All Good Children

Austen, Catherine. All Good Children. Custer, Wash.: Orca Book Publishers, 2011. Print.
[Book cover credit: http://catherineausten.com/books_agc.html]

Booktalk:

We've gone too far treating children like they're precious when actually there are billions of them in the world and most of them are good for nothing.

p.97*

Yikes, right?

In a future not far from our own, Max is struggling to maintain his independence while everyone under the age of 18 is turning into some kind of zombie. The scary, do-what-you're-told kind, not the fun, brain-eating kind. They're being changed in the hope is that this program, called NESTing, will make sure that no child is "good for nothing." They will all be good doing what they're told.

Review:
All Good Children is a great book. The world that Austen has created really is a whole lot like ours could be in, oh, 50 years (or less). The majority of the population is desperately poor and living in cars they cannot afford to fuel. The (what we now call) middle class minority works in some capacity with the booming elder care industry. Everyone has an RIG that connects them constantly to entertainment, work, communication, whatever (ie, it's what iPad aspires to be). A chemical spill has created a whole region's worth of people born with physical deformities...that compete on a reality TV show. The cities are dangerous places, and everyone has moved to gated communities (actual communities rather than housing developments) for their own safety. That they've given up a whole host of civil liberties in exchange for that safety bothers almost none of them. They even give up the right to know what vaccinations are being administered in their children's schools and why their children suddenly have no discernible personalities. It's cool though, because they're just so darn well-behaved.

Max is not well-behaved. He never has been, and if he has anything to do with it, he never will be. He, along with his best friend Dallas, struggle to maintain their own thoughts and personalities while pretending to be perfectly "good children." Their struggle was awful, but their friendship was great.

The fact that Max's mom is Black and his father was white is not a constant issue, but it is an important one. In their own community, it is a non-issue (or it's supposed to be), but outside is another story. Without the visual aid of their father, Max's mom is always eyed with suspicion while traveling with Max and his sister Ally.

This is a really plot-driven book, which makes it hard to review; I don't want to give too much away.

Though it is published by Orca, it is not technically a hi-lo (high interest, low reading level). It's appropriate in both areas of measurement for the 12 and up set. It is, however, about a couple high school seniors and could be used as reading material for the same. I think it will be great for reluctant readers and dystopian lovers alike.


All Good Children comes out in in hardback in October!


Book source: ARC provided by the publisher through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.

*Quotes and page numbers are from an uncorrected proof and may not match the published copy.

Links to Amazon.com may be affiliate links for the Amazon Associates program. If you buy something through this link, I may receive a referral fee.

Dark Parties

Grant, Sara. Dark Parties. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2011. Print.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/10602949]

Booktalk:
Neva looks a lot like her best friend Sanna who bears a striking similarity to Neva's boyfriend Ethan who has a passing resemblence to Sanna's boyfriend Braydon who you can tell is related to just about everyone else in Homeland. When everything is shared, including the gene pool, life can be suffocating. But in the dark, no on looks the same and the possibilities are almost endless.

Review:
Dark Parties is my favorite kind of dystopian novel. The society therein is totally recognizable, and life seems almost completely normal. Only the over-abundance of hand-me-downs and the community-wide family resemblance mark Homeland as different than real life. Until ... DUN Dun dun ... Neva figures out why her life is the way it is and decides to do something about it. This set-up almost never disappoints me, and Dark Parties was no exception. I really liked this book! But as nothing in Neva's world or ours is ever perfect, I had a few issues with this book.

The first is that part of the mystery of what's really going on hinges on Neva not knowing what IVF stands for. If you don't know what IVF stands for, ignore this concern and skip to my next one. It's only mentioned briefly, but in the context of the story, it gave a lot away (Spoiler?: society desperate for healthy babies + teenage girls being taken by the government = In Vitro Fertilization fueled baby factory, obvs). That said, I doubt this will be an issue for the majority of teens reading this book.

My second issue is with Neva's relationship with Braydon. Let me rephrase: Neva's romantic relationship with her best friend's boyfriend. Kissing your best friend's boyfriend in a pitch black room where you can't see anyone could be an honest mistake. Every make-out session behind your best friend's back after that, however, is Not Okay.* Neva and Braydon's affair lasted for jsut about the entire book, and though Neva felt guilty about the inevitability of Sanna's broken heart, she continued to be the one doing the breaking. It made me not like her a bit, and apparently I am one of those people who has a hard time in an unlikable main character.

These two issues aside, Dark Parties really was a great book. It has a great dystopian setting that still has a few secrets left to reveal. I hope Grant chooses to let us explore them!


