2021 Cybils Finalists and Ones That Got Away

Alibrarymama did a great post on the Middle-Grade Spec Fic Cybils winners, so I'm going to shamelessly copy her and share the results of the YA Spec Fic panel's deliberations:

We had such a great list of nominees to read, but these are the ones we all agreed rose to the top of the list. See our blurbs for them here. Wonderful diversity in authors and content, and just excellent, excellent writing. Honestly, I don't know how the Second Round Judges are going to be able to decide among them! Links to my reviews, (except for Vespertine and The City Beautiful, which I haven't gotten around to reviewing yet!)

The Gilded Ones, by Namina Forna

The Mirror Season, by Anna Marie McLemore

Vespertine, by Margaret Rogerson

The Ones We're Meant to Find, by Joan He

Iron Widow, by Xiran Jay Zhao

The City Beautiful, by Aden Polydoros

Bad Witch Burning, by Jessica Lewis

There are so many other worthwhile books that we read, and it's worth mentioning some of my favourites (you can see most of these by just looking at my reviews from the past few months, but I'll put them in a list for you):

Aetherbound, by E.K. Johnston: possibly my favourite of hers yet, and that's saying a lot.

Fragile Remedy, by Maria Ingrande Mora: intimate, sweet dystopia

Mister Impossible, by Maggie Stiefvater: sequel to Call Down the Hawk, and it's so good!

We Can Be Heroes, by Kyrie McCauley: girl power and ghosts.

The Darkness Outside Us, by Eliot Schrefer: super twisty sci fi!

Defy the Night, by Brigid Kemmerer: princes and outlaws and a thoughtful plot.

The Theft of Sunlight, by Intisar Khanani: sequel to Thorn, which I loved. 

These Violent Delights, by Chloe Gong: Romeo and Juliet like you've never seen them!

The Wild Ones, by Nafiza Azad: so, so original! Luscious.

Chaos on CatNet, by Naomi Kritzer: sequel to Catfishing on CatNet and just as fun and dark.

You're welcome for all these new additions to your TBR!

Fragile Remedy, by Maria Ingrande Mora

Oh, my heart! Oh this book! Fragile Remedy is set in a relentlessly gritty, claustrophobically hopeless world (that bears a frightening resemblance to our own world), and yet it is one of the gentlest, tenderest stories I've ever read. It's about how to stay a decent human being when you have to make terrible choices just to survive. It depicts what love looks like to characters who don't know what it is because they've never been afforded it. And yet they still care for and protect and sacrifice for each other, and the worse the circumstances around them, the stronger grow their bonds of love and trust. This is what family is.

The world-building is intense and immersive. It took me a few chapters to decide I might like this book, because the slum neighborhood of the Withers is grim and disgusting. They eat seagulls and sludge rats. What a brilliant detail! And of course drug addiction and gang violence are constant threats.

Nate is a particularly vulnerable member of this outcast society, because he has been genetically engineered to have healing blood. He escaped being exploited by the elite in Gathos City, and now he has to keep his identity as a GEM secret from everyone else who might try to capitalize on his value to escape their desperate poverty. I loved this extreme metaphor for the exploitation that threatens the vulnerable in any society.

Fragile Remedy has some pretty searing social commentary, but the plot and the heart of the book focuses on Nate's relationship with two other young men: drug dealer Alden, and Reed, the leader of a found family of scavengers. Both Alden and Reed are protecting Nate in their own way, and the complexity of trust and loyalty among the three is exquisitely rendered. The problem of Nate's tenuous existence is developed in some really interesting ways, and all the characters were nuanced and thoughtfully developed, including the antagonists.

This book wouldn't let me go, and I'm still thinking about Nate and hoping he's going to be okay!

