Tag: Young Adult

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

A Monsters Calls is a fantastic coming of age story. Conor’s mother is very sick. Since her illness, Conor has been treated differently at school and works hard at home, trying to keep everything running smoothly while she’s resting. He’s had a nightmare too- one that wakes him screaming almost every night. But then, one night, he dreams a different dream in which a monster formed from a yew tree comes to his home…

This book gave me goosebumps, it’s so good! I especially liked the monster’s tales.

Here’s the first time Conor meets the monster: “… here was a monster, clear as the clearest night, towering thirty or forty feet above him, breathing heavily in the night air. “It’s only a dream,” he said again. ‘But what is a dream, Conor O’Malley?’ the monster said, bending down so its face was close to Conor’s. ‘Who is to say that it is not everything ELSE that is the dream?'” pg 38 (ebook) Who’s to say?

“‘Here is what will happen, Conor O’Malley,’ the monster continued, ‘I will come to you again on further nights.’ Conor felt his stomach clench, like he was preparing for a blow. ‘And I will tell you three stories. Three tales from when I walked before.’ Conor blinked. Then blinked again. “You’re going to tell me STORIES?” ‘Indeed,’ the monster said. “Well-” Conor looked around in disbelief. “How is THAT a nightmare?” ‘Stories are the wildest things of all,’ the monster rumbled. ‘Stories chase and bite and hunt.'” pg 40-41 (ebook) Love, love, love! “Stories are the wildest things of all.” Yeah, they are.

I love the relationship that develops between Conor and the monster: “He (Conor) heard a strange rumbling, different from before, and it took him a minute to realize the monster was laughing. ‘You think I tell you stories to teach you lessons?’ the monster said. ‘You think I have come walking out of time and earth itself to teach you a lesson in niceness?’ It laughed louder and louder again, until the ground was shaking and it felt like the sky itself might tumble down.” pg 70 (ebook)

One more small passage that I had to include, not because it’s particularly important to the story but because it’s so very true: “Conor stared out the window… “How long are you here for?” he asked. He’d been afraid to ask before now. His father let out a long breath, the kind of breath that said bad news was coming. “Just a few days, I’m afraid.” Conor turned to him. “That’s all?” “Americans don’t get much holiday.” pg 103 (ebook) Mic drop!

This is a young adult book, but if you’re looking for more excellent fairy tales (like the monster’s stories) you may want to pick up In the Night Garden (The Orphan’s Tales, #1) by Catherynne Valente or, for another amazing coming of age story with fairy tale elements, try The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman.

Thanks for reading!

Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace

Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace

Overall, I enjoyed Kornher-Stace’s tale about a girl with claw marks on her face who traps and studies ghosts because she’s a priestess of a goddess who lives in the stars. I felt like Archivist Wasp was a combination of The Last Apprentice/Wardstone Chronicles by Joseph Delaney and What Dreams May Come by Richard Matheson. There’s also some dystopian and survival elements to it. There’s a few moments of rough language in here and some quick, brutal violence, but nothing worse than what a young adult would read in The Hunger Games.

Kornher-Stace throws the reader into an alien world with zero explanation or background info and it’s a lot of fun to pick out the story from the details. Take this passage describing a ritualistic painting in Wasp’s home:“The bones of the painting were nails, hammered straight into the wall to pick out the stars of Catchkeep’s constellation. And around them She had been outlined in thick black paint, all teeth and legs, Her back curved like a rainbow, caught in mid-leap over a shadowy abyss. … Catchkeep Herself was black and red. Stepping close to Her you could make out the outlines of handprints, darker where they overlapped. Wasp’s first day as Archivist, they’d rushed her here before the blood of the fallen Archivist could dry on her palms, and to the painting she had added the shape of her hand, which was the shape of her predecessor’s death.” pgs 14-15 ebook. Dark, eerie, awesome.

Wasp feels trapped in her role as priestess and lacks the confidence in herself to do anything else. Her personal development and stepping into her power is one of the main arcs of this story: “…beneath all her talk, she knew that what she was about to try would fail, as everything else she tried had failed, and then her life would go on as it had always done, pacing out the length of its leash, smashing into empty air at either end like a bird against a window. Take the knife out of the doorframe. Sweep the dust from the little house. Restock its jars with the useless dead.” pg 67 ebook. She’s a very strong, and believable, female main character. Think Buffy the Vampire Slayer… but with ghosts.

