Gabriel Finley & the Raven's Riddle by George Hagen

 Gabriel Finley's father, Adam, has disappeared.  Not long after this happens, Gabriel rescues a baby raven named Paladin and learns his family's secret - the Finely's are capable of bonding with a raven.  They can communicate without talking and even merge into one another so then can fly or walk together.  Gabriel learns that his father is being held captive by Corax, a half man half raven who use to be Adam's brother, in the underground city of Avioplois.  Corax is convinced that Adam knows where the torc is, a necklace that grants wishes.  Gabriel and his three friends set out to rescue Gabriel's father.

I really enjoyed reading this.  Great characters, exciting adventures, and it leaves you wondering what will happen next.  I felt like I hadn't really read anything like it, which is saying something since most fantasy books follow a well-worn trope.  There was some really good world building going in the book.  We're given an ancient history lesson so we understand where Avioplois came from and the origins of the torc.  We learn that ravens and humans used to be best friends, until a terrible thing happened that made humans fear all ravens and lead to the creation of the evil valravens, who now serve Corax.

Riddles play an important part in the story.  Gabriel loves riddles, and so do ravens.  We learn that ravens always greet each other with a riddle because only true ravens laugh at riddles.  Valravens, the evil, undead ravens, never laugh.  There's lots of riddles in the books, and I would find myself trying to solve them before I read ahead.  I felt very clever, indeed, when I could.

Some spoilers

A Tale Dark & Grimm by Adam Gidwitz

Think you know how fairy tales go?  You're wrong.  Hansel and Gretel run away from home to escape their child-killing parents.  Their journeys lead them though many a violent Grimm fairy tale as they struggle for survival and safety.

This was great.  I can see why the series is so popular.  Adam Gidwitz frankly acknowledges that kids love a little bit of horror.  And he gives it them in spades.  I remember reading the real Grimm fairy tales as a kid.  They are seriously dark.  Nothing like the Disney-fied versions.  Gidwitz uses the characters of Hansel and Gretel to wander through this fairy tale world, becoming part of lesser know Grimm fairy tales such as Faithful Johannes, The Seven Swallows, and A Smile as Red as Blood.

The scary parts are not skipped over.  So that means we have cannibalism, heads being hacked off, souls being ripped out through people's throats, and parent's gambling their children away to the devil and dooming them to hell.  The thread that follows Hansel and Gretel through the story is their sad search for some parents who aren't completely horrible.  Who won't do things like cut their heads off or try to eat them.  A lot harder to find than it should be.

Hansel and Gretel start off as foolish, greedy children, and their trials cause them to grow and change and they are not the same people at the end of the story they were at the beginning.  So not only do we get some great gore, the retelling of classic fairy tales most people have never heard of, but also so great coming-into-their-own story and a steadfast brother-sister relationship.

This series is certainly not for everyone.  Not all kids want to read about scary, gory things.  So fair warning!  This is for kids who like a little bit of horror.

If kids love this (and many will) maybe you can even them to read the original Grimm stories!

Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick

Have you ever had the feeling that you've lived another life? Been somewhere that has felt totally familiar, even though you've never been there before, or felt that you know someone well, even though you are meeting them for the first time? It happens. In 2073 on the remote and secretive island of Blessed, where rumour has it that no one ages and no children are born, a visiting journalist, Eric Seven, and a young local woman known as Merle are ritually slain. Their deaths echo a moment ten centuries before, when, in the dark of the moon, a king was slain, tragically torn from his queen. Their souls search to be reunited, and as mother and son, artist and child, forbidden lovers, victims of a vampire they come close to finding what they've lost. In a novel comprising seven parts, each influenced by a moon - the flower moon, the harvest moon, the hunter's moon, the blood moon - this is the story of Eric and Merle whose souls have been searching for each other since their untimely parting (Goodreads).

Midwinterblood won the Printz award this year.  I can see why.  It's certainly an interesting, engaging read.  The way it was framed was intriguing, leaving you confused and guessing for most of the book.  I enjoyed it.  It was not the best thing I read all year, but then the Printz committee doesn't ask me.

