The Rook by Daniel O’Malley

Cross-posted at Guys Lit Wire.

The Guys Lit Wire annual book fair is going on right now! Please support the Ballou Senior High School Library by purchasing a book or two (or more) on their behalf.

A woman finds herself in a park, her body aching, with no memory of who she is or what she was doing. She survived some kind of attack–the ring of motionless bodies surrounding her is an obvious clue–and finds a letter in her jacket pocket which begins

Dear You,

The body you are wearing used to be mine. The scar on the inner left thigh is there because I fell out of a tree and impaled my leg at the age of nine. The filling in the far left tooth on the top is a result of my avoiding the dentist for four years. But you probably care little about this body’s past. After all, I’m writing this letter for you to read in the future. Perhaps you are wondering why anyone would do such a thing. The answer is both simple and complicated. The simple answer is because I knew it would be necessary.

Killer opening, right? And, for the most part, what follows lives up to the promising start. Which is saying something, since the book is nearly 500 pages long.

The letter writer, Myfanwy Thomas, warns the woman reading the letter that she is in terrible danger. The original Myfanwy (rhymes with Tiffany) considerately gives her the choice of starting a new life, with a new identity, or continuing to live Myfanwy’s life to find out what happened her. New Myfanwy is no idiot. She’ll take the new life, thank you very much. Why would she want the old Myfanwy’s life, when strange people wearing latex gloves want to harm her? Only, before she can follow Myfanwy’s instructions, she is attacked. She has no idea how the people after Myfanwy have found her so quickly, but it changes her mind about which route to take. She will remain Myfanwy Thomas. And in a few days, she will go to work as if nothing happened to her and try to figure out which of her colleagues betrayed her.

If she can find the time to investigate, that is. Myfanwy is a Rook of the Checquy Group, which exists to protect England from supernatural dangers. Okay, Myfanwy’s an administrator, a paper pusher, but she’s very good at her job and she knows it. Well, the new Myfanwy knows that the old Myfanwy was good at her job, but trying to hide the fact that she remembers nothing about her old life while reviewing the budget for the removal of plague-infected bodies, observing the interrogation of a man apprehended by the Checquy, and dealing with a sentient fungus, among other things, is not easy.

The reader learns about the Checquy and original Myfanwy’s life along with the new Myfanwy, through letters and the contents of a giant purple binder the original Myfanwy wrote before her memories were taken from her. These sections are informative without feeling infodump-y. Plus, they’re filled with mentions of past supernatural threats (or assets, in some instances) Myfanwy had to deal with that, many of which were refreshingly imaginative and frequently hilarious.

This, and the distinct voices and personalities of the two Myfanwys, make Daniel O’Malley’s The Rook a clever and entertaining and very fun read. Yeah, some of the chess-related aspect of the Checquy’s structure felt a bit underdeveloped (why, exactly, organize it around chess?), and, once the plot really gets going, some Myfanwy’s letter intrude on the book’s otherwise brisk pace. But I was never once tempted to put the book down or skim a section or two, so considering how engrossing and enjoyable I found the book, these are minor complaints about a smart, sly supernatural thriller.

Book source: public library.

It’s Chaos Walking Week

hosted by Loving Books. Basically, a week dedicated to Patrick Ness’s amazing series, which I found out about from Lisa is Busy Nerding.

Anyway, I have no idea if this is some kind of coincidence or what, but…

…the Chaos Walking series comprises today’s Kindle Daily Deal. If you have a Kindle and haven’t read the series yet, the books are 99¢ each! You can’t go wrong!

I don’t mean to turn this into a buy-stuff-from-Amazon post, since I’m not a fan of many of their practices (I’m not, nor have I ever have been, an Amazon affiliate), but Melina Marchetta’s Finnikin of the Rock is currently (as of this writing) on sale for $3.49. And wouldn’t you know, last week was Marchetta Madness at Chachic’s Book Nook.

There are some awesome posts there, by the way, like Trish Doller on how Jellicoe Road influenced Something Like Normal. Which makes me want to read Something Like Normal even more.

2012 RITA finalists for Young Adult Romance

It wasn’t too long ago that there weren’t enough YA Romance entrants for the RITA Awards to qualify as a category. Remember when Caridad Ferrer’s Adiós to My Old Life won the RITA Award for best contemporary single title romance and some people complained that a YA book didn’t belong in the category? The only reason Adiós to My Old Life was even up for best contemporary single title romance in the first place was because the YA category was cancelled for lack of entrants.