Book source: ARC provided by the publisher


*Is there a girl version of "bros before hos"? There should be.

Links to Amazon.com may be affiliate links for the Amazon Associates program. If you buy something through this link, I may receive a referral fee.

Ship Breaker

Bacigalupi, Paolo. Ship Breaker: A Novel. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2010. Print.

[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/9160869]

Awards:
Andre Norton Award Finalist (2010)
National Book Award Finalist, Young People's Literature (2010)
ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults (2011)
Printz Award (2011)

Booktalk:
While scavenging in an old ocean tanker, Nailer falls into a vat of oil, still black gold in his world years upon years ahead of ours. In order to survive, he has to watch all of that oil wash into the ocean. Still, he's lucky to be alive. He thinks his luck is going to give him a second chance when he and Pima find a clipper washed up on shore after a city wrecker of a storm. It's full of silver, gold, and other valuables in addition to regular old copper and steel scavenge. It's their own lucky strike. Until the dead swank in one of the clipper's cabins blinks.

Review:
The world in which Nailer lives and works is brutal. He and his friend Pima are on light crew which means they pick light scavenge from old ships, primarily pulling copper wire from small utility ducts. This is opposed to heavy crew, where Pima's mother works pulling steel and other valuable metals from the same ships. These are the only good options in life. The only others are to become professional fighters who moonlight as security (like Nailer's dad), sell of body parts and/or fluids, or become some version of a prostitute. Basically, even though Nailer is doing dangerous and backbreaking work that almost gets him killed, he was lucky even before he survived his dip in the oil. He's also 15. Nailer's background and, really, his entire society make his decision to help Nita (the swank) more amazing. And it's that decision, so contrary to the way he's been taught to survive, that create an adventure story in the middle of a dystopian world.

I think one of the most amazing things about Ship Breaker, for me at least, is they way Bacigalupi accomplishes his world-building. This is a seriously complex world full of swanks, ship breakers, beach rats, half-men, and all the cultural implications these groups carry with them. Bacigalupi manages to explain all of this without ever sitting the reader down and explaining all of it, yet I was amazingly un-lost throughout the story. The world he builds is still our world too. Nailer lives on the Gulf Coast and takes a train that carries him over the drowned city of New Orleans. We can recognize leftovers from our day and age. It's clear that some kind of environmental fall-out has occured (in addition to a severe lack of oil and a submerged New Orleans, traders can sail right over the Arctic Circle), but the details of how we got from here to there are never explained, leaving the reader to put 2 and 2 together. No heavy-handed environmental message required (or present).

Ship Breaker is, at times, a very bleak book portraying a society in which each person is practically required to step over someone else to survive. Getting ahead is a pipe dream. But, like many other dystopian novels, its points of light that make the story. This is the kind of book that can stress you out (in a good way) while reading, and it will be a hit with your dystopia fans. My library is also adding it to our Environmental Justice bibliography for next year's incoming freshmen.


There is talk of a sequel, The Drowned Cities, but it's not showing up yet on the publisher's website, only on GoodReads.


Book source: Philly Free Library


Links to Amazon.com may be affiliate links for the Amazon Associates program. If you buy something through this link, I may receive a referral fee.

Sapphique

Fisher, Catherine. Sapphique. New York: Dial Books - Penguin Group (USA), Inc., 2010. Print. Incarceron 2.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/6159635]


If you haven't yet read Incarceron, what are you waiting for? ;) Also, don't read this. It will spoil it for you.


Booktalk:
The Warden's final little stunt destroyed the portal to Incarceron, trapping not only himself but also Keiro and Attia in its depths. As much as Finn would like every waking moment to be spent working on their release, there are bigger things for he, Jared, and Claudia to worry about. Finn's lack of courtly manners and, you know, memory of his life as Prince Giles is really starting to work against them. And when a young man who is indistinguishable from Finn physically but clearly bred to eat from a silver spoon comes to court claiming to be the long-lost Giles, it could be death of them all, in Incarceron or Out.

Review:
It took more self-control than I knew I had not to tear into this book as soon as I got it. I wanted to reread the first book so I could pick up all the little things that I was sure would pop up again in this sequel. I suggest you all do the same. Fisher writes a very intricate story, and it definitely builds on little clues left behind in the first book. Still, I don't think Sapphique quite lived up to its prequel. Or maybe it just didn't live up to all the hype I'd built up for it in my head. I loved the way I was plopped into the middle of all the characters lives again rather than having the book pick up right where the previous one left off. I really liked that there were so many little clues in the text to lead the reader to what is Really Going On Here. I loved that this book, the end of the Incarceron series (pairing?), was still full of twists right up to the very end. I still loved most of the characters (though not necessarily the same ones I loved in the last book, a fact I also loved). But there was just something missing. I didn't stay up until 4 in the morning to finish Sapphique. I took a leisurely week to read it.