The book goes backwards.  We start in 2073, with journalist Eric Seven arriving on the strange island of Blessed with a specific task in hand - find out about a mysterious flower that possibly has the power to prolong life.  However, once he arrives on the island he begins to forget why he's there, along with the rest of his life.  But he has a strange feeling that he's met a woman, Merle, before.  As Eric is about to be killed as a sacrifice, we go back in time.

At first there was a bit of consistency how far we'd go back, the first few times it was around 50 years, but then as we got father back there were bigger jumps.  In each life, there's a Merle and an Eric.  In each life (for the most part) Merle lives and Eric dies.  Their relationships are different each time, sometimes they're brother and sister, sometimes they're lovers, sometimes they're parent and child, but each relationship is one of love.  Often, but not always, Eric would sacrifice himself in some way so that Merle could live.  It all went back to the first life, when Eric was sacrificed but promised his wife, Merle that he would come back seven times and find her, and so they keep living different lives, but each time Eric dies and they don't get to be together.

I liked the story, but the little inconsistencies bothered me.  Why did Tor (a character that often served the role of parting Eric and Merle) only show up in some of the lives?  Why, if Eric died in each of the lives, sacrificing himself for Merle in some way, he didn't die, at least not that we saw, in the second to last life?  Why, in 2073, did no one seem to know that it was drinking the tea made from the flower that was keeping people from having children?  What was the whole vampire thing?  Were the people on the island in 2073 supposed to be vampires too?  What was the thing with Eric Seven's parent's religion that was alluded to?  Was I just not reading carefully enough and all these questions were answered?  I thought there were a lot of holes.

An interesting read for a thoughtful reader.  Unlikely to have mass appeal.

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black

Tana and her ex-boyfriend Aidan are the only survivors of a massacre carried out at a party by vampires. Aidan is infected, and Tana might be infected too, it's too soon to say.  Tana does the only thing she can think of - head for the nearest Coldtown, a quarantined location where vampires live and rule.  Traveling with them is Gavriel, a very strange vampire who Tana saved and is now assisting them on their journey, and who is hiding a dark secret.

What made this book stand apart from other vampire books, aside from the obviously better writing and the well-rounded characters, was that The Coldest Girl in Coldtown shows vampires to be vicious and blood thirsty.  They are, essentially, monsters, with no love or feelings for humans.  Humans are there to be used as vampires wish.

The Coldtowns are well wired, and the lives of the vampires are the most popular reality TV to the outside world.  Of course, you have people who dream of becoming vampires.  Who think vampires are beautiful and sexy.  Who think vampires are misunderstood.  These people deliberately go to Coldtowns and try to get a vampire to turn them.

All the Truth That's In Me by Julie Berry

Judith returns to her village two years after her friend Lottie was found dead and Judith disappeared.  She returns mutilated, and her mother forbids her to try speaking.  The village treats her like she's been cursed, and Judith sees no future for herself.  In her head, Judith speaks to the boy she's always loved, but who no longer speaks to her.  When her village is attacked, Judith is forced to take action and make decision.  Perhaps she will finally be able to reclaim her voice and speak the truth.

I blazed through this.  I wanted to know what really happened to Judith and hope she would finally get the courage to defend herself from all the people who looked down on her, took advantage of her, and generally treated her like crap.  It did remind me of Speak, a bit, in that something traumatic has happened to a girl and she is unable to tell anyone what happened (although for very different reasons) but eventually finds it in herself to reclaim her voice.

Judith's life is sad, and made harder because of the happy family she remembered.  She returns home after being held captive for two years to find her beloved father has died and her mother seems to be a different person after dealing with the disappearance of her child and the death of her husband.  At first she is joyful at Judith's return, but it quickly turns to fear when she sees what has happened to Judith.  Judith obeys her mother's command to not speak, and when questioned by the village council cannot say what happened to her or defend herself when accusations are made against her. 