We Can Be Heroes, by Kyrie McCauley

Trigger warnings: school shootings, domestic violence

(Note: if you are a member of the NRA, you won't like this book)

We Can Be Heroes is a ghost story about anger, art and activism. There were a lot of things I liked about it, but I loved the friendship between the three girls. Beck and Vivian jumped off the page and Cassie slowly gained substance (you'll get what I did there when you read it!), and the dynamic, sometimes fraught bonds among them were lovely to watch. Also girls standing up for girls never gets old. Just saying.

[I can't help but notice a common thread of anger in a lot of this year's YA. It's an appalling truth that in 2021 there are still so many things to be angry about, and I can only applaud the authors giving us angry characters breaking rules to make things change.] [For more anger, art and activism, look for a One Billion Rising event in your area. Or start one.][We now return you to your regularly scheduled review.]

I loved Beck's use of women from Greek myths in her murals, reclaiming their stories to make sure Cassie's story gets told. Don't you love this great, incisive line: "If the hero dies, they call it a Greek tragedy, but when the heroine dies, it's a romance." Isn't that just the problem with western literature in a nutshell! (It's ever so slightly possible that I enjoyed this novel so much because I agreed so much with its very obvious message. Ahem.)

Okay, I know why this book struck such a chord with me: its theme that the story we tell ourselves—the stories we tell each other—about who we are, about what matters and who matters and how things ought to be—these stories change everything. And we each need the space, the permission, the power,  to tell our own stories. That's a message every girl should hear.

The Darkness Outside Us, by Eliot Schrefer

So, this is one of those I-can't-tell-you-anything-about-the-plot-so-how-am-I-supposed-to-review-this-book books. There's so much I want to tell you about that I can't! I finished this book last week and I'm still thinking about it, going over all the ramifications of what happened in the story and the choices the characters made, and the choices the author made about how to tell the story. It's just so interesting and provocative!

Okay, here: have you ever heard of the philosophy book Gödel, Escher, Bach, by Douglas Hofstadter? Mind blowing stuff about consciousness and computers and stuff that I understood about 1/18th of, maybe, but it was a lot of fun (and made me feel smart every time I understood a sentence!). Reading The Darkness Outside Us makes me want to go back and read that book.

That is not going to convince you to read this novel. Try again.

Trapped in a spaceship with an enemy and an AI that sounds like your mother: how long would it take you to go insane? This book plays with some familiar sci-fi tropes, layers in a life-or-death mystery, adds a sweet, weird love story (can't tell you why it's weird: too spoilery), and sends you on a mind trip of epic twistiness. It's fun, it has feels, it punches you in the gut, it makes you say, "But, wait ... no, hang on a minute: what??!" not just once but probably four or five times, and then it makes you go, "Huh. That's ... huh. There's a metaphor in here; let me think about this for a while."

And so here I am, a week later, still thinking about it and trying to get you to read the book so we can think about it together!

Iron Widow, by Xiran Jay Zhao

I was excited about this book, and worried it wouldn't live up to my expectations. It's gotten a lot of hype, and controversy, neither of which I particularly care about, but the premise of a Chinese-history-inspired sci-fi with giant fighting robots just sounded too fun!

Well, Iron Widow is a wild ride of a book, every bit as intense and entertaining as promised. (Note that if you think giant fighting robots are dumb, you may not enjoy it as much as I did!)(I mean, giant fighting robots are dumb, I am objectively aware of that. I have no idea why I think they are cool, but all the coolness is well and truly explored in this book!)(Also, familiarity with and appreciation of various anime tropes make it more likely that you'll enjoy Iron Widow.)

Xiran Jay Zhao has a clear and emphatic Message being conveyed through all the fun mayhem, but I never felt like I was being hit over the head with it—probably because I was too busy cheering Zetian while she hits lots of obnoxious things over the head, metaphorically and literally.