Though the narration still switches between life in the Realm and life in Incarceron, a lot of Sapphique follows Claudia, Finn and Jared in the Realm. Which is what I wanted! I know! But life at court rather than at the Wardenry or with the peasants is pretty boring. And Claudia and Finn both annoyed me. A lot. They're both beyond frustrated at Finn's lack of memory and this frustration manifests itself as doubt on Claudia's part and severe moodiness on Finn's. Neither were the strong and/or sure of themselves leaders that we met in Incarceron. The change in them was totally believable; I just didn't love them as much as I used to.

BUT with all the focus on life Outside, Sapphique does treat us to more insight into living life by Protocol, including a short trip to a peasant village:

She [Claudia] shivered. "You should glass the windows. The draft is terrible."

The old man laughed, pouring out thin ale. "But that wouldn't be Protocol, would it? And we must abide by the Protocol, even as it kills us."

"There are ways around it," Finn said softly.

"Not for us." He pushed the pottery cups toward them. "For the Queen maybe, because them that make the rules can break them, but not for the poor. Era is no pretense for us, no playing at the past with all its edges softened. It's real. We have no skinwands, lad, none of the precious electricity or plastiglas. The picturesque squalor the Queen likes to ride past is where we live. You play at history. We endure it."

p.199*

Throughout the book Claudia is served revelations such as this. It also becomes obvious that though she is kind and more educated than she should be considering Protocol in general and her gender class in it, she has no idea how to interact with people outside of the roles of master and servant, and everyone who is not her master is her potential servant. If Finn gained anything from living in Incarceron (besides his BFF Keiro), it's that he knows what it is to go without, to live a meager existence, to just try to survive. Even as Claudia doubts more and more whether Finn is actually Giles, it becomes clear (to me, not necessarily to the characters) that Finn will be a wonderful king if/when they get rid of the witchy Queen.

Speaking of the witchy Queen, one of the characters that I loved the most was her son Casper. I know, he's horrible in Incarceron and he comes nowhere near making the switch to "good guy" in Sapphique, but I still loved him. He seemed so lost a lot of the time. You can tell that he really grew up living in the dual shadows of his Queenly mother and Princely half-brother. When Giles comes back, whether anyone believes Finn is the real Giles or not, Casper is left being the younger prince again. The spare. I felt so bad for him, still hanging around Claudia throughout this book even though it's always been clear she has no interest in him. He kept trying to win her back with promises of power and safety, things Finn/Giles couldn't offer her, but rather than coming off as evil and manipulative, he seemed like an unpopular rich kid who buys everyone in his class presents so they'll come to his birthday party.

And then there's Keiro and Attia still in Incarceron following yet another legend of Sapphique, looking for a way out. I liked their storyline a lot, but there was little to no character development in it. It was like Fisher knew she needed danger and action to keep readers interested in between all the palace intrigue in the Realm, so she foisted it all on the two of them. But it's the two of them who manage to pull everything together in the end (I'm being generous because I LOVE Keiro; Attia's the real smartypants in this volume).

Sapphique is a must-read if you are a lover of Incarceron. It's not the thrill ride that the first book was, but questions are answered, loose ends are tied up, and maybe, just maybe, things are allowed to change.


Sapphique will be out in hardback on the 28th!
You know, before you blow all your hard-earned Christmas money. ;)

Also, I would be a bad blogger if I didn't point out that last week Taylor Lautner (yes, that Taylor Lautner) was announced as The Guy Who Will Play Finn in the movie adaptation. I just hope Hollywood wises up and listens to the FYA ladies when casting the Warden.


Book source: ARC picked up at ALA

*Quotes and page numbers are from an uncorrected proof and may not match the published copy.

Incarceron

Fisher, Catherine. Incarceron. New York: Dial Books - Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2010. Print. Incarceron 1.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/2998395]

Awards:
Cybils Finalist - Young Adult Fantasy and Science Fiction (2007)

Booktalk:
Finn lives in an vast and inescapable prison. All the unwanted riff-raff of society, the murders, thieves, predators, and other criminals, were once permanently locked away. This prison was supposed to be a paradise where the lowest of society could start over and make things right. But things did not work out as planned. The prison, Incarceron, is a sentient hell-hole where fear, treachery, and hunger rein. And its boundaries have been breached. The prisoners live on the hope left by the legends of Sapphique, a man who is said to have escaped, and Finn, who is thought to have been born of the prison rather than of its prisoners, remembers bits and pieces of a life Outside. With the help of a Sapient, a learned man, he hopes to escape back to the life he thinks he remembers. He remembers the stars.