For two years Judith has lived in the village in silence.  And object of ridicule and disgust to everyone, including her own family.  Judith keeps watch on the boy she loves but knows she can never be with, Lucas, who while not cruel to her, pays her no attention.

Things begin to change when the village is under attack.  Judith knows someone who can help, if she dares to return.  Her actions set in motion a series of events with both positive and negative consequences.  Lucas starts to be looked on with suspicion, Judith makes a friend who encourages her to speak, and Judith slowly begins to piece together everything that happened and understands who is behind the murder of her friend Lottie.

There are some truly cruel characters that live in Judith's village, but most of them are just indifferent, which hurts just as much.  Lucas' and Judith's relationship evolve, but Lucas is far from perfect and Judith learns to see his flaws and that he's not the perfect boy she made him into.  The story is dark and sad, but Judith is strong and triumphant by the end.

All the Truth That's In Me comes out September 26, 2013.

The Walking Dark by Robin Wasserman

The Killing Day happened a year ago.  Five perfectly normal people suddenly started killing, and then killed themselves.  12 people were dead, and no one left to explain why, except for one girl, who has no answers to what happened.  After a tornado partially wrecks the town of Oleander and causes a breach in a nearby military complex, the townspeople are prevented from leaving, supposedly for their own good.  But are the soldiers protecting the town from the breach?  Or is the rest of the state being protected from them?

So I didn't finish it.  Not completely.  Around page 250 I really just wanted to know how it was all going to come out.  But the big reveal of what was really going on hadn't even happened yet, and there was another almost 200 pages to go.  I was getting tired of the buildup.  I got it.  Something was afoot.  Everyone was acting crazy and murderous except a select few.  It clearly wasn't natural.  So I started skimming.  And I skimmed my way through the rest of the book and I feel completely satisfied.

I have to say I haven't really liked any of Robin Wasserman's other books.  They've been fine.  They fit in neatly with whatever is popular at the time, be it dystopia or paranormal or whatever so they're always a safe buy.  I was enjoying this one more than I had any of her others when I first started reading it.  It was much darker than any of her others, and also a lot more gripping and interesting.

The story centers around five teenagers.  West, Daniel, Ellie and Jule all witnessed one of the murders on the Killing Day.  Cass killed a baby that day, had has supposedly been in a mental hospital for the past year.  She has no idea why she did it.  The five all have vastly different lives.  West is the golden boy football player.  Ellie is incredibly religious and thinks she hears God, or someone, in her head.  Daniel's father is an alcoholic and he's just trying to care for his younger brother.  And Jule's family runs a huge meth lab.  They were all interesting characters who develop other the course of the story.

But it was taking FOREVER.  At first the slow build was fine.  It made things dramatic.  But I think it just went on too long, as things get worse and worse in the town.  More and more people seem to lose it, and I felt like it was high time for this all to start going somewhere.  Even the prospect of the town trying to burn Cass at the stake was not enough to keep me reading.  I just wanted to know WHY it was all happening.  And the reason why was good too!  It really was.  I just lost the patience to get there.

So...yeah.  How's that for a mixed review.  I recommend it, even though I didn't finish it.  Perhaps you'll be more patient than I am, or be more pulled in.

The Walking Dark came out September 10.

Conjured by Sarah Beth Durst

Eve has no memory.  She doesn't remember where she lived before, what she looked like before or what her name was.  If she tries to use her magic abilities, she has terrible visions and loses consciousness.  She has been told she's in a witness protection program, protected from a powerful magic-welding serial killer.  Eve remembers nothing of this, and everyone seems to be waiting.  Waiting for her to remember...something.

I had a hard time getting into this at first.  I found the beginning dragged, and you have so little information about what's going on and I found this annoying rather than intriguing.  But I stuck with it and it got much more interesting.  And pretty dark.