Zetian is about as bad-ass as they come. She's loosely based on the only female emperor of China, whose ascension to (and retention of) power is pretty mind-blowing when you consider the society she lived in. Xiran Jay Zhao recreates that society for us, exploring all its systemic misogyny through Zetian's visceral daily experience of it. Zetian's anger is the moral compass she uses to navigate this world so impossibly stacked against her, and it's so refreshing! (I'm not a violent person, I promise! I was actually a little worried that this book would be too dark and edgy—and yeah, it goes darker places than I was hoping, but, well, history.)

Too bad. I am exactly the kind of ice-blooded, rotten-hearted girl he fears I am. And I am fine with that.

May he stay unsettled.

 I'm all for themes of forgiveness and reconciliation in the real world, but the real world also has some pretty horrific things in it and we should be angry about them. This book is that anger. 

With giant fighting robots. 

 

Aetherbound, by E. K. Johnston

No E. K. Johnston book is like any other book in existence, including any other E. K. Johnston book. She has very specific stories to tell, and each book is told in the just right way for that story, which probably won't conform with any standard structures or tropes you're familiar with. So you have to come to each new book with an open mind and trust that Johnston is going to give you the story you need that you didn't even know you needed.

All that is preamble to say I didn't know I needed a retelling of the Fisher King myth, set in space with magic, but now my heart is wrung and my mind is slightly blown and I'm not sure how to review it. (Full disclosure: I have only the vaguest understanding of the Fisher King myth, and a quick google search is not helping me understand it any better; I didn't recognize this as a retelling until a reviewer mentioned it, even though Johnston specifically tells the Fisher King story in the middle of the book!) (To achieve healing you have to ask the right question—that's as far as my understanding goes.)

Right. The review. There's some harsh stuff in this book, no doubt about it, and it's very spoilery to tell you what it all is, but if you're concerned my Goodreads review has the spoilers. The reason you don't want to be spoiled is that we start with Pendt as a five-year old to whom all this is normal, and we only gradually discover, along with her, that it's unbearable. This is a book about autonomy, freedom, choice, and I think it's important to be in Pendt's head as she grows into a person who can make choices, who sees her opportunity and escapes, and sees her next opportunity and grabs it. I think the first section of the book is brilliant in the way Johnston controls POV so that we are a little appalled, then more appalled, then fiercely excited and terrified when Pendt escapes. (That's not a spoiler: it's on the book jacket!)

Then we get part 2, and another set of characters who are imprisoned in an entirely different way. The way Pendt's need to escape leads to a unique solution to all of their dilemmas is weird and strangely affirming. And all that is told as more of a background to the developing friendship among three young people who are essentially good and kind and trying to do the right thing in a very twisted universe.

One of the things I love about E. K. Johnston is her ability to portray goodness and kindness. In the end, I think that's what all her books are about, and the plots are just vehicles, scenarios in which goodness and kindness can play out. All the more highlighted when the universe is so completely the opposite of good and kind. I can't tell you how much I love Pendt and Ned and Fisher! (And there had better be a sequel, because that Stavenger Empire needs to be taken down!)(She hints at a sequel at the end, so here's hoping!)

Johnston's pacing is always odd, because she tells you what you need to know when you need to know it, and only shows you the things she thinks are important. Things can seem rushed and abrupt because she trusts her readers to keep up. She's doing it all very deliberately, so pay attention to where she spends her narrative time. (She definitely doesn't tell the story that most authors would tell and most readers would expect.) I need to reread and pay more attention myself to see all I missed the first time around.

Oh, and don't ask what the LGBTQ+ rep is, because you don't want to be spoiled! I thought the way she dealt with this particular character was quite brilliant and fun, and also very pointed. (It's never explicitly stated, because it shouldn't have to be.)

This isn't a book for everyone: the reviews will tell you that! But if you've liked more than one of Johnston's books (or if you like Patrick Ness—he's maybe the only comparable author out there*), and you're willing to go along for a very interesting ride, I can highly recommend this. (I think it's my second favourite of her books, after Exit, Pursued by a Bear.)