Now look. For, I believe, the fifth year in a row, there’s a YA category

• Enclave by Ann Aguirre (Feiwel & Friends)
• Flawless by Lara Chapman (Bloomsbury)
• Hourglass by Myra McEntire (Egmont USA)
• I’m Not Her by Janet Gurtler (Sourcebooks Fire)
• Touch of Frost by Jennifer Estep (Kensington Teen)
• Warped by Maurissa Guibord (Delacorte)

and YA books are represented in the Best First Book category (YA titles bolded)

• Beautiful Disaster by Laura Spinella (Berkley)
• The Darling Strumpet by Gillian Bagwell (Berkley)
• The Devil in Disguise by Stefanie Sloane (Ballantine)
• First Grave on the Right by Darynda Jones (St. Martin’s)
• Hourglass by Myra McEntire (Egmont USA)
• How to Marry a Duke by Vicky Dreilling (Forever)
• I’m Not Her by Janet Gurtler (Sourcebooks Fire)
• Warped by Maurissa Guibord (Delacorte)

Say what you will about whether or not the RITAs really honor the most outstanding romance fiction, I think it’s more interesting to note how it reflects the growing stature of YA fiction.

A couple of things that stood out to me (I guess I’m all about the bullet points today):

• Nice variety in the YA category. Not just in genre, but also publishers represented. Six finalists, six different publishing houses. A couple of Big Six/Seven publishers (Macmillan and Random), but mostly smaller houses, and three relatively new YA imprints (although Sourcebooks and Kensington have previously had success publishing adult romance).
• Didn’t Darynda Jones’s First Grave on the Right win a Golden Heart a couple of years ago? In any case, and continuing the trend of adult romance writers also writing YA, she’s got a YA book coming out this fall, Death and the Girl Next Door.
• I think Jill Sorenson has said she has no plans to write YA. Which makes me sad, since she is the one romance author I’d love to see writing YA, based on her single title romances, which feature teenaged characters in important roles. (I think Sorenson’s The Edge of Night is a great for Perfect Chemistry fans also reading adult romances, but without the over-the-top epilogues.) This year, her Stranded with Her Ex is a finalist in contemporary series romance. But I have to say, of the five of her books that I’ve read (and I cannot wait to read Caught in the Act!), Stranded with Her Ex is probably my least favorite.
• I thought I was pretty bad last year, having only read five of the finalists in all categories at the time of the finalists’ announcement. This year? Four.

And, as always, congratulations to all the finalists!

Department 19 by Will Hill

Oh, why not?

I blogged about this briefly a couple of months ago, but wrote a slightly more in-depth post about it for Guys Lit Wire today.

Abraham van Helsing thought that, after the events described in Dracula, vampires were eradicated and so posed no more threat to humans. In 1892, the famous vampire hunter learned he was wrong. There were still vampires out there, threatening human lives. And so Department 19–England’s most secret government organization–was created to fight vampires, werewolves, and other monsters.

The descendents of Department 19′s founding families are automatically invited to join the organization, also known as Blacklight, upon their 21st birthday. Jamie Carpenter is only sixteen, but when he learns of Blacklight’s existence, he is determined to earn a place in it right away. Because he can’t waste any time, not if he wants to find his mother, who was just kidnapped by vampires.

Will Hill’s Department 19 is like the Alex Rider spy series on steroids. With, as the van Helsing reference implies, a couple of characters from classic literature and some twists on vampire mythology. It’s long–over 500 pages–but filled with action and reads much more quickly than its length might suggest. If you like high octane action and would rather see vampires splatter rather than sparkle, give this book a try. It kicks off a series with the same name; book two will be published in August.

Two things

1. Is it just me, or have there been a lot of hockey-playing love interests in YA books all of a sudden?

• Awkward by Marnie Bates
• Chain Reaction epilogue by Simone Elkeles
• The Survival Kit by Donna Freitas
• Bittersweet by Sarah Ockler
• Playing Hurt by Holly Schindler

2. Speaking of Bittersweet, on p. 110, a character says, “What kind of hockey team has not one, but three black dudes? No wonder they can’t win,” which just rubbed me the wrong way. I know, it’s not Hudson, the main character*, who says it, but her best friend. And (spoiler?) this team with three black hockey players, among others, does end up winning. A lot. In this sense, it refutes the implication of the original statement. But maybe I’m being too sensitive or humorless here, because it still did not negate the original snarky comment explicitly enough to satisfy me.

I mean, it wasn’t that long ago that black hockey players couldn’t play in the NHL. I’d never heard of Herb Carnegie until this New York Times article last weekend (also very much worth reading), but he was a superb hockey player denied the opportunity to play in the NHL because he was black. And the fact that his skin color was the only reason he couldn’t play in the NHL hurt him deeply.