Eve not only has no memories of her life before now, but she suffers random memory erases.  She might find herself suddenly sitting at a table, and the last thing she remembers is from three weeks ago.  She keeps losing days, and she doesn't know why.  And no one will explain anything to her.  Eve wants to feel safe, but she doesn't know who to trust because her memory is so spotty.  The only person she really feels comfortable with is with Zach, who Eve meets while working at the library.  Zach is completely non magical, but when he kisses Eve, he can use her magic.  And if doesn't make Eve pass out.

Spoiler

The Basic Eight by Daniel Handler

Flannery Culp is starting her senior year.  She has seven wonderful friend and one huge crush on Adam Slate.  But Adam doesn't seem interested, Flan's science teacher is harassing her, she's constantly cutting school, drinking absinthe...and Adam Slate is going to be killed on October 31st.  And one of the Basic Eight is going to do it.

It was certainly interesting to read.  It does not take the reader very long to figure out we're dealing with an unreliable narrator.  At the beginning, Flan explains that she's rewriting her journal for publication.  But the past and present get mixed together.  Flan is clearly adding things in after the fact, sometimes it seems like something is part of the "original" journal but there's no way she could have know it at the time.  She also admits to adding things in to "introduce" characters and the like.  So there's no way to tell what's from the past when she was actually experiencing these things, and what's been added in later.

Flan also seems to mix things up sometimes, but again, we don't know if she's mixing things up now or if she was mixing things up then. There's no way to tell.

Spoilers.

Rachel Rising: The Shadow of Death by Terry Moore

Rachel wakes up and digs herself out of a shallow grave.  She isn't sure what's happened.  And why she looks so strange.  And why people are freaking out when they see her.  Rachel is dead.  And she's going to find out who killed her and why.

Rachel Rising is another graphic novel I've been hearing about for a while, due to how awesome it was, but hadn't gotten around to getting a copy.  I have finally read the first issue.  It was pretty awesome.

It's very dark.  People are dying in violent ways.  Rachel wakes up with strangulation marks around her neck.  A man gets --> decapitated in elevator doors.  Yeah, dark and violent.  But not gratuitously so, I didn't think.

The story is a mystery.  Rachel is trying to figure out who killed her and who is behind other people dying.  She sees a strange woman, who no one else, with the exception of a little girl, can see, who seems to show up, and then terrible things happen.  And Rachel isn't the only one coming back from the dead.

The first volume is doing a lot of set up.  It establishes some major characters and raises lots of questions and doesn't answer any of them.  I am looking forward to reading the next volume and seeing where it goes.

The art is black and white ink drawings.  For the most part it's in a traditional panel format.  The darkness of the panels fits well with the tone of the story.

Days of Blood & Starlight by Laini Taylor

In the sequel to Daughter of Smoke & Bone, Karou has now taken Brimstone's place as the resurrectionist and is building an army for the Wolf, the war leader of the chimaera.  Karou feels she has to do whatever she can to avenge her people, even when she questions how the revenge is taking place.  Akiva is still a solider, whose job is to kill chimaera, but he resists, struggling with the idea that redemption might still be possible for them all.

Amazing.  Loved it.  I want more.  Right now.  So freaking good.  I admit I did a little skipping around to find out what happened.  It was one of those books that has multiple stories going on in alternating chapters and sometimes I JUST WANTED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED AND COULDN'T WAIT.  So I was forced to skip ahead.  I had no choice.  Oh it was good.

It has been a while since I read Daughter of Smoke & Bone, and realized as I started reading this one I'd forgotten a lot of stuff.  Important stuff.  Like how things were left between Karou and Akiva, and how Brimstone died.  You know, things like that.  It mostly came back as I read, but I think I'd like to read the first one again.  I'm sure I'm still forgetting things.  So if it's been a while since you've read Daughter of Smoke & Bone, you might want to give yourself a refresher.  Laini Taylor does not waste time rehashing what happened last time.  We are moving forward full steam ahead.

Hexed by Michael Alan Nelson, art by Emma Rios

Luci Jenifer Inacio das Neves, Lucifer for short, is a thief.  An occult thief.  And one who only steals things for the right reasons.  Unfortunately for her, someone from her past wants her to steal something very dangerous, and NOT for the right reasons.  Now Lucifer must steal an object with the power to kill, and put it into the hands of a killer, otherwise the life of the one person she cares about could be forfeit.

