth Hull

In lieu of a book review, here are the authors and books matched up to the first sentences I posted on Friday. (Oh, and the parenthetical P notations indicate, where I remember, that the first sentence comes from a prologue, since I’ve been obsessed with prologues lately.)

1. We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck. -M. T. Anderson, Feed

2. It was a dark and stormy night. -Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

3. I remember lying in the snow, a small red spot of warm going cold, surrounded by wolves. -Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver (P)

4. When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. -Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

5. I don’t believe in ghosts. -Gillian Shields, Immortal (P)

6. The tree woman choked on poison, the slow sap of her blood burning. -Holly Black, Valiant (P)

7. Chauncey was with a farmer’s daughter on the grassy banks of the Loire River when the storm rolled in, and having let his gelding wander in the meadow, was left to his own two feet to carry him back to the chateau. -Becca Fitzpatrick, Hush, Hush (P)

8. Blood fills my mouth. -Bree Despain, The Dark Divine (P)

9. In these dungeons the darkness was complete, but Katsa had a map in her mind. -Kristin Cashore, Graceling

10. Her parents were going to kill her for this. -Carrie Vaughn, Voices of Dragons

11. Just when I thought my day couldn’t get any worse I saw the dead guy standing next to my locker. -P. C. Cast & Kristin Cast, Marked

12. On the day Claire became a member of the Glass House, somebody stole her laundry. -Rachel Caine, Glass Houses

13. Mommy forgot to warn the new babysitter about the basement. -Kelley Armstrong, The Summoning (P)

14. Janie Hannagan’s math book slips from her fingers. -Lisa McMann, Wake

15. Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. -J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

16. “Please tell me that’s not going to be part of my birthday dinner this evening.” -Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty

17. There were only two kinds of people in our town. -Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl, Beautiful Creatures

18. Around midnight, her eyes at last took shape. -Lauren Kate, Fallen (P)

19. Torrential rain was pouring the afternoon Rebecca Brown arrived in New Orleans. -Paula Morris, Ruined

20. Dad had Uncle Eddie round, so naturally they had to come and see what I was up to. -Louise Rennison, Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging

21. It didn’t take long for Phoebe to figure out Jeremy wasn’t coming back for her. -MINE!

22. “Guess who?” -Alyson Noel, Evermore

23. Someone was looking at me, a disturbing sensation if you’re dead. -Laura Whitcomb, A Certain Slant of Light

24. Some things start before other things. -Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

25. Flames shot high, turning the night lurid with carnival light. -Annette Curtis Klause, Blood and Chocolate (P)

26. Everyone’s seen my mother naked. -Elizabeth Scott, Something, Maybe

27. Jason was going to Brain Camp. -Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever

28. I’d never given much thought to how I would die – though I’d had reason enough in the last few months – but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this. -Stephenie Meyer, Twilight (P)

29. My mother used to tell me about the ocean. -Carrie Ryan, The Forest of Hands and Teeth

30. There are these bizarre people who actually like physical education class. -Carrie Jones, Captivate

So there they are. Happy Monday! It’s going to be a beautiful week!

Black Magic Sanction by Kim Harrison

Posted on by Beth Hull

The first book of Kim Harrison’s I read was Every Which Way But Dead. And I was blown away. Like Kelley Armstrong, Kim Harrison was one of the first women in the horror genre to actually get my attention. Yeah, Laurell K. Hamilton got my attention too, but the first book of hers I picked up was Cerulean Sins, and it got my attention more in the way a train wreck gets a person’s attention. Or, perhaps more accurately, in the way unexpected and distasteful pornography gets a person’s attention.

Kim Harrison made urban fantasy cool. Her world is so real, from the descriptions of all the Inderlanders (nonhumans) mingling with the humans, to the church her main character, Rachel, lives in, to the very idioms used by her characters. It’s such a thoroughly written setting that I feel like I could live there. Black Magic Sanction keeps the world alive. The characters, the creatures, everything is there.

