Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

Another post apocalyptic novel by Bacigalupi.   He received a nebula for his debut novel, the Windup Girl but to be honest I preferred this one.  It seemed more honest, and the simple determination and courage of his characters shines through in a world now almost devoid of oil, and where even small children are put to work breaking up wrecks for the small amounts of metals they contain. 

Nailer's days on his job are numbered, almost too big for light crew and the job of crawling through ducts for wires, and too small for heavy crew he faces an uncertain future.  His only remaining family a brutal father strung out on drugs, he has created a family of sorts among his crew, but loyalty in this world is a hard thing, bought in blood and broken for money. 

When a rich girl washes up with a storm, he is left with the choice to slit her throat, take her wealth and make a better life for himself - or can he justify the risk of keeping her alive?

A gripping book without the technical or scientific bullshit of his previous novel, this was for me the ultimate teen read even if, from what I understand, it is being sold for adult consumption. Great fun!

Genius Suad by Catherine Jinks

The Official Blurb:
Will Genius Squad be the answer to all Cadel's prayers? Or is he right to question their motives? Deciding what's good and what's bad is more difficult than he could ever have imagined ...


The Book:
I don't remember reading Evil Genius, but the scenario isn't hard to catch onto, Catherine pretty much spells everything she needs to at the beginning of the book.  So much so that it felt like I'd read the original - or maybe that was just Artemis Fowl messing with my mind.  After all Artemis Fowl is pretty much along the same lines -  except Artemis doesn't seem to have quite so many daddy issues.

The Plot:

The absolute best thing about the book is the plot.  Just when things can't possibly get any worse, they do. I was on the edge of my seat (well the edge of my sickbed) almost to the very last page.  


you want more than that? ok.  The once evil genius Cadel is in a foster home, but jumps at the chance of being able to change the life of a friend, by joining Genius Squad where he finds his skills at lying and deception to be most useful.  After all he's working for good isn't he?  trying to bring down an evil organisation... but is that really what Genius Squad is about, or is there some more sinister purpose? 


Everything Else:
hey what else matters in an evil genius story besides a good plot, and in this case a great plot?  Not much.  But for the record Catherine is a great writer and kids stop reading here, because if you do it will put you off worse than the lame trailer.  Yes it's those daddy issues.  The whole trust thing.  It makes the adults happy that you're being slapped in the face with "good" and "bad" yes you know the difference.  And that the bad guys always lose.  That's why stories are so great.  They can make mistakes you don't have to, but on occasion this book seems to preach - that's not for you, not really that's for all the adults, some of whom are probably wondering why I'm addressing you guys because they didn't figure out "no kids past this point" really meant "kids, listen up." 

Anyway it's a good read.  Lots of fun.  Not too hard on the brain.  Enjoy!  I'm looking forward to the next one, Genius Wars.

Twilight Robbery (or Fly Trap in America) by Frances Hardinge (sequel to the heavily acclaimed Fly by Night)

Please note, although I'm sure you can hardly wait Twilight Robbery is not coming out until the 4th of March 2011.


The story:


Trouble follows Mosca wherever she goes, and it doesn't much help that she hangs out with a lying, cheating, fraudster of no account, and a goose best described as homicidal.

Got that?  Good.  Because now you've got to hold on tight, through kidnapping, half a bizarre country, more gods than I could possibly name, and into a town that is in terrible peril, from itself. 

Will Mosca save the day?  Will she be able to help more than just herself, but all the people who are relying on her?  Hold on tight and get ready for to discover a world of danger and not so much enchantment.  It's not magic that has everyone enthralled so much as the brazen daring of Mosca, her companions - and of course the evil forces they are pitted against.  Men and women who are too self centred to care about the plight of their fellows.

Twilight Robbery is everything you'd expect from children's book.  It's gorgeous, loveable, dangerous, enchanting (without the magic), and there's lots of running both into and out of danger, as well as fast talking, and a fun, loveable and dangerous -- goose.  Now while I didn't much care for Gullstruck Island, and Verdigris Deep is so brilliant that I don't think any other fiction will ever compare -- this strikes a happy middle note that makes me wonder why on earth I didn't read Fly by Night earlier.  A mistake I will soon be fixing.

My advice is (and I did exactly this) lay your hands on a copy as soon as you can. And if you're a good reader and can cope with intricately wrought writing with big words, read Verdigris Deep and marvel about how it failed to win the awards it deserved.  My reveiw is here.


Fly by Night won the Branford Boase Award in 2006,and was listed in the School Library Journal's Best Books of 2006.  Review here.



Frances Hardinge's website is here  - fair warning though -as of this moment her sequel hasn't been posted yet.