This was pretty great.  Lucifer is a character from Fall of Cthulhu, which I have not read but now that I've read Hexed I want too.  Nelson liked Lucifer so much he wanted to give her her own story.  So he did.  This means that there are some references to things that happened before which I did not understand, but that just made me want to find out what happened, it did not disengage me from the story.  Lucifer is smart and capable.  She isn't attached to very many people, but to the one person who she really cares about, Val, (no, it's not a boyfriend!  Just a friend!  A female friend!) she is fiercely protective of and loyal too.  She is put in dangerous and tricky situations, and she works her way out of them.

Lucifer has been Hexed, and we don't learn what that actually means until almost the end of the story.  We also don't know how she got into this business of stealing occult objects.  Lucifer is kind of a Robin Hood figure.  She steals occult objects and returns them to their rightful owners.  She doesn't do this on her own, however.  She is hired to do so.  Many of her jobs go through Val.  We don't know how Lucifer and Val met.  I'm not sure how much more I would know if I'd read Fall of Cthulhu, and how much just hasn't been revealed.  I hope there are many more Hexed stories.  I would really like to continue with it.

For the most part, I really liked the art.  From when the story starts, Lucifer has been working for some time, and when crises strikes she doesn't get to rest.  There are several mentions of how she'd love to sleep or take a shower.  And she looked it.  She looked like someone who was tired and filthy and exhausted but couldn't stop.  I wish people's faces had more expression.  There was a generic flat look, a generic angry look, and a generic smirking kind of look and all the characters, for the most part, worse one of those looks.

There was only one scene that I felt was gratuitously sexual.  Lucifer has to cut into a dead body and jump inside to find the doorway into the world she has to get too.  Before we know that's what she has to do, it set up like she's going to have to have sex with a dead body in order to open the door.  She says "Finding the Carasingth will be the easy part.  The hard part is getting into his lair...It's just that there's this whole "yuk" factor...Sadly, violating the body of a 300-pound dead man isn't the worst thing I've ever had to do on a gig.  But it comes pretty damn close."  And the images are of her taking off her pants and straddling a dead body.  Why did she have to take off her pants?  Why did she have to straddle the body?  So I didn't love that scene.

Also, I wish the cover image were not Lucifer crouching in her underwear.  She's such a kickass girl, why'd they have to use the one image of her when she's partially undressed?  Annoying.

This is definitely for older YA and adult.  I really enjoyed it though and recommend it.

The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan

Misskaella, wronged by her family and those around her took her revenge on the island by tempting the men with sea wives: women she can draw from seals.  Now the only people on Rollrock Island are men, their sea wives, and their sons.  And the wives never stop wishing for the sea.

I found this story incredibly disturbing.  It was still an engaging story, but I was very disturbed.  The legend of selkies I always found upsetting: men stealing the seal skin of a women and hiding it so the women cannot return to the sea and then taking her for a wife.  It's really pretty awful.

The setting felt Irish to me, and selkies are often connected to Irish lore.  There was nothing that explicitly put it in Ireland, or our own world for that matter, but some of the slang used, and the constant reference to the native people having red hair caused me to picture Ireland as the backdrop for this story.

Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins

Eleven year old Gregor is trying to get by one day at a time, ever since his father disappeared two years ago it has fallen on his shoulders to help his mother take care of his two sisters and grandmother. He isn't bitter about the added responsibility, but he does take his job very seriously when looking over two year old sister Boots. This is especially true when he and Boots are pulled through the laundry grate into a mysterious world called the Underland. There are massive bugs, bats, and rats, and a curious population of people that are forced to prepare for war because of Gregor's desire to get home. Now Gregor must deal with keeping his sister safe, getting the two of them home, possibly saving his father, and being the prophesied Overlander that will save Underland from being overtaken by the vicious rats. Just a normal day in the life of an eleven year old, right?

