NJ: Young Fantasy Reads Book Group (Paramus) discussion

This is the Thread for Books Read by the Young Fantasy Reads Book Group in 2011:


THE FALLEN, Chloe King 1.................................Celia Thomson.................11/17/11
PRETTY MONSTERS............................................Kelly Link..........................10/20/11
GRACELING, Graceling 1.....................................Kristin Cashore.................09/15/11
AIRBORN, Airborn 1.............................................Keith Oppel.......................08/18/11
GENERATION DEAD, Dead 1...............................Daniel Walters..................07/21/11
ROVERANDUM.....................................................J R R Tolkien.....................06/16/11
THE ADORATION OF JENNA FOX, Fox 1...........Mary Pearson....................05/19/11
THE LIGHTNING THIEF, Percy Jackson 1........Rick Rioran........................04/21/11
THE ROLLING STONES.......................................Robert Heinlein................03/17/11
ZOMBIES VS UNICORNS.....................................Black / Larbalestier..........02/17/11
GIRL PARTS..........................................................John Cusick.......................01/20/11

The following accounts are reprinted with permission from THE STARSHIP EXPRESS Copyright 2011 Philip J De Parto:


THE FALLEN, Chloe King 1
THE FALLEN starts off as pretty standard YA fantasy fare, though instead of the teen protagonist being a witch or vampire or mutant, she is actually a members of a secret cat race from ancient Egypt. Chloe discovers her heritage when she falls to her dath on her 16th birthday and comes back from the dead, an ability certain members of the cat race enjoy. Soon thee are secret societies trying to kill or protect her and friends who just don't understand.

The average fan is not going to be terribly impressed with this work of teen fantasy chic lit, but the trilogy becomes a lot of fun in the second and third books where the author delves more deeply into the history and politics of the cat race. A number of situations, like the good bad-boy and the bad good-boy are turned inside out. The series concludes with the most unexpected, and common sense, solution to a problem wince Michael Kane's decision to have his people abandon their city instead of fighting an insane enemy in MASTERS OF THE PIT. Recommended, but read the combined volume, which is only $ 2.00 more than the standalone book.

PRETTY MONSTERS
There are ten stories in the collection and about half of them have been nominated and/or won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus and World Fantasy Awards. No one liked the title story, feeling it was too clever by half, but everyone enjoyed some of the tales. I liked "The Wizards of Perfil" but loved "Magic for Beginners." This is a real hoot about a group of friends (and their parents) who are all fans of a pirate television series, which airs at no fixed time on no fixed station, called THE LIBRARY. "In one episode of THE LIBRARY, everybody was invisible. You couldn't see the actors: you could only see the books and the bookshelves ... Invisible people tripped over invisible dead bodies, but you didn't find out who died until the next episode. Several characters ... disappeared for good, and no one is sure if they are dead or not" (pgs 103 - 104). There were lots of other good parts, too.

GRACELING, Graceling 1
The work can be characterized as The X-Men in the Middle Ages. Random people are born with "graces"--abilities beyond those of ordinary mortals. Some have strategic importance like archery, lie detection and mind-reading. Heroine Katsa's grace is combat: she can take out a score of trained fighters without breaking a sweat. She is a bully-king's personal enforcer, but she is developing a conscience.

The book's virtues include good supporting characters, nice scenes aboard a ship, and a bold, disorienting jump in time at one point. The drawbacks are that the evil villain is dispatched too easily and that the male and female leads lack depth, they are just too perfect.

AIRBORN, Airborn 1
AIRBORN is set in a steampunkish world where zeppelins ply the skies with passengers and cargo. Our here is cabin boy Matt Cruse on the luxury liner, the Aurora. He befriends a passenger his own age: spunky, rich, strong-willed Kate de Vries, whose resourcefulness is a match for his own. They become the pivotal players on an eventful trip which includes pirate attacks, shipwrecks, fierce storms and the discovery of a dangerous new animal.

If you wish to shorthand the book, think TREASURE ISLAND crossed with TITANIC set aboard a steampunk zeppelin. Among the touches various of us enjoyed were the cloud cats, the sumptuous descriptions of the ship and food, and a number of supporting characters, especially Chef Vlad. The author invests pirate Vikram Szpirglas and assistant sail maker Bruce Lunardi with more complexity than most writers would.

GENERATION DEAD, Dead 1
GENERATION features a high school love triangle about a girl and two boys, one of whom is a zombie. These are not your George Romero zombies. They don’t want to eat you, they just want to be treated like everyone else. No one knows why a certain percentage of teens (no children, no one over about 20) just get up and start walking around, it simply happens. Oddly enough, the phenomenon is confined to America, leading to many conspiracy theories. There is a great deal of variation within the “biotically different.” Some move, talk, and seem to think real slow. Others can pass for normal with a bit of makeup.