The Horrible Books I've Read Lately

This is a bit like my personal raspberry awards for 2009/2010.  I've just had a run of books I"ve absolutely hated - here are a few of them. 

And the winner for Unreadably Awful Prose is Andy McNab's, "DropZone".  Of course nobody reads his stuff for the prose, they read them because he was a SAS covert ops commander, and I presume because he can come up with a decent plot.  I really couldn't get that far. 

And the winner for - Don't Ask Me Why but I just HATED it,  goes to Michael, C. Thorpes', "Ben Brown's Adventure Beyond the Universe, the Return of the Nephilim."  Old fashioned sci fi that feels like it might have come from a WWII bunker - but possibly on the wrong side.  I was probably just in completely the wrong space, I know other people who have just loved this book, but I found it distasteful - maybe I just couldn't get past those wheat fields.  It didn't help that a UFO crashed in one, killed a whole lot of cows- presumably from fire damage, but the wheatfield didn't go up .  After that I was just looking for trouble.

The winner for, Used Someone Else's Idea for a Story and it Really Didn't Work goes to Ben H. Winters', "Sense and Sensibility and Seamonsters".  Seriously, "Pride, Prejudice and Zombies" was entertaining on more than one level.  I might have hated the characters and been crossing my fingers for the to die, but with this particular "conversion" I hardly know who any of the cahracters are -- and I certainly don't care.  Adding fish guts and grossness might amuse a few adolescent boys, but it's just dumped in every few pages whether it fits in with the plot or not.  So the story ends up - oh- they cooked something gross for dinner - so what?  Someone falls into the water for no real reason...




Alicia Ponder


There may be more yet to come -- but I hope not!

Starclimber by Kenneth Oppel

Starclimber, sequel to "Skybreaker," the Times Children's book of the year, seems to be an attempt at an old fashioned sci fi adventure. The plot starts with a big bang, and then Matt Cruse, the intrepid hero, has to undergo gruelling training and disappointment before being picked to be part of Starclimber's crew alongside his photographer girlfriend. They turn out to be right about all sorts of bizarre things, and end up in an awful lot of danger.

I found the characterisation shallow, the plot telegraphic, and much of the sci fi element old and tired . Don't get me wrong, some of it was great, and there were even moments where I thought, gosh if this author can sort himself out he's got real potential. But the end result was disappointment. Maybe my expectations were too high. 


Review by Alicia Ponder

Brainjack: the next war starts in cyberspace, by Brian Falkner

Sam Wilson, brilliant teenage hacker, is looking for trouble. And trouble is looking for him. He's trying to get into the most carefuly controlled pieces of cyberspace there is - but he has no idea of the danger that he's getting himself into, it's not just that the police might be after him, he's being chased by an agency he can't even comprehend.
Ok, I'm a science fiction buff, so nothing in this book was particularly new, but it didn't seem to matter, it was a great roller-coaster. Lots of fun, lots of danger, and some really nice touches -- it makes me want to read his other book - the tomorrow code - to see if it's half as good as this one.

About the author:  I'm slow on the uptake (my excuse is that the book was published in Aus):  Brian is actually an NZ author -  born and raised in Auckland - which I wont hold against him, and is the author of several aother books besides this and the Tomorrow code (shortlisted for the 2009 New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children - Young Adults and the Esther Glen Award at the LIANZA Awards). The Flea Thing (shortlisted for the LIANZA Esther Glen Award, 2004), The Real Thing, and The Super Freak (shortlisted, New Zealand Post Book Awards, 2006).

Darke Academy - Secret Lives by Gabriella Poole

What can I say? Darke Academy is a bit of a cross between Harry Potter and Twilight. If you liked those, you'll almost certainly love this - it was fun, and I've not met anybody yet who didn't love it.  Even those completely jaded after Twilight.

Ordinary girl from a tough background wins a scholarship to a school so magnificent she can hardly believe it. All the guys are handsome, all the girls are beautiful and very rich, but the Darke academy has a dark secret, (of course it does,) it's a haven for the chosen "Few" who seem to be able to do whatever they like.

But who are these "Few?" and what will it take to join them? Well, of course you know they're vampires, but Cassie doesn't... and she's the one in danger.

Review by Alicia Ponder

Lonely Werewolf Girl by Martin Millar

Depressive werewolf girl is hunted by her own family. She has nowhere to go, and no life until she is rescued by two extraordinary humans who find themselves caught in the middle of two power struggles: one centred on a rather crazy clothing-obsessed elemental; and the other, a bid for the werewolf leadership -- a struggle in which the Werewolf girl's dead body would be a very powerful bargaining chip.