I listened to this one audiobook, it had a rather slow start. I also got extremely annoyed by the reader. He didn't have a strong ability to stick with a voice for a character. They all ended up being either his normal voice or kind of a high pitched misty sort of voice that was supposed to represent bats, cockroaches, and almost all girls. He also didn't have a great sense of timing or inflection. It made it really difficult to get into the book and care for the characters. I even found the two year old to be obnoxious. But I'm assuming that a lot of this is more based off a dislike of the reader's interpretation of the book rather than the book itself. Or at least a majority of it.

Suzanne Collins is also the author of the Hunger Games series, you knew you recognized her name didn't you? You can totally see how this book would eventually lead her to create the world and plot of the young adult series. This is a dark book, it has a lot of serious themes that she deals rather well with given this is a middle-grade book. The action was gritty and violent, just bordering on too much for someone below the age of eleven or twelve. I loved the character of Ripred, so jaded and sarcastic. He was a much needed voice of reason, even when it was overly blunt. I also got rather attached to the cockroaches, even though the visual of six foot long cockroaches made me want to puke in my car. One thing I love about Suzanne Collins is the fact that her imagery is so vivid, you can always picture the setting clearly. At least I can. I'm always transported by her words, even when I'd rather not be like when the group of heroes is located in a nest of spiders. Gross.

Here are the detractors. I got rather annoyed by Gregor's inability to stop and think things through... but let's be honest he's an eleven year old with an abandonment complex and more responsibilities than most adults. The book was intensely slow at the beginning, Lots and lots of exposition that I didn't want at the time, and still think could've been tightened up and made more concise. But again, I have to make the excuse that she is setting up a world for a five book series so lots and lots of details are needed?

I enjoyed this for the most part. I'm hoping to read the next one soon and enjoy it more without the bad reader. We'll see how it goes. What I think is more interesting is the fact that you can see the progression from this middle-grade series to the young adult series and how Suzanne Collins has developed as a writer.

Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls by Mary Downing Hahn

It's the last day of school in 1956, and Nora and her friends are looking forward to summer.  Then the unthinkable happens.  In Nora's quite little suburban town where nothing ever happens, two girls have been shot and killed.  In the park.  In daylight.  And they were girls Nora knew.  The entire town breaks apart and the blame falls on one of the girls' ex-boyfriend, who swears he's innocent.

This was really heavy.  It's based on a true event that Mary Downing Hahn lived through in June of 1955.  While Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls is fictional, it pulls heavily from Hahn's own memories of that time, which she has never forgotten.  She talks a bit about the actual event at the end of the book and how she wanted to write about it for a long time.

The evening before the shooting there was a party and all the high school kids are together having a great time.  The next day two girls, Cheryl and Bobbi Jo, have been shot and killed in the park.  Cheryl's ex-boyfriend Buddy is accused of the crime.  Everyone in town is sure he did it.  Nora is not so sure, however.  It difficult for her to voice this though, because everyone else is so certain.

Habibi by Craig Thompson

Two children, Dodola and Zam, escaped from slavery and live alone for years in the desert.  As they grow older, their relationship becomes strain as Dodola sees Zam as her child and Zam begins to experience sexual attraction.  Dodola is captured and becomes a slave in the sultan's harem.  Zam goes in search for her.  Years pass, but the two never stop looking for each other.

Well.  So.  I heard lots of mixed things about this one.  Some were saying it was the most amazing thing ever.  Others disagreed and had major problems with it.

I also had problems with it.  But first things first.  It was beautiful.  Absolutely beautiful.  All of Craig Thompson's work is beautiful and I love his style of drawing and how gorgeous it can be in just black and white.  So Habibi was no exception.  Beautiful as always.

Morning Glories Vol. 1 by Nick Spencer, Joe Eisma, and Rodin Esquejo

Morning Glory Academy is one of the most prestigious prep schools in the country. Only the intellectual elite are allowed into the hallowed halls. For the new students, this could be the start of an incredible future.

