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By Nico Vreeland, on December 29th, 2011  Author: Maile Meloy
2011, Putnam Juvenile
Filed under: Thriller, Fantasy, Young Adult
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
6 |
It’s 1952. Janie is a regular 14-year-old American girl, living in Los Angeles… until she discovers that her parents are Communists, about to be arrested for un-American activities. The family flees to London.
Once there, Janie starts flirting with a boy in her class named Benjamin, and they embark on a mission to spy on a man that Benjamin thinks is a Russian agent. Only, the man he meets is Benjamin’s own father, the apothecary of the title.
From there, Benjamin and Janie begin a fairly typical young-adult-novel adventure: they follow clues, use newfound powers, and become embroiled in a massive conflict with no less than the world at stake.
It’s a familiar arc, and while Meloy writes it well, it’s a relatively forgettable novel. Except, that is, for one aspect, a facet of the mythos of The Apothecary that’s fairly original, but also quite uncomfortable. (Minor spoilers ahead. If you want to go in fresh, skip the rest of this. If you like Harry Potter and the Lemony Snicket books, you’ll probably like this one, as well.) …
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By Sean Clark, on November 17th, 2011 Author: Scott Westerfeld
2011, Simon Pulse
Filed Under: Young Adult, Sci-Fi, Historical.
Get the book.
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
5 |
Goliath closes the YA trilogy Westerfeld opened barely two years ago with Leviathan (if you want to get caught up, you can read my review of Leviathan here, and my review of the middle book, Behemoth, here). Like its predecessors, Goliath is a fun adventure set in a creative alternate history, where World War One is a fierce battle between the steampunk Clankers (Germany and friends) and the Darwinists (headed by Britain) whose army consists of giant biological weapons created by genetically modifying lifeforms–the titular Leviathan being an armored airship supported by a flying whale.
Deryn, the girl posing as a midshipman in the British Air Navy, and Alek, the Hapsberg prince hoping to find a means of peace, continue their adventure right where things left off. There’s plenty of spectacle in this book, and even more historical figures make their way onto the pages (Nikola Tesla, William Randolph Hearst, Pancho Villa, and others). …
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By Sean Clark, on May 26th, 2011 Author: Brian Jaques
1994, Ace Books
Filed Under: Fantasy, Young Adult.
Get a copy at Powell’s.
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
7 |
| Entertainment..... |
10 |
| Depth..... |
6 |
The Redwall books were among my favorites when I was actually a young adult reading YA books. Salamandastron stands out in my memory because it was the first I ever read. I remember first seeing the cover with the badger holding the spear, and just lighting up. I was a pudgy little dork who really liked Watership Down and the Final Fantasy games, so this book screamed awesomeness to me. I wasn’t let down, and I devoured the rest of Jacques’s books with ever-increasing voracity.
I still have all my Redwall books. The covers are worn, the pages yellow and tattered. They’ve survived moves from apartment to apartment, been lent out and miraculously returned more than once. I’ve always said I would revisit them at some point but never did. When Brian Jacques died in February, I finally decided to return to them. My initial thought was to hit the three core books (Redwall, Mossflower, Mattimeo), but then I saw that cover again and knew it had to be Salamandastron. Just look at that badger –he’s not some goofy Looney Toon. He stands there in armor, holding his pike and helmet and seeming, well, somber. …
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By Sean Clark, on May 19th, 2011 Author: Scott Westerfeld
2010, Simon Pulse
Filed Under: Young Adult, Historical, Sci-Fi, Fantasy
Get a copy at Powell’s.
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
6 |
| Illustrations... |
8 |
My biggest gripe with Westerfeld’s Leviathan was that it was too much a set-up for a trilogy and not as satisfying a standalone story as the lead entry in a series ought to be. Seeing as Behemoth is the second entry of said planned trilogy, that problem is no longer as glaring. Still, this too acts as a build up for a larger conflict, but rather than leaving us at the precipice, it–as a good middle segment should–aligns the plot’s working pieces then sets things in motions for a hefty conflict in book three. All that aside, this novel features all the aspects that made the first book intriguing, as well as an arguably tighter story arc.
Behemoth picks up with Deryn, the girl posing as a male in order to be British midshipman, and Alek, the Hapsburg prince on the lam, aboard the great flying whale dirigible following the escape at the end of Leviathan. They head for Istanbul, where the majority of the story unfolds.
(I gave a breakdown of the basic conceits of the series in my review of Leviathan, so if you haven’t read it go check out that first–but in brief, this is a steampunk retelling of World War One, where the machinist “Clanker” Eastern Europeans are in conflict with the “Darwinist” Western Europeans’ army, which is built around giant creatures created by manipulating evolution into complex living vehicles and biological weapons. So by whale dirigible, I mean it’s literally a huge, floating, armored whale.)  …
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By Sean Clark, on February 18th, 2011 [This clever YA fantasy is a C4 Great Read.]
Author: John Connolly
2009, Washington Square Press
Filed Under: Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Young Adult
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
8 |
| Entertainment..... |
9 |
| Depth..... |
7 |
I stumbled upon Connolly’s The Book of Lost Things a few years ago and really loved it. At some point I’ll go back and reread it for review, then probably crown it a Great Read too. That book was engrossing, surprisingly deep, and quite dark. Despite being about demons trying to incite Armageddon and annihilate the human race through a trans-dimensional wormhole, The Gates is not a dark book. It provides levity with cheeky humor and a colorful cast of characters (both demonic and not).