Latricia reported that teenaged girls loved the book because of its high drama content. All of us enjoyed the scenes in the haunted house that is the headquarters for the local zombie contingent. We all thought the slogans on the tee shirts of the zombie supporters were clever. Phil enjoyed the names of the favorite bands and songs of main point of view goth girl Phoebe. The girls in this book-–both living and risen-–were more interesting than their male counterparts.

Latricia, who had recommended the title based on hearsay, had mixed feelings about the book. Liz, who had expected to dislike the work, thought it was okay. Phil found it a fun read.

ROVERANDUM
This was a short work by the author to console his son who had lost a toy dog while on holiday. Latricia enjoyed the forward about the writing of the book and the narrative voice. Barry liked the parallels to THE HOBBIT. Phil noted the playfulness of the language. After the discussion, the threesome discussed future selections for the group and chose seven new titles, bringing us well into 2012.

THE ADORATION OF JENNA FOX, Fox 1
Rich, parentally-adored teenaged Jenna Fox gets out of bed one morning with no memory of anything before she awakened. She is told by her parents that she had been in an accident and has been illegally downloaded into an artificial body. The rest of the book follows Jenna's quest of self-discovery and to reconcile what she is with who she was. It also examines the benefits and possible consequences of unsupervised genetic innovation.

There are interesting similarities and differences to Robin Wassermann's FROZEN (aka SKINNED). While I think that the Wassermann book is the better effort, JENNA is not far behind, and the work is recommended without hesitation.

THE LIGHTNING THIEF, Percy Jackson 1
This middle grade novel is the first in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series and focuses on the adventures of a group of young Olympian demi-gods. Percy’s mother has kept him in the dark about the true nature of his absent father, but when monsters out of Greek mythology attack him at his school, he gets a crash course gods and monsters. Before long, he and his friends are on a quest to locate a stolen thunderbolt of Zeus before a war breaks out among the gods.

There are a number of parallels to the Harry Potter books. Phil is a Greek mythology junkie and he and Karen enjoyed the book. Liz and Taras were less impressed.

THE ROLLING STONES
The book is an episodic work in which the pioneering Stone family--point of view twins Castor and Pollux, father Roger, mother Edith, grandmother Hazel, sister Meade, and four-year-old Lowell--have a string of adventures on the moon, interplanetary space, Mars, and the asteroid belt. This is a Lake Woebegon family, whose members range from above average to exceptional. Cantankerous Hazel Stone is the most interesting character and the tribblesque flatcat incident were the most memorable aspects of the book.

ZOMBIES VS UNICORNS
The book evolved out of a discussion on the editor’s blogs about which creature was cooler for story telling purposes. A number of other authors weighed in and Black and Larbalestier decided to present an original anthology to settle the matter, with six stories championing each side of the debate.

The group consensus was that the best stories were “Princess Prettypants” (the hands-down winner) by Meg Cabot and “The Highest Justice” (which has both a unicorn and a zombie) by Garth Nix. The weakest of the lot were “Bougainville” by Carrie Ryan and “A Thousand Flowers” by Margo Lanagan. The book is striking as an art object with its unusual cover and sleeve, chapter markers and snarky editors’ introductions and comments, but it was only so-so as a collection of stories.

GIRL PARTS
Set in the near future, GIRL PARTS is the tale of two teenaged boys, spoiled rich David Sun and awkward, geeky Charlie Nuvola, a teenaged girl (Rebecca Lampwick) and the robot Companion, Rose, who has been assigned to instruct David in forming meaningful relationships with women but who instead winds up with Charlie.

The group felt the work was a mixed bag. Everyone could point out good bits, with Latricia citing the date-of-crossed-signals between Charlie and Rebecca as a scene which really worked well, but everyone had issues with other aspects. For example, Phil did not believe in Rebecca as a character.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was more of a dramatic, emotional take on Science Fiction. When I first picked up the book, I wanted to know the SF of Jenna and what made her into the new being she became. I enjoyed reading about her emotions and how she felt as she slowly discovered what had happened to her and how she turned into a part human part experimental being.

If you are looking for something action packed, this is not the book for you. But if you are looking for something emotional and thought provoking, a book that struggles to answer “what makes us human” from the perspective of one young woman named Jenna Fox, then this is the book for you.

Graceling by Kristin Cashore

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This was a fun novel that grips you on the first page. Toward the beginning there was a lot of backstory telling, but it was info you needed for the rest of the story. I loved the two main characters who were well rounded and strong. I didn't care much for the writing style, but the story was so gripping that I didn't care. There were some unexpected twists and turns and even though there were things I figured out before they were revealed I enjoyed the suspense.



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