Casey is an outrageously smart girl, with a drive to outdo her peers and do what's right. Morning Glory is Ike's last chance after being kicked out of seven other schools, he is a privileged psychopath with no real desire to care for anyone else. Zoe always gets what she wants, especially if it's coming from a boy. Hunter is the boy next door, with a strong moral compass and a fatherly benevolence. Jade is a rather stereotypical emo, with a rather unhealthy crush on her teacher. Jun has an agenda and the abilities to carry them out, but no one else knows what they are. They think they're all special in some way, until they meet one another at Morning Glory Academy. As they try and survive orientation, they must question not only why they've been chosen for the school but also what the true agenda of the sadistic Miss Daramount is, and what else is inhabiting the school

I would like to state that I wasn't gung ho about this series when I picked it up. It sounded too violent and a bit cliche to hold anyone's attention. That's when I read the first ten pages and got bitch-slapped in the face and sucker-punched in the gut. This graphic novel is a fast-paced psychological thriller. Yes it's violent, and yes there's some romance, but it's also got more twists than the first season of Lost. I kept reading it and thinking, "What the what?" Well that's not really what I was thinking, but my parents read this so we'll keep it PG-13. Morning Glories never really lets you stop to ponder why something is, it is so crazy fast. It just leaves you with the absolute need to continue reading in the hope that something, anything, will be explained or some crumb of information will be handed to you. Instead Nick Spencer makes you work for it. You can't say once you've finished that you get anything in this literary universe, but you know that you crave a bit more. Fan-fricking-tastic.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Yeah, I know I'm seriously behind the times.  A few years ago when the entire world was reading this book, people kept asking me if I'd read it yet and what I'd thought and I'd say, "Yeah, it's on my to-read list."  However, my to-read list is about a million books long, and I just wasn't that interested.  It seemed to be one of those love-it-or-hate-it books.  Either people said it was the most amazing thing they'd ever read, or people were totally unimpressed, didn't know what the big deal was and discussed how it was clearly written by a middle-aged man, as no one else could write a book where female characters of various age kept jumping into bed with a middle-aged man.

I finally decided to read it because of the American version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is coming out and I saw the preview and it looked kind of awesome. And since I feel strongly about reading the book before seeing a movie based on a book, it was, at last, time to read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  So I did.

In case you've been living under a rock, or work in a field where you primary read YA literature, it is the story of Mikael Blomkvist, a respected journalist who's just been find guilty of libel, which puts a crimp in his career.  Blomkvist is hired by Henrik Vanger, the head of an old and powerful Swedish family to ghost-write his autobiography, but the real reason Vanger hired Blomkvist is to solve a decades old murder of his grand-niece, Harriet, who vanished without a trace in 1963.  Blomkvist joins forces with Lisbeth Salandar, a researcher with a photographic memory and authority issues.

Here's the interesting thing about this book: almost half of it was set-up.  Things didn't actually start happening until more than halfway through the book.  The story is so incredibly detailed that over 200 hundred pages are spent giving us all the background we need in order for the action to really start.  While this was kind of annoying after a bit, I was interested and involved enough (and horrified enough) to want to see where things were going to go, so I carried on and was reward with one royally fucked up story.  Whoa.  Holy shit.  I was so, so, so, not prepared.  How is it that whenever people talked about this book no one ever said, "Oh, P.S., not for the faint of heart."  Or maybe, "Involves graphic violence against women."  Or even, "You may want to throw up at various points while reading this book."  Something.  Anything.  I'd like to have been warned is all.  Because holy shit.  Fucked.  Up.  So disturbing. 

So...yeah.  It was certainly an engaging story.  Lots of twists and turns and near escapes and horrible, horrible things happening to people.  I kept reading, even when I was absolutely horrified, so well done book.  I am now a lot more wary about seeing the movie.  I also don't feel the need to read any of the subsequent volumes.  Unless the movie's really good and then I'll have to, I guess.

In conclusion: graphic violence against women.  A lot of it.  Just be prepared.