Samuel Johnson, who is 11, and his personable dachshund, Boswell, while staying out past their curfew, espy a weird Satanic ritual take place in a neighbor’s basement. The neighbors are possessed by demons and set about opening a gate to Hell in order to allow The Great Malfeasance to lead his army through and destroy the planet. How did the first demons get through? Because of a tiny particle that escaped the CERN hadron collider. …
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By Sean Clark, on January 5th, 2011  Editors: Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier
2010, Margaret K. McElderry
Filed Under: Short Stories, Fantasy, Young Adult
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
5 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
3 |
This collection isn’t quite what it sounds like: it’s not a bunch of stories about zombies and unicorns in battle. That would have been awesome. Instead it’s a collection of stories, some about zombies, some about unicorns. Each is preceded by a short dialogue between editors, each of which helms one of the two camps. The whole debate is pretty juvenile, even for a YA book, but that is, of course, to be expected to a degree considering the subjects at hand.
So does it work? Sort of. This collection is what it is. It boasts a number of recognizable young adult authors, and a few stories (such as “Inoculata” by Scott Westerfeld) are fairly good. The rest, not really so much. …
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By Arthur McCulloch, on November 12th, 2010 Author: John Flanagan
 2005, Puffin Books
Filed Under: Young Adult, Fantasy
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
5 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
6 |
Read this book. If you are an active reader of fantasy, someone who has a former appreciation for the genre, or an adult interested in passing on a your passion to a young reader, you will definitely be rewarded by reading this initial installment in the widely popular series by John Flanagan.
Frankly, I balked at the prospect of reading the New York Times Bestselling Ranger’s Apprentice series. First of all, it’s genre fiction on the New York Times Bestseller List, too often a haven for popular but rather uninspired writing. And “Ranger’s Apprentice”? Does that not smack too much of Tolkien’s king hero: a kind of young Aragorn type of book? Does this series represent yet another writer’s and publisher’s attempt to cash in on the popularity of the movies by Peter Jackson? Or, is this the series that a big name publisher is putting its weight behind to make sure that the momentum of the Harry Potter phenomenon does not dissipate?
The series kept cropping up in conversations with friends and colleagues; their comments were overwhelmingly positive. Jumping to a slew of wild conclusions based simply on a cursory reaction to a book’s title certainly didn’t seem too fair, or open-minded a treatment of a book. Young adult, and 249 pages, I wouldn’t lose much time by reading it, so I gave it a shot. …
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By Sean Clark, on October 27th, 2010 [This novel is a C4 Great Read.]
 Author: Richard Adams
1972, Rex Collings
Filed Under: Young Adult, Fantasy, Literary
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
8 |
| Entertainment..... |
9 |
| Depth..... |
8 |
Every so often we like to go back and do a quick mini-review/reminder of a great book. I’ve done it before with Frankenstein and Lolita, and I now I’m doing so with another of my all-time favorite books. I’ve read Watership Down close to as many times as Lolita, which is to say many. I know it backwards and forwards, and it holds up just as well as a book for adults as it does a story for children.
This book is about a bunny rabbits. Physically they and the world around them are realistic; in fact, all the locations of the books are real places in England. There is no sword-swinging or clothes-wearing, the rabbits are anthropomorphized only in that they are given language, reason, culture, and names. Fiver is the runt of the warren, bullied and ostracised. He often sees visions, but only his brother Hazel ever takes him seriously. When Fiver foresees the destruction of their colony (by real estate development), and the chief rabbit ignores the warning, Hazel organizes a ragtag group of exiles, made up of mostly weaker rabbits, but with a few tough guys, including the badass Bigwig. …
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By Sean Clark, on June 24th, 2010 Author: Cory Doctorow
2010, Tor Teen
Filed under: Young Adult
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
7 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
9 |
This is a pretty dorky book. It’s initially about gold farmers: low-salary workers in China, India, and elsewhere, mostly, who grind MMO games like World of Warcraft for in-game currency and items, then sell them to Westerners. In For the Win, groups of these gold farmers band together to form an international union of workers, both online and offline. Interestingly enough, it’s not dorky in that it dwells in descriptions of video game worlds and fantasies (it doesn’t, really). This book is dorky because it doubles as a pretty sound lesson in fundamentals of economics. I learned a lot actually.
An econ lesson taught through video games? That might sound boring, but actually For the Win is riveting. …
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By Kathleen Dacey, on April 8th, 2010  Author: Rachel Vincent
2007, Mira
Filed Under: Horror, Romance, Chick Lit, Thrillers, Young Adult
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
3 |
| Entertainment..... |
5 |
| Depth..... |
3 |
I’m not sure I can say that I liked Stray. I wouldn’t read it again and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else (unless they were a werecat enthusiast, in which case I’m sure it would come to mind, and I would bring it up, and I would say, check this shit out). But I did read it in one week. Which says something.
First, a few fun facts about werecats:
- Werecats have this amazing sense of smell. Lines including descriptions such as: “my citrus-scented pants” and “wholesome femininity layered with Herbal Essences and cherry Bubble Yum” really clue the reader in. Over and over and over again
- Werecats do not have nine lives. As the protagonist puts it, “that would be cool, though.” Maybe her werebabies will have that gene?
- Good werecats don’t eat human flesh. Bad “strays” do.
Did I mention that I trash-picked this book from the trash? Yep. Found this gem on the side of the road. Look at the cover: You would have picked it up, too. There’s a sex kitten right on the cover and you wonder, is that a tattoo on her lower back, or a scratch mark?
I’m not always a fast reader. Sometimes I forget my book at home and end up spending the day with the Metro. Or I switch around, hopping from story to story.
One week says something. It says that I opted to read about werecat love triangles when I could have been out at the bar or catching up on my new favorite British teen drama, “Skins” or, you know, going to the library for a better book. It says that I remembered to bring it with me to work everyday so that I could read it on the train and on the elliptical machine at the gym. It says that I maybe hunted around my room for it late one night when it was hiding under my blankets and I really wanted to know whether or not the protagonist was going to be raped by the bad guy.
…
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