Not to mention, it’s awfully close from “What kind of hockey team has three black players?” to “What kind of basketball team starts an Asian-American point guard?”**

Race shouldn’t matter, nor should nationality or sexual orientation. After all, if you can play, you can play, right?

(I rarely embed YouTube videos, but since I just did it a couple of sentences ago, why not do it once more?)

* To her credit, Hudson immediately points out how diverse the rest of the team is besides the “three black dudes,” although that’s not the same as defending their ability to play hockey.

** Okay, this argument might have been more effective a month ago, but still.

My Own Worst Frenemy by Kimberly Reid

First of all, look at this cover, which includes not one but four people of color on it. Between the covers is an entertaining, well-crafted mystery. Plus something that probably made me more inclined to enjoy My Own Worst Frenemy, the first book in Kimberly Reid’s new Langdon Prep series: it’s got a bit of a Veronica Mars vibe to it, and I’ll explain why later. But here’s what the book is about.

I keep it to myself because that’s one of the things I do well, hold on to other people’s business. You never know when you might need it.

Information is negotiable, like currency. (p. 6)

Chanti Evans—pronounced “Shawnty, not Shanty like the towns where poor people live in a Steinbeck book”—is used to keeping secrets. Her mother, Lana, is a vice cop, and in a tough neighborhood where cops are distrusted and scorned, it’s safer to keep her mother’s real occupation under wraps.

When an outreach program at the exclusive Langdon Preparatory School funds three new scholarships for incoming juniors, Lana cashes in some information and arranges for Chanti to receive one of the scholarships. The scholarships are a new initiative, but no one on campus seems to support the program; none of the non-scholarship students befriend Chanti. The school’s headmistress, who was never in favor of the scholarship program to begin with, condescendingly looks down upon Chanti, Marco, and Bethanie. Chanti soon realizes that her new classmates at Langdon have secrets of their own, and she is determined to uncover some of them when Chanti and another scholarship student are framed for a series of thefts.

Actually, there are a couple of mysteries that Reid twines together, one of which I thought took Chanti too long to figure out. But Chanti’s motivation for trying to solve the mysteries without going to the authorities was plausible. What I didn’t find plausible was that absolutely no one at school would befriend Chanti, other than her fellow scholarship students. I mean, really? I can see why an author might do this for the dramatic effect, but I found it hard to believe. On the other hand, I did really like that while race does appear as an everyday issue several times, it’s not an Issue. It doesn’t matter to the story the way class and socioeconomic status do.

Chanti’s first-person narration reflects her character—she’s smart and not ashamed of it, with enough realistic flaws and doubts to keep her relatable. The frequent short flashbacks may bother some people, since I don’t think they gave that much insight into Chanti’s character as much as they explained the state of some of her relationships with a couple of friends and acquaintances from her neighborhood. Did the story require all the flashbacks? I’m not sure, but they didn’t bother me.

So, the Veronica Mars comparison. Yes, there are a lot of superficial similarities (both are about girls who are being raised by a single parent who works/has worked as a cop/sheriff-turned-private-investigator while attending school with a lot of rich kids even though they aren’t rich themselves and uses the knowledge she’s picked up from her mother/father to solve some crimes at school…), although Chanti doesn’t have the same sort of baggage as Veronica. But I think the tone of My Own Worst Frenemy is closer to Veronica Mars than some other YA books that have received the the VM comparison. I found Chanti easier to root for than Audrey and Neily in Anna Jarzab’s All Unquiet Things, more serious and less flighty than Hartley in Gemma Halliday’s Deadly Cool (which I admittedly only skimmed). Even if you haven’t seen Veronica Mars, if you’re looking for a solid contemporary mystery, give My Own Worst Frenemy a try. Then start watching VM ASAP!

Book source: public library.

Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition by Karen Blumenthal

Unforeseen consequences.

I’m sure most, if not all, of us have done something with good intentions, only to see things turn out…not how we expected.

Supporters of prohibition hoped that outlawing “the manufacture, sale, and transportation of liquor” would “forever end drunkenness, reduce crime, and make life better for American families.” (p. 3)

That’s not what happened after the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect. Ordinary people willfully broke the law, smuggling alcohol into the United States or brewing it themselves. Policemen and politicians accepted bribes while gangsters fought for bigger shares of the suddenly-illegal alcohol distribution trade.

In Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition, Karen Blumenthal delves into the history of Prohibition, its causes, and its effects. This makes the book’s title somewhat misleading, since the scope of Blumenthal’s narrative is broader than just bootlegging and gangs. So don’t be surprised when the book begins with an account of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929, but doesn’t return to the incident for another eight chapters.