The world Claudia lives in is based on some fond remembering of the Victorian Era. Everything has been altered to artificially represent this bygone and romanticized time when things were simpler, safer, and more ordered, at least from the point of view of the rich. Everyone, privileged or not, is left chaffing in a world that society has long since outgrown. But like most things in her world, underneath her image, Claudia is decidedly non-Era. She's smart, educated, and wants to know more than she's allowed. As she hurtles towards her wedding to the heir of the throne, she snoops on her father, the Warden of Incarceron. And she finds a key.


Review:
I devoured this book. Twice. The pacing, the storyline, the characters, it all fell into place for me. A lot of the time I think that two simultaneous story lines (as opposed to alternating viewpoints of the same action) make it easy for either or both stories to get away with being a bit under-developed. That's not the case here. Both Finn and Claudia's stories are complex, and the points where they come together are intense. The difference between Claudia's life and Finn's is so stark. Claudia and Finn's disbelief at discovering the other (and realizing how the other must live) is genuine. It also allows for a lot of explanation without a lot of info-dumping. And Fisher uses the alternating viewpoints to create a million mini-cliffhangers throughout the text.

Finn's whole storyline is so urgent. His only certainty is that whatever unknown is around the corner is probably life-threatening. He can't even be sure that his memories of Outside, which come to him during seizures, are real or really his. But Finn is surrounded by friends, or at least by people who need him, like his oathbrother Keiro. Finn and Keiro's relationship is one of my favorite parts of his world. It's complicated and not always all that honest, but they clearly care about each other a lot. And even though their circumstances are over-the-top horrible, they manage to maintain a normal-ish friendship: the kind where a searing punch to the gut can mean "I forgive you."

The society that Claudia lives in is based on the Victorian Era, but this is no revisionist history. The people who put Protocol and Era in place are trying to recreate, not re-remember, that time. They aren't creating an idealized version so much as trying to return to the way things were. Exactly as they were: no technology, widespread healthcare, or women in pants. No indoor plumbing. But in reality they should be much more advanced in all of these areas than we are now. Because of this, the spread between the haves and the have-nots, already extreme in Victorian times, is even more obscene. The have-nots must live like their 19th century counterparts; they don't have the means to change anything. People like Claudia, on the other hand, can use a myriad of technologies to make their lives easier ranging from washing machines for their fine silks to laser skinwands for their wrinkles. They just have to look like they're living within Protocol; they have to make a pretense of not wanting to get caught. Even though most of the heart-pounding action happens inside Incarceron, it's Claudia's world that fascinated me. Hopefully the next book, Sapphique (which I'll review next week), will delve deeper into the technology (and lack thereof) and culture of her world.

Incarceron is deeper and more complicated than I expected (and less steampunk-y than the cover would suggest). I highly recommend it!


Also, Incarceron is already being developed as a movie (2013 projected release) and the sequel is coming out at the end of this month.



Book source: I bought it.

Birthmarked

O'Brien, Caragh M. Birthmarked. New York: Roaring Brook Press, 2010. Print.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/9117047]

Booktalk:
Gaia has just finished her first delivery as a midwife rather than a midwife's assistant. The birth goes well, but Gaia must take the baby. The first three babies delivered by each midwife must be surrendered to the Enclave. Every month. And no matter how badly she feels for the mother who loses her baby, Gaia knows she must do her duty. Besides, everyone knows that advanced children, once surrendered babies, who grow up in the affluence of the Enclave are much better off. They never go hungry or thirsty like children in Wharfton often do. With these thoughts swirling in her head, Gaia heads home, only to find no one there. Her parents have been taken by the Enclave. Unlike the baby Gaia has just advanced, her parents need to be rescued.


Review:
Set on the shores of Unlake Michigan, this dystopian world has me hooked. Following some kind of environmental fallout that resulted in not nearly enough water to go around, the difference between the haves and the have-nots grows much more pronounced. What used to be the northern United States becomes something resembling a feudal city-state. The have-nots in Wharfton, where Gaia lives, depend on the "good people" of the Enclave for water to survive. And a bleak survival it is. Gaia and her parents do alright; there are only three of them and both her parents work, her mother as a midwife and her father as a tailor. Gaia's new status as a full midwife should have brought her family the Wharfton version of luxury: plenty of water and extra passes to the local entertainment center, Tvaltar. The Enclave also could not exist without those in Wharfton. Though there are bakers, tailors, and other services available right inside the wall, the people of Wharfton provide much of the labor and services the Enclave requires.