I'm so deeply divided about this book. The prose is stultifying, it's almost like eating baby food that's been chopped down until it's so soft all the texture is missing. But even so, and this is where the deeply divided comes in -- this baby food has kick. There's wit and charm, and the odd glimpse of three dimensions in amongst the cut-out two dimensional characters. Even better, against the odds, the apparently rambling plot of feud and counter-feud comes together to a relatively satisfying conclusion, so in the end all I can say is people like this book. They do. My copy went flying across the floor more than once, but I still made it to the end, which is more than I can say about quite a few books lately.
It's the sort of story that can make a so-so author into a name, not because it's brilliant, but because it has the things that teenagers are looking for in a story, sex, drugs, depression, rock and roll, and originality. It's not preachy. It doesn't glamorise, it just gets on with the plot as two -- no three -- very different worlds collide. I'll never love this book, for me it was twilight all over again, maybe edgier, more exciting, and far less sentimental, but still pulp -- a fact proudly proclaimed by the cover as it declares the author has invented a new genre; "pulp fantasy noir."

Review:  Alicia Ponder

"And Another Thing..." by Eoin Colfer from the Douglas Adam's Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy -- universe

Part 6 of the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy is one of the more controversial books to come out this year - all the hard-core Douglas Adams fans were out asking the hard questions before it was even released, like; "is it as good as the original?" "Is it funny?" But most of all, "how dare this upstart take the place of our beloved demigod and creator of the answer to the question of life, the universe and everything?"

Fortunately the answers to the fan's questions don’t require a computer the size of a planet. In terms of readability "And another Thing" is somewhere between the good hitchhiker's books and the crappy hitchhiker's books, with a smattering of fantasy, and good eye to adventure -- which admittedly takes a while coming but is well worth the wait.

In some ways "And another thing" is fresher with more of a story feel, and I liked that a lot, but I thought the humour was also cruder and less godlike and so I liked it less.

And finally, I'm not exactly sure how Eion Colfer had the balls to take on this project knowing full well that he'd be caught in the crossfire of the purists and all the infidel who remain blissfully ignorant of the significance of the number 42. Was it money? Probably. The fun of playing with gods? Well he certainly took that opportunity in both hands. Maybe we do need a computer the size of a planet to answer that question after all.

In the end though, the only real question worth asking is -- is this new instalment of the Hitchhikers guide worth reading, and, yes, I think it is, so don't be shy -- give it a burl -- even if it's only so you can complain about how Eion Colfer should have done everything differently, which is admittedly, rather fun.

Twilight Review - Reviewed by Cassie Brown , Australia

Genre: Romance , Fantasy

Author: Stephanie Meyer

Twilight is a romantic story about a high school romance….but different. This book is a sure hit with female teens and even some adults.

Twilight is about a girl named Bella Swan, when her Mother has to go away with her stepfather, she has to move in with her father in a small town named Forks. When Bella moves to Forks she meets old friends, and makes new ones. But she is completely mystified with one person… Edward Cullen, she cant keep her eyes off him, but soon she realises that he has a secret…..

I love Twilight and its series. They just keep you captivated so you just want to keep turning every page to see what happens next! I loved it so much I read it every night just waiting until I could read new moon (the next volume in the series) to see what happens! It’s like the most unlikely fairy tale! The clumsy awkward girl falls for the bad guy!!!

I recommended Twilight for young female teens an onwards. Although I recommended twilight for girls some boys may also enjoy this book too.

 
Thanks Cassie for your great review!
 
Older readers might also enjoy the Host by Stephanie Meyers
http://ronagallerybooks.blogspot.com/2008/05/stephanie-meyer-author-of-immensely.html#links

Photo's from the Fifi Coulston's workshop.

Everyone had a blast creating characters from a picture of a skull, and adding everything from noses to names to secrets.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (2009 Newberry Award Winner)

This book grabbed me with the very first sentence -- "There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife..." and after that it just didn't let go.

The macabre setting made the perfect backdrop for Neil Gaiman's subtle humour and agreeably offbeat characterisation. And unlike many popular authors this is not a by the numbers book, there is real heart to the story -- unsurprising in a work that has twenty-two years to fully realize. Moreover this is only one of many glowing reviews. Still I would warn you not to read them, for fear of spoiling any of the twists and turns along the way. So I in turn will choose my words very carefully, and say only that -- A killer comes in the night for a young boy, and the events of that one night shape the life of all the souls in the graveyard for some time to come.

Go, on, open the first page and see if you can put it down.

Review by Alicia Ponder

The Roar by Emma Clayton

Science Fiction meets the 21st century. It's the sort of book that can distract children from television, now how often do you see that!