Kornher-Stace’s description of the afterlife was just like what is portrayed in What Dreams May Come or Otherwhere by Kurt Leland, the deceased shape their surroundings with the energy from their thoughts and emotions. In the ghost’s world, Wasp sees demon-like dogs that attack her again and again: “Still don’t believe the hunt is real?” Wasp shouted. She was having trouble modulating her voice. Her teeth were chattering too hard. She had never been so tired. “We bring our own monsters with us,” said the ghost. “It looks like these are yours.” pg 123 ebook. Goosebumps!

I liked the author’s description of what a ghost is: “You’re a ghost. You need answers. You need closure. You need them like the living need air to breathe. You think it’s just you, but from what I’ve seen, most of us die without getting either. And maybe that’s all a ghost is, in the end. Regret, grown legs, gone walking.” pg 155, ebook.

My favorite parts of the book are Kornher-Stace’s varied descriptions of the worlds through which Wasp travels with the ghosts. They are beautiful, desolate, bizarre, and, sometimes, scary:“They tromped through the snowfield for ages. They passed things that, to Wasp’s eye, might have been waypoints. A wind-shredded orange plastic tent. A cave hung with icicles that were mottled gray with ash. A distant huddle of dark birds circling and alighting on an unseen mass. A tiny pond, perfectly round, frozen into a mirror upon which no snow settled. The metal skeleton of something that had fallen from the sky and smashed there, its nose plowed deep into the earth. They walked on.” pg 172, ebook.

If you enjoyed Archivist Wasp and are looking for young adult read-alikes, you may want to try Fray by Joss Whedon (a graphic novel) or Revenge of the Witch (The Last Apprentice/Wardstone Chronicles, #1) by Joseph Delaney. If you’re looking for an adult read-alike, try The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawking.

Thanks for reading!

The Many Selves of Katherine North by Emma Geen

The Many Selves of Katherine North by Emma Geen

katherinenorthIn The Many Selves of Katherine North by Emma Geen, humanity has harnessed the power of consciousness and mechanized the ability to place that consciousness in different bodies at will.

Katherine is a teenager who works for a large research company. She’s the longest lasting “phenomenaut” (person who’s consciousness is put into the body of an animal) because she seems to be special.

The process of consciousness transfer seems to stop working when the brain ages and loses its plasticity. Despite her age, Katherine’s brain seems to be fine.

But then, one day, Katherine sees something strange when she’s out of her body… and perhaps she’s not as well as she imagined.

The Many Selves of Katherine North asks some pretty powerful questions like: What is consciousness? How does our physical body change how we perceive the world? What is reality?

I think that this story has the potential to open up a dialogue about these questions between readers who may not have considered them before. In that way, this is a very powerful book.

I did not like how the story flips back and forth between the present and the past. I think Geen was using the shifting timeline to build the mystery, but, because of the nature of Katherine’s many consciousness experiences, it made things rather confusing.

This is a complicated book. At times, maybe too complicated.

The richness and variety of Katherine’s experiences drives a wedge between her reality and the rest of humanity’s reality.

The reader really sees difference in this moment, when Katherine is preparing to go into work: “Later, I lie in bed quivering… because it’s only hours until I’m out of here. Here- not just a room but skin. How can other people call this their totality? There is so much more.” pg 19

Katherine captures the impossibility of explaining out-of-body experiences very succinctly here: “Because how do you cram the lived experience on to a page? The words available to me were never enough. Something would always slip the sentences. Human language developed around human bodies, it never quite fits other ways of being. pg 66

I loved all of the chapters when Katherine was in the body of an animal. In this one, she was a snake: “Old scents have imprinted upon the world like spoor into soft mud, the past blundering prey. I wonder if this is one reason many animals have a poor memory compared to humans. What’s the use in remembering when the world does it for you? pg 146 Fascinating.

Emma Geen included a disclaimer at the back of her book and it contained some of my favorite lines: “…what if there are other valid ways of knowing? What is the world is not one, but multitude, with as many ways of being as there are beings? What if literature were the opportunity to glimpse such refractions, thrown by the world as though from a diamond?” pgs 349-350 Loved that.