And the babies. The people of Wharfton also provide Enclave families with babies.

At first I thought this was going to be a situation like that in The Handmaid's Tale where most women become sterile and those who still can are pressed into service as babymakers. That is not the case here, though why the Enclave needs Wharfton babies remains a mystery for most of the book. Many people on both sides of the wall believe, like Gaia herself, that the children sent to the Enclave are simply lucky, even while their parents are left heart-broken; they have a chance at a much easier life. The Protectorat, the ruling class of the Enclave, have a much more complicated need for children born in Wharfton. Luckily (not really) Gaia is caught pretty early on on her attempt to rescue her parents and so gets to meet the key people behind the "advancement" program.

After Gaia is captured in the Enclave, where she has no right to be, she learns so much more about the history of her society and world than she could have imagined. She learns just how the Enclave uses those in Wharfton and the vital part she and her mother play in that relationship as midwives. She learns that her parents, who she trusted implicitly and thought she knew inside and out, hid very important things about themselves and their family from her. She learns what they hid about her own past. And during all of this acquisition of knowledge, she makes some unlikely allies inside the wall and, of course, falls in love with an especially broody, high-ranking member of the military who seems to hate her and yet find her interesting.

It's a lot for one girl to go through. And it's all a set-up. It was an emotional thrill ride the whole way through with an ending just barely satisfying enough to not make me want to tear my hair out.

I can't wait for Book 2.


Book source: Philly Free Library

Bad Faith

Philip, Gillian. Bad Faith. Glasgow: Strident Publishing, Ltd., 2008. Print.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/6367859]

Booktalk:
Being the daughter of a One Church cleric has its perks. Cassandra and her family are above suspicion in the highly monitored religious society that England has become, if only just slightly. Unfortunately, every perk comes with a drawback. Most of the people Cassandra comes in contact with through her father's work are in the same situation, and some of them are above the law altogether. And everyone knows it.

Review:
How do you not love a book that starts like this:

Before I slipped on the mud and fell over the Bishop, our family didn't have a lot to do with murder.
A little, but not much.

p.1

When Cassandra literally stumbles onto the body of an important Bishop, her father's boss, she and her best friend Ming hide the body. They don't know who killed the Bishop, but they know someone in Cassandra's family is involved. Her family has been ruled by a complicated web of secrets that dates back to before her parents were even married. As more and more of these secrets come out into the open, Cass's world falls apart a little bit more. She has to deal with harboring her own secret about the location of the Bishop's body while she finds out all kinds of things about her parents and brother, tries to avoid a pack of school bullies with religion on their side, and deals with lingering memory and cognitive issues from being his by a car years earlier that just make everything more confusing and complicated. Oh, and she falls in love with her best friend Ming.

As if all that isn't enough for one girl to deal with, it's all happening in the middle of a theocratic dictatorship and her dad works for the church. One Church isn't like a church in the way that we think of it today; it's more an instrument of the state. There is a definite religion involved, and it seems like it is Judeo-Christian based, but I don't think it's supposed to be any religion that is recognizable today. Cass's father is practically a heretic because he still carries a cross from when he was a rector in a pre-One Church church. No one really believes in what the One Church preaches, they just all say that they do because it's illegal not to. Except Ming and his parents, and boy do they pay for it. As a consequence of their non-belief they lose a large property, Ming gets beat up at school constantly with no consequence other than being constantly suspended for "provoking" other kids, and Ming's parents are constantly being pulled in for questioning by the police. All in the name of the One Church. While some may read this as a book that is anti-religion, I think that Philip has done a wonderful job of making it a book that is anti-absolute power instead. When a large group of people above is the law while everyone else is constantly looking over their shoulder afraid of being watched or heard, things can never end well.


I didn't talk about it in my review, because it comes out late enough in the story to be a little spoilery, but sexual abuse is also present. Nothing is described in detail, but it's there, and it is perpetrated by a "celibate" religious man. This probably makes the book very controversial, but this person's status as above the law is the enabling factor in the abuse, not his perceived celibacy or religious role.


Book source: I bought it.
Bad Faith is not currently in print in the US, but it can be purchased (with free shipping, no less!) at the Book Depository.