Ellie is chased across New London in a fighter, her pet capuchin monkey eating popcorn. Somewhere below, her twin brother has been told that she's dead, but he doesn't believe it, and he's determined to find her.

There's lies, animals, outrage, adults being so stupid only children could believe it, and this rollercoaster of a book doesn't let up until - the end - and not even then - we're all expecting a sequel.

So my advice is, strap yourself into your fighter cockpit, make sure your most trusted dog, mouse, parakeet is by your side -- and escape!

Review by Alicia Ponder


PS. becasue I've been asked so many times I believe the release date for "The Whisper" in NZ is February 2012.  Cross your fingers. :)

Gool by Maurice Gee

OK I admit I haven't read Salt, and so perhaps I shouldn't even be reviewing Gool, but here goes. I found the beginning was strained, but that's often the case with book number two and most particularly, I found it difficult to get into because of the language. It was too simplistic, almost as if Maurice Gee was too scared to write words of more than two syllables and I found that stultifying. Of course, once underway, the plot was great and the ideas were of the callibre that they stayed with you, developing slowly into larger ideas -- that would be completely ruined if I telegraphed them in this review.

So instead of posting a review right away I talked to other people about their reaction to this book, given that mine wasn't exactly what I had expected, because you see, I LOVED Maurice Gee's Half Men of O series, and I know this man can write -- not just, ah that's nice, he's a New Zealander and the writing's ok., but Fiona Kidman -- this is a national treasure -- can write.

And the big thing that they all agreed on was that the writing for Gool and Salt was very simplistic - which is absolutely great if you want to be able to make sure a whole class will be able to read the book, but for the upper end of the market, for those children who read widely and are sensitive to style there's a certain something lacking. In fact in some ways this is true fantasy science fiction of the traditional kind where the plot is terribly important and the writing is merely a scaffold for the ideas --ideas that seem greater than the sum of their parts.

Anyway, if you liked Salt, you'll probably like Gool, some of the locations and characters are obviously revisited and there's nothing like going back and revisiting a world you love and finding hidden depths and dangers -- and the human spirit to confront them.

Review by Alicia Ponder

Faerie Wars by Herbie Brennan

While Faerie Wars is not the perfect book, it's a great read. And there is something for everyone, real life, fantasy, adventure, kittens in danger, a prince who rescues animals, and a terrible threat to the faerie kingdom.

It begins with Henry for a chapter. He's just an ordinary boy, with an annoying little sister, and he earns money tidying the house of an eccentric pensioner . Then for a long time Henry is abandoned while we follow the exploits of the faerie, Pyrus, as he goes about getting himself into trouble. Just as Henry is almost forgotten the two collide and Henry and the eccentric pensioner have to help Pyrus return to his Faeire kingdom so they can unravel the plot to wrest the throne off the Purple Emperor. It's fun, it's fast, and while it does not have the lyrical beauty of an award winning book it's one of those novels that has children sitting up under the covers and reading through the night.

Overall very absorbing, fast, and perfect for ten plus.

Review by Alicia Ponder

Y Fiction

Faerie Wars by Herbie Brennan

Finally someone who knows how to spell faerie properly -- Faeire wars is a most charming and absorbing book. Review coming soon.

Appologies for few reviews at the moment from me as I'm very busy, I should be able to get back to at least a review a week very soon. Hopefully others will also be filling in over this time.

Alicia Ponder

Fantasy

Shadowmarch & Shadowplay - by Tad Williams

Every so often I take a deep breath and immerse myself in what can only be described as Epic Fantasy -- with capital letters.

Yes, the cover does not lie, this is such a book, and yes it has fairies and gods and strange races with odd names that might as well be called dwarves and selkies and borrowers. Yes borrowers, bless him. I loved the borrowers growing up, and these truly perfect little people remind me of their vigeur, sans the overly cutesy angle.

The story begins with the threat of the fairy shadowline moving near the kingdom of Southmarch. The king has been kidnapped, and the world they had been a small part of is now threatened, not only by an evil ruler who believes he is a god, but by an incursion of fairies. Not the nice, sweet ones many people grew up with, but big, nasty, dangerous ones.

A fiesty princess -- yes of course there's a fiesty princess otherwise why would any girl ever pick up such a book? -- is kept pretty busy even as her twin brother is beset by nightmares and unsurprisingly eventually finds himself on the wrong side of the fairy "Shadowline." Notice the Capitals. High Fantasy, after all seems to demand them.