Blumenthal instead explains why Prohibition became law by first discussing the history of alcohol production and consumption in America (did you know that Americans drank more alcohol, per person, in the early 19th century than at any other time in the country’s history?), the temperance movement (which initially advocated only drinking in moderation), and the lobbying and political machinations that led to the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment. Only then does she go into detail about the smuggling, gangs, (lack of) law enforcement, and so on. Blumenthal covers a lot of ground, considering the relatively short length of the book. Bluementhal’s writing is accessible, and the narrative organized mostly in chronological order, which helps all the names and information straight. Most of all, Blumenthal excels at providing context, such as the influence on World War I on the prohibition campaign, giving readers a deeper understanding of the topic. Along the way, Blumenthal also reveals the origins of the words teetotalers and speakeasies, that Al Capone’s brother once worked as a federal agent, how some children and teenagers broke the law themselves while Prohibition was in effect, and much more.

The book’s design is simple but effective, featuring numerous black and white photographs and illustrations. I do wish a timeline was included with the backmatter, which is otherwise extensive and includes a glossary, bibliography and source notes, and an index.

Book source: public library.

Cross-posted at Guys Lit Wire.

Cybils winners!

This year’s Cybils winners have been announced. Congratulations to the winners and thanks to the judges and panelists for all their work.

And my reading list gets even longer

Because have I read any of the major award winners, other than Schneider winner The Running Dream? Nope.

Printz
Winner — Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley

Honors — Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler; The Returning by Christine Hinwood; Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey; The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

Morris
Winner — Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley

Excellence in Nonfiction
Winner — The Notorious Benedict Arnold by Steve Sheinkin

Margaret A. Edwards
Winner — Susan Cooper

Batchelder
Winner — Eerdmans Books for Young Readers for Soldier Bear by Bibi Dumon Tak

Honor — Delacorte Books for The Lily Pond by Annika Thor

Odyssey
Winner — Listening Library for Rotters by Daniel Krauss

So, my predictions were quite wrong this year. Anyone else have any thoughts about the award winners and honor books? Or books you think got snubbed?

Gut feelings

Here are my Youth Media Awards predictions based on nothing more than gut feelings. My gut turned out to be surprisingly accurate last year, except for the YALSA Nonfiction Award, but who knows about this year; the following predictions could be way off base.

Printz Award
I think A.S. King will pull a David Almond (Skelling, 2000 Honor; Kit’s Wilderness, 2001 winner) and win for Everybody Sees the Ants (which did earn six starred reviews, per Whitney’s list).

I think A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness, as much as I love it and hope it gets recognized, won’t even get an honor. This year’s Marcelo in the Real World, especially considering its performance in Mock Printzes (go check out Whitney’s Mock Printz roundup at Youth Services Corner!). I would *love* to be proved wrong on this one, though.

I think Chime by Franny Billingsley (which looks like the only book besides Everybody Sees the Ants to earn six stars) will get an honor.

Margaret A. Edwards Award
This could go to practically anyone, but I’d love to see Tamora Pierce honored.

Morris Award
I haven’t read Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley yet, but I think it’s going to win.

Nonfiction Award
After the last two years, I have no idea.

Odyssey Award
The Odyssey goes to “to the producer of the best audiobook produced for children and/or young adults,” not a book or author. So my pick is Scholastic Audiobooks for Beauty Queens by Libba Bray. Narrated by the author x different voices for the various characters + sound effects!

Other Youth Media Awards
Batchelder — I think a publisher will be honored for a children’s book I haven’t read. Then again, how many YA books in translation were published this year? Two? (Ruby Red and The Midnight Palace. Am I missing any?). So I probably should say I’m sure the Batchelder will go to a publisher for a children’s book I haven’t read. Delacorte for The Lily Pond by Annika Thor, to follow up their win in 2010, maybe?

Schneider Family — Um… The only 2011 YA book I remember reading with a disabled character is The Running Dream by Wendelin van Draanen, which I liked but am not sure it fits the award criteria, which states in part “Must portray the emotional, mental, or physical disability as part of a full life, not as something to be pitied or overcome.” Jessica gets there at the end, but the amputation *is* something she has to overcome, right?

Who else is planning on watching the webcast on Monday morning? Do you have any predictions or titles you’d like to see win?

For predictions and coverage of awards I didn’t mention, check out:

• 100 Scope Notes
• A Fuse #8 Production
• Green Bean Teen Queen
• The Happy Nappy Bookseller (Coretta Scott King 1, Coretta Scott King 2, Pura Belpré)