***weak spoiler here…close your eyes, D-Chan***

Holy. Elf. Can you believe she makes herself pixy-sized and gets to see the inside of Jenks’s house/stump? I would read the whole book again just for that one description. This is where Harrison absolutely impresses me, because I never would have even explored the idea of going inside the pixy stump. I mean, Rachel is a human (well, a witch, but human-sized. You know what I mean), and way too big. But in this novel she has to get inside, for reasons I won’t divulge, and wow.

***spoiler over…you can open your eyes now***

The only problem I had with Black Magic Sanction was the issue most longer series get into: too many characters. There are so many memorable people in Rachel’s world, and that mirrors life exactly, because we all interact with many people on a daily or weekly basis (unless we are introverts who finally get our wishes and just get to stay home for a few days. Without toddlers. But I digress). This is where literature should not mirror life, and Black Magic Sanction could have benefited from a smaller cast of characters.

I keep waiting to read a Kim Harrison book in which Rachel has simply gone too far in her journey, where she’s hit the limit of her character growth and there’s nowhere else for Harrison to take her (again, not trying to rip on LKH, but see what Anita Blake is doing? If you do, you’ll understand why I get a little skittish once a series gets past book 5 or 6).

That hasn’t happened yet. Rachel is still learning and growing, and I’m thrilled to watch it all happen.

For Kim Harrison’s blog, click here. For her website, click here.

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

Posted on by Beth Hull

A reviewer on the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest compared aspects of my submission to Shiver, which is unfair because I didn’t read the book until last weekend, and my manuscript was submitted two months ago. This is just one of the many gross injustices in the writing world. You have an idea, and, hey, so did someone else…and most likely she wrote it better than you did.

Stiefvater’s story, however, is quite different from my own. The similarities are generally found in the heroine’s parents and in the existence of werewolves. Thankfully the similarities stop there, although Grace’s parents (and my main character’s, I guess) are unique enough to make me cringe: both sets are flighty, artist types. Grace’s mom is a painter; Phoebe’s dad is a sculptor. Grace’s dad and Phoebe’s mom are emotionally unavailable, although he is a never-at-home businessman and she is a never-outside-of-her-head stay-at-home mom. (Speaking of bad parenting, here’s an interesting essay from The New York Times discussing the trend of bad parents in YA lit.)

Other than these elements, I would be flattered to have my book compared to Stiefvater’s. Her writing is smooth and poetic without sounding so literary that you lose the story. Beautiful lines everywhere. Example: “‘I know,’ I replied, frowning at the multicolored sweaters and scarves trailing into the school, evidence of winter’s approach” (161). It’s such a beautiful image!And there are so many more. I think a werewolf novel has to be laden with more sensory details than a regular novel. It’s a rule.

The romance is another one of those too-good-to-be-true Twilight love-at-first-sight deals, but very few popular romances aren’t, these days. Grace and Sam have been in love for six years and have never spoken to one another because most of their googly-eyes are made while Sam is in wolf form. Which is sort of sick if you think about it outside the scope of the book, but doesn’t bother me in the actual story. (That’s how good the writing is! Googly-eyes at a four-legged mammal isn’t gross!)

The story isn’t fast-paced, but leisurely for the most part, giving the characters and their new (finally) human romance time to develop before plunging us into the crisis. The beauty of the ending was that I wasn’t sure what to expect. I knew what I wanted, but I didn’t know whether or not it would happen. I won’t say anymore and spoil it, though.

For more information of Maggie Stiefvater and her writing, you can visit her very entertaining blog.

My manuscript is out of the running for the ABNA contest, sadly, and I felt sorry for myself for about a week until I, well, got over it and figured out my revision plans. Happily, my friend Seven N. Blue’s entry made the cut. Click here for the excerpt–this is exciting stuff!

A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb

Posted on by Beth Hull

A Monday Book Review

“Except for the librarian and a couple of mice, I spent more time in the school library than anyone” (40). Oh dear. Not another YA novel where the main character loves the library. But I’ve ranted about this before, so I’ll resist the impulse to do it again.