Anyway, I'd love to make this a complete book review with an ending, but it's impossible. The series isn't finished -- and wont be for some time by the look of it -- so I can't help but wonder if I've started this series a little too early, on the positive side Tad Williams is relatively young, so he's unlikely to die before writing the last book -- unlike David Gemmel and Robert Jordan, on the negative side this could turn into another of those, "walking, walking, walking," epics where nothing heappens as the publisher and author take all the money they can. There was a small section in the middle of Shadowplay where I was terrified this was about to happen, enough to make me think it didn't quite get the stronghanded edit it deserved, especially as I was thrown out of the story too often by typographical errors.

Still, I can't help but feel the gandness of this is Tad Williams at his best, at his peak of writing, and he's never been a slouch, the plot so far is strong, always keeping me reading from one chapter to the next. In the end I can only surmise the weaknesses are only those that can be expected in this strange genre where writers aren't thinking in hundred pages, but in thousands. And the strengths are those that can possibly only be appreciated by people who aren't immediately put off fiction because there might be fairies and gods and ... doesn't Shakespeare have such things? --

Anyway if you love fantasy, and just can't get enough, or you want your fantasy-loving teenager to be invisible for several days, this is the series you're looking for. Plenty of blood and gore and violence for the boys - without straying too far into graphic realism, but most of all there is a cast of definite characters, a sense of adventure, and of our protagonists rising to enormous challenges to cope with events that, despite their best efforts, keep spiralling out of control.

Review by Alicia Ponder

YA Fiction

Juno of Taris, review by Joanna Ponder

I fell in love with Juno. The story of a twelve year old girl who tries to fit into the utopian society of Taris. Taris was established after a major upheaval in the outside world. Here there are many rules the inhabitants are expected to live by, but Juno can't help herself asking - why?

Juno is a carefully crafted novel, it moves along at a steady pace, and kept me entertained me every step of the way.

Richard really enjoyed it, and the declared it was a girls' book, and he is probably right, but obviously it has a wider appeal than just girls.

YA Fiction

The Alchemist by Michael Stott


The Alchemyst, Nicholas Flamel is still alive, his tomb lies empty -- and ready to exploit this is Michael Stott, author of -- well, The Alchemyst.

He does it well.

Josh works in Nick Flemming - sorry Nicholas Flamel's bookstore, his sister Sophie works across the road. It's something they only discover when John Dee, another character out of the past comes to steal the book that contains the secret of eternal life.

It's fast paced fantasy, and once started the story rolls onward with a breathlessness that doesn't stop. No seriously it doesn't stop - it just leaves you on a cliff-hanger so you can't wait to read the next book.

It's not the best book in the world, and doesn't hold a candle to "The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World" or "Verdigris Deep" at least not in terms of stylish writing, but in plot and knowing his market Michael Stott has done a superb job.

I found it fun, and so did Richard, once he got past the information about the famous historical figures and got into the plot. Recommended for about 12-13+

YA Fiction

The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World by E.L. Konigsburg



Ostensibly this is a book for children. And why not, after all the two main characters are children? Only they're not. They're adults in children's clothing, and like all the characters in the story they are kind of dusted off and placed in the same raggedly careless fashion any item might be when cleaning out the attic.

At eighty it is almost as if Koningsburg has forgotten what children are like. But that hardly matters, she herself almost acknowledges this. Better yet if the book hadn't been marketed for children at all. It's for librarians and teachers and schools, aspiring art critics, and literary awards, it's for those people who were never young or who enjoy writing that you could frame and put on a wall.

Not that the book is quite full of quotes as such, because most can't quite be lifted from the text and maintain their full import like, "Selective forgetting is the first symptom of Austrian amnesia " (harks back to all the nazis protesting their innocence, but seems equally applicable to American politics today.) & the very funny when applied to pink bubblegum and priceless art, "whatever happened to the unposted laws of civilized behaviour?" Only "Ninety percent of who you are is invisible" seems to work all by itself.

This is a clearing out of the attic book. A search to find amazing treasure, only to discover there is 90% of any character, real or fictional that you will never see, and mostly it is not about children at all but about an old diva who has sung for the last time, and even as her precious home is being dismantled, she is putting on one last show, a real life performance so that the main character (and the reader) can understand a bit more about that "mysterious edge of the heroic world," about the past and the present and the secrets that lie just beyond that ten percent of the known world.

I'm not entirely sure about who this book is for, I'm not even entirely sure that I liked it, maybe it was just a bit too much like cough syrup for my liking, maybe the promised treasures just turned to so much dusty plastic under careful scrutiny. I'm not sure, but I do know that Joanna would say that this is all because I haven't quite grown up yet and, after all this was a book for adults. Never mind, Peter Pan awaits, and growing up is something that only children aspire to.



Review by Alicia Ponder