*If Johnston and Ness ever collaborated on a project, I'm pretty sure the universe would collapse into a singularity from so much originality and depth.

Cross-posted on Goodreads, and I should really post my other E. K. Johnston reviews there too.

Bad Witch Burning, by Jessica Lewis

This is a debut novel?? Unbelievably tight, emotion-packed writing, gripping plot, compelling characters. Just, wow.

There are some books where characters do stupid things and you roll your eyes and throw the book across the room. Then there are books like Bad Witch Burning, where you spend the whole time saying, "Noooo! Don't do it, Katrell, you know this won't end well!" but you completely understand why she's making these really bad choices and you think you might even make the same choices in her shoes.

Lewis depicts with searing, heart-wrenching intensity the physical, mental and emotional toll of poverty. When Katrell finds out she can raise the dead, and people will pay her for it, we feel her utter conviction that There Is No Way Out for her and of course she has to keep performing necromancy despite the terrible consequences. And what interesting consequences: the story is slow-burn creepy and it will surprise you. The pacing of the reveals is particularly well-done.

This is a paranormal book but it isn't about the magic: we don't find out why Katrell has this power, there aren't other witches around, there isn't a magic system. It's a very focused story that uses the horror of the paranormal as a brilliant metaphor for the very real horrors of Katrell's life and the impossible choices she has to make. Lest I scare you off, thinking it's a dismal, depressing read, there are some wonderful characters who are There for Katrell, and Katrell herself is an engaging narrator with attitude to spare. It's a hard book to read, but I couldn't put it down. I loved Katrell to pieces and her journey was fascinating.

Trigger warnings for physical and emotional abuse and violence against a dog. 

The Gilded Ones, by Namina Forna

 

The Gilded Ones is a fierce tale of friendship and loyalty in a strikingly original world. In Otera, "impure" girls bleed gold, proving their demonic nature, and yet no girl knows if she is impure until the Rite of Purification, when, if she does turn out to be impure, she is summarily given the Death Mandate. What a powerful metaphor for the impossible double standard used to repress and control women in so many cultures!

When Deka finds out that she is impure, she is given the opportunity to escape a truly horrific fate, only to face a possibly even more horrific life training to defend the empire against monsters. There is a lot of quite brutal violence and abuse in this book, so much so that I became desensitized to it, which I don't think was Forna's intention. (Apparently she based a lot of the book on her childhood experiences in Sierra Leone during a civil war. Considering the reality of what women do face every day in many parts of the world makes this book extremely difficult to read.) 

The nature of these gold-blooded girls, or alaki, is very strange, and I wasn't sure I was convinced at first, but Forna develops her mythology solidly and keeps us invested in the characters. The training school scenes focus on the developing friendships between Deka and the other alaki trainees, and I loved these interactions and relationships. There are some great magical beasts, too. There are perhaps a few too many really significant revelations in the last part of the book—things are suddenly moving very fast and everything gets turned upside-down pretty quickly—but it all mostly ties together, and there are some great fist-pumping moments for all the characters we care about.

Great themes of what makes someone monstrous, and wonderful, empowering female friendships.

Mr. Impossible, by Maggie Stiefvater

It took me a while to get to this sequel to Call Down the Hawk, because I didn't love Hawk as much as I wanted to, and I didn't want to keep not loving the story about Ronan. Because, Ronan! And Matthew and Declan! I guess there was just too much plot in the first book, maybe? Lots of really weird stuff happening and I wasn't wrapping my head around it.

Mister Impossible sorts out all that plot and makes me care immensely about it. And I guess we needed Hawk to set everything up so that all this amazing character growth could happen in Mister Impossible. Character arcs like you wouldn't believe, people!

Brief backtrack to set context: Ronan Lynch (and his brothers Declan and Matthew) are beloved characters from Stiefvater's Raven Boys series, which I highly recommend, and which you don't exactly have to read before you read this series, but I think you'll care a lot more if you do. 