Because the majority of this book review is spent on a total tangent, I will say here that A Certain Slant of Light is an enjoyable read. The idea of two ghosts borrowing the bodies of two troubled teens and falling in love is the sort of plot hook that allows me to forgive the library-loving protagonist issue. The writing is quite beautiful in places and…I cried at the end. A Certain Slant of Light has more poetic prose than a typical commercial fantasy novel, which was pleasantly surprising.

That said, I can now jump into my rant. (Not about libraries.)

I am quite baffled as to why this novel is marketed as YA fiction. The two main characters are adults, although ghosts. Helen was 27 when she died, and has been a ghost for 130 years. James was 29 and has been a ghost for 85 years. That gives each character over a century of experience in the world! Just because they are “borrowing” two teenagers’ bodies does not make them teenagers, and some of their actions, as well as the main character’s thought processes and (prior) life experiences, place this book completely in the realm of general (adult) fiction. I wonder if young adults were the original audience Whitcomb had in mind.

But perhaps I approach this in the wrong way. Young adult fiction doesn’t have to feature teenagers as the main characters…although honestly I’m having a hard time coming up with examples which do not feature teenagers. Anything with animals? I would argue that  The Warriors series by Erin Hunter (starring cats) and The Underneath by Kathi Appelt (populated with all manner of animal characters) are more middle-grade fiction.

YA literature has to be something young adults want to read. But now I’m puzzling over the distinction, because some teens love “adult” books too. And with the YA market attracting more and more adults (for the LA Times article about this, click here), the distinction is problematic.

Can anyone come up with examples of YA books that do not feature a teen as the main character? Extra points if you think of one that features a main character over the age of 20.

For more information on Laura Whitcomb and her writing, you can visit her website by clicking here.

The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

Posted on by Beth Hull

A Monday Book Review

“Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master!” This is part of the refrain of the Wee Free Men, the little pictsies who help Tiffany Aching along on her quest to find her kidnapped brat-of-a-brother Wentworth. It’s also what I imagine the stinking* irises are shouting at me as I scold them into submission before ripping them from the ground.

Iris Foetidissima

Stinking Irises

But, oh yes, Pratchett’s book. It was quite funny! I love a book that makes me laugh, and there’s something inherently funny about picsties (six-inch blue men with red hair) who love fighting, stealing, and drinking. Plus what’s not to love about a girl who will use her little brother as bait so she can bash a monster over the head with a frying pan?

*possible spoilers in here*

But when Tiffany finds out the fairy queen kidnapped Wentworth, she follows them to a fairy kingdom to retrieve him, the Wee Free Men tagging along to help her out. And that’s where I stopped having as much fun with the book.

Let me be clear: Terry Pratchett really is a genius, and I could not write his books better. The following is a matter of personal taste, not an attack on his skill as an author.

Basically, I don’t have much patience for fairy kingdoms or alternate worlds (exception to this rule: Graceling by Kristin Cashore). Not my thing. Someday I might have a great idea and go with it for a book of my own, but I sort of doubt it. When the rules change, and when dreams are involved and the rules change rapidly, my ability to suspend disbelief is…suspended. Not only that, but when the dreams are controlled by a character, and then that control is wrested away by another character, and so on? Nope. I’m not buying it.

Plus I’m trying to read fast because Z is running around tackling me and trying to swipe my book away, and then there’s like this never-ending ending, the climax of the story going on forever.

The book was good. I’m glad I read it. And when I need some funny little blue people to bring some laughter into my day, I’ll pick up another of Pratchett’s books. Or I can paint Z blue, dye her hair red, and dress her in a kilt. Teach her to talk with a Scottish accent.

*Note: “Stinking” here is not an adjective, but part of a compound noun. That’s really the name of the irises, iris foetidissima. While getting rid of the tempting red poisonous berry seeds is one reason I’m pulling them up, the other reason is I resent their very stubborn presence. Husband says it’s because they are as stubborn as I am. I was a little resentful of his presence too, when he said that.