The Way We Fall by Megan Crewe

Kaelyn is living on an island that is part of Canada when an unknown virus suddenly appears.  It starts out just seemingly like a cold - sneezing, coughing.  But then it breaks down your social inhibitions.  Then the hallucinating starts, and then you're dead. Kaelyn's father, a microbiologist, is working hard to find a vaccination, but things are getting bad fast.  The island is quarantined, and even though they've been promised food and medicine from the government, no help seems to be coming.  Is it only a matter of time until the virus takes them all?

I classified this as a dystopia, but it isn't, not really.  It hasn't actually happened, so I guess it's sort of futuristic, but something like it could happen, and the world Kaelyn was in was our world today.  It isn't out of the realm of possibility.  It was particularly creepy reading it because everything that happened was possible.  It wasn't one of the "strange disease sweeps through and then everyone turns into brain eating zombies!"  It was like Outbreak.  A previously unknown virus shows up somewhere and people start dying.  It moves very fast and there isn't a whole lot of time to find a solution for it.

Ghost Projekt by Joe Harris

Will Haley, an American weapons inspector and Anya Romanova, a Russian detective are called in to examine an abandon Siberian research facility where something, possibly a weapon of mass destruction, has been stolen.  After the weapon disappears, people who once worked on the project during the Cold War start turning up dead.  There's nothing to show how they died, aside from a strange red rash.  Will and Anya must figure out what's going on as fast as they can, and what was really happening behind the Dosvidanya Projekt.

This was a bit dark, and definitely for an older, more mature audience.  The weapon that is unleashed goes around killing lots of people, which are graphically depicted.  There's also disturbing images because of what happened to a little girl named Natalia.  I found that more upsetting then the people dying.

This is the first in the series, and it mostly felt like a set-up for the rest of the series.  It gets the story moving, but not a whole lot happens in terms of plot, and I'm still not totally clear what exactly Natalia is, and how it seems she can both kill and heal people.  I'm interested to see where this goes though.

I would recommend this for grade 11 and up.

A Long Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan

Rosalinda Fitzroy wakes up to find that she's been in stasis for 62 years.  Her family is gone.  Everyone she knows is dead, including the love of her life, Xavier.  Rose learns that while she was asleep, the Dark Times happened, which killed millions of people and the world is completely changed.  One thing that has not changed is the existence and strength of her family's interplanetary company, which she is suddenly heir to.  Rose feels lost and confused and is just trying to fit in when she discovers her life may be in danger.

I really enjoyed this.  It was kind of a dystopia novel but not really.  The world Rose wakes up in really isn't all that bad.  Things are strange and different, and things are far from perfect, but not evil.  Although there is some evil in the world, of course.  I mean, it's a world with people.  It's a science fiction book that will appeal to the kids who love to read dystopia novels because it reads and feels like one, even though I don't think it really is.

Rose is of course very confused when she first wakes up.  The world has changed so dramatically and she doesn't know anyone.  She has to learn to use new technology.  She doesn't talk like the kids her age.  She's horrified to learn about the Dark Times and what happened, knowing that the people she knew went through that.  She misses Xavier terribly, and draws his face over and over again.  Most of the kids at school think she's a freak and won't come near her.  Rose is very passive.  She doesn't know how to speak up for herself.  She can't say what she wants or needs.  If something bad happens, she keeps it quiet.  As the book goes on, it becomes clearer why she's like this.

There was a bit of mystery to it.  The big question was "How did Rose get left in stasis for 62 years?"  Why didn't anyone notice?  Why didn't anyone look for her?  Why didn't Xavier look for her?  Those questions kept me eager to read and try to piece together what the world was like.  At first it seemed like stasis was used regularly in this world, like a recreational activity.  Rose got put in stasis all the time.  Rose was around 8 when Xavier was born, but over time he caught up with her.  Then it became clear that, no, stasis wasn't what everyone in this world did, just her.  So why did Rose's parents keep putting her to sleep?  How did she get forgotten, even if the Dark Times did come shortly after?

Spoilers!