Mister Impossible is the second book in the Dreamers series, which focuses on Ronan's ability to bring real things out of his dreams—and the consequences of that ability, for both Ronan and his family and for the world. The magic of it is really cool, and I love that Stiefvater makes the consequences so real and Ronan's dilemmas so impossible. Lots of great discussions of identity and personhood and what is reality, anyway? Jordan and Hennessy weren't my favourite new characters in Hawk, but now I love them both intensely.

Excellent twist at the end, I must say! We need a happy ending for all of these characters, dear Maggie: please give us a happy ending for all these deeply flawed, hurt, desperate characters who are so busy blowing themselves up that they can't see how loved they are. Now I have to wait for the third book, arrgh!

Defy the Night, by Brigid Kemmerer

Defy the Night is a fun, fast-paced fantasy that adds a bit of nuance to the tropes of good-hearted outlaws and cruel-by-necessity monarchs. The plot device of an illness that only a rare ingredient can cure is perhaps more topical than you might want to read about, but it did make the book resonate a little more than it might have otherwise. 

The strength of the book is in the character relationships, and Tessa, Wes, King Harristan and Prince Corrick are all compelling characters with believable, complex tensions between them. I wanted them all just to trust each other and be able to work together, and there are so many reasons why they can't.

The world-building is fairly scant, just a background for the plot to happen in, and the politics were pretty simplified, but really, it was all just an excuse for Tessa and Corrick to face off against each other in various settings, and I was all there for that! I did appreciate that the ending looked for different solutions than the all-or-nothing battles typical of fantasy.

The Mirror Season, by Anna-Marie McLemore

The Mirror Season is a stunning, devastating book. Big huge trigger warning for graphic sexual assault. But it's such an incredibly healing, affirming, cathartic, book.  I can't possibly recommend or not recommend it to anyone, since I don't have that trauma in my life to deal with. But I can say that she deals with it gently and ruthlessly, like a nurse picking broken glass out of a wound.

The writing is gorgeous. If you've read McLemore before you know her prose is vibrant and lyrical. In this book I think she is a little more spare, more precise. Every word exactly the right one in the right place. In her previous books I've enjoyed the colour and depth magic realism brings to her stories, but the connections, the metaphors didn't always land for me. In this one, metaphor and magic realism and allusions to The Snow Queen interweave so brilliantly to illuminate her themes and characters that when I wasn't sobbing about what was happening on the page I was crying with how beautifully it was all coming together. 

Probably the best book I've read all year. I love Ciela and Lock with all the pieces of my broken heart.

Also, I need to find a pastelería so I can try pan dulce in all its delicious-sounding variations! And I looked up a recipe for cazuela, and that's what we're having for dinner tonight (except I don't have any of the right spices or chilies, so it will be a pale imitation).

These Violent Delights, by Chloe Gong

What an ambitious book! Let's retell Romeo and Juliet, set in 1920s Shanghai, during the rise of the Communist Party. Let's make Juliette the heir to the Cai criminal empire, and Roma the Montagov heir, representing Chinese and Russian gangs fighting for control of the city. Add in the European political and mercantile factions, choosing sides, and the Communist Party threatening all power structures, local or foreign, legitimate or gang. Oh, and let's also add in a disgusting monster spreading a terrible madness everywhere it goes. 

The setting of These Violent Delights is awesome, and the way Gong works it into her plot is brilliant. Some of the Romeo and Juliet work-ins felt contrived to me, but she does cool things with the story, twisting it in interesting ways. Roma and Juliette are compelling characters—not immediately likeable. Juliette is a hard, violent person, and Gong doesn't glorify the violence. I appreciated that even when she's being particularly kick-ass against people whose asses definitely need kicking, we don't avoid the uncomfortable questions about Juliette's methods. There are some great side characters that kept me invested even when I wasn't so sure about our mains!