If you enjoyed The Many Selves of Katherine North, you may want to pick up The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern or Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock for more glimpses of worlds hidden within worlds.

Big thanks to Goodreads First Reads program, NetGalley, and Bloomsbury USA for providing me with an advance reading copy of this novel.

Thanks for reading!

Paper Towns by John Green

Paper Towns by John Green

Warning: this is a book you either love or hate.  Consider yourself warned.

I fell more on the “hate” side of this equation but, surprisingly, enjoyed the film. This young adult, coming-of-age tale has elements of mystery to it.

Quentin has always loved Margo. One night, she wakes him up and they go on a wild tear about town, righting perceived wrongs and causing all sorts of hijinks.

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The next day, Margo has disappeared. Their night out left all sorts of clues to where she went. Q decides to find her.

My negative reaction to Paper Towns surprised me because I loved John Green‘s The Fault in Our Stars so much.

Right off the bat, the reader is thrown into Margo and Quentin’s lives and we’re exposed to some of their worst traits rather than their best. Usually, people behave their best when you first get to know them and then, as they become comfortable with you, they let some of their more questionable sides out.

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The whole “rolling around the neighborhood at night and causing mayhem” takes place right at the start of Paper Towns. It isn’t fun because we don’t really know these characters yet.

It’s easier to forgive adolescent hijinks when you know and love the people who are doing them, but we’ve got almost zero time to form a connection before they’re breaking laws.

I think I would have given up on Paper Towns if I hadn’t watched John Green’s TedTalks video on the topic. If you haven’t seen it yet, here it is:https://youtu.be/NgDGlcxYrhQ

Quick summary of Green’s video: The basic idea behind a paper town (a made up town on a map) was copyright protection. The coolest part is that the mapmakers took something that wasn’t real and made it real because they presented it that way for so long.

I know that John Green can write amazing, sympathetic characters. He chose not to in this book and I’ve been rolling it around my brain, wondering why.

I think that Green wrote the characters in this story like a paper town.

At first, he presents the main characters as over-the-top clichés of what teenagers could be. The reader isn’t necessarily meant to bond with them at this point, they’re not real, they’re just “people on paper.”

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Then, through the second part of the book, let’s call it the “clue finding” part, Green slowly reveals more and more of the real parts of their characters just as Quentin finds more and more clues to where Margo has gone.

Through their hopes and dreams, relationships, daily struggles and hopes, they’re becoming more real.

Finally, in the last third of the book, as we join the characters on their mad rush to find Margo, they’ve become real. Real enough to have some close life-threatening moments on the road. Though they started out fake, Green built enough substance for the characters so that they have heft and dimension.

That’s my theory on why Green wrote such awful characters: he meant to. But, I still never liked any of them very much, even after they became “real.”

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I liked Green’s prologue: “The way I figure it, everyone gets a miracle. Like, I will probably never be struck by lightning, or win a Nobel Prize, or become the dictator of a small nation in the Pacific Islands, or contract terminal ear cancer, or spontaneously combust. … My miracle was this: out of all the houses in all the subdivisions in all of Florida, I ended up living next door to Margo Roth Spiegelman.” pg 15 ebook.

“Margo always loved mysteries. And in everything that came afterward, I could never stop thinking that maybe she loved mysteries so much that she became one.” pg 23 (ebook)

And that was the high point in this book for me. It was all downhill afterwards.

Here’s the passage that helped develop my theory about Green writing paper characters in Paper Towns: “… she looks like Margo Roth Spiegelman, this girl I have known since I was two- this girl who was an idea that I loved. And it is only now, when she closes her notebook and places it inside a backpack next to her and then stands up and walks toward us, that I realize that the idea is not only wrong but dangerous. What a treacherous thing it is to believe that a person is more than a person.” pg 406 (ebook)

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In conclusion, if you haven’t read any of John Green’s books, please don’t start with this one.

I highly recommend A Fault in Our Stars. It will break your heart. This one was not so good.

The film adaptation of Paper Towns was surprisingly ok. Borrow it from the library and let me know what you think.

I’m off to be more than a paper character in my own life- thanks for reading!