The monster is creepy, gory and terrifying, and makes a great metaphor for the forces tearing Shanghai apart. The mystery of where it comes from and how to stop it drives most of the plot, which I thought wandered somewhat in the middle. I didn't think it needed to be quite that convoluted. But the character relationships kept me reading, and the climax is tense and satisfying. 

There will be a sequel, which I'm not sure I'll read, because that monster is haunting my nightmares!

The Ones We're Meant to Find, by Joan He

It's your last day to nominate books for the Cybils! 

I'm going to try doing mini-reviews for the next little while, as I have a lot of books to read and won't possibly be able to keep up with reviewing them all, but I want to get down my feelings before I forget them.

The Ones We're Meant to Find is an impossible book to review, actually. It has so many mind-blowing plot twists that I can't tell you anything about what happens. It had me scratching my head and rereading passages and flipping back to check previous chapters several times to figure out what was going on, because you make certain assumptions and then it turns out they're all completely wrong. Except maybe the most important ones. 

It's also hard to review because I'm still not sure how I feel about it. It's compelling and frustrating in almost equal doses (but more compelling!). It's dense, as in, it packs a ton of world- and character- and plot-building into not very much space, so it feels fast-paced even though it doles out its mysteries agonizingly slowly! I loved the characters—they were brilliantly done and I cared desperately for all of them. The writing was beautiful. The world was fascinating and a very pointed critique of our own—but there were some elements that were hand-waved a bit too unbelievably for me. The plot was crazy clever and intriguing, but by the end I felt a little manipulated. Too much whiplash, too much milking the surprise reveals without giving time to digest the really interesting philosophy being explored. But on the other hand, manipulation is one of the themes, so having that experience as a reader is actually a plus for the book!

Do I recommend it? Highly! I really want everyone to read it so we can all have long interesting discussions about all He's really cool ideas! Do I love it? Almost! I think for me the twistiness of the plot ended up distancing me from the characters, so that the final dilemmas felt more mechanical than heart-wrenching to me. But I admire the book so much for how it weaves the personal and the political and forces the reader to ask really hard questions about our own humanity. Definitely worth reading.

Cybil's Shortlists are out!

January 1st is when the Cybils Round One Judges announce the shortlists they pass on to the Second Round of judging, and these are always books well worth reading. I am hoping that 2021 will be a year with a lot more headspace for discovering new books, so I'm adding these to my TBR.

Young Adult Speculative Fiction

Patrick Ness has a new book? You don't have to tell me anything more: I'm in. It has dragons? And is set in an alternate history Pacific Northwest during the Cold War? With dragons?? Pretty sure I'll be reading this one tomorrow!

The others sound good, too: I've heard a lot of good things about Cemetery Boys, and when Kiersten White's take on Guinevere came out I flagged it for myself. The others are new to me and I'm excited to check them out!

Young Adult Fiction

Not going to lie: a lot of these choices sound very heavy and depressing to me, and as important and relevant as they may be, they are not what I want to read right now. But there's one about fútbol that sounds like a lot of fun! Furia is set in Argentina, about a girl who plays football (or soccer as North Americans strangely call it!) in secret because of her family's rigid disapproval.

Middle-Grade Speculative Fiction

These ones all sound perfectly fantastic and right up my alley! A Thai, magic retelling of Les Miserables? Yes please! Some fun and original-sounding witches, a kid dealing with anxiety on Mars, and a great Halloween read about a town with a dark secret ... I will be checking all these out as soon as possible!

Middle-Grade Fiction

I love how many different realities are represented here. There's poverty, grief, injustice and abuse, but it looks like there's a lot of resilience and friendship. I had already added From the Desk of Zoe Washington to my TBR; now I have more!

And I'm already a little overwhelmed, but you can go on to check out the other lists, including graphic novels, picture books and non-fiction.

Cybils winner: Fireborne, by Rosaria Munda

We had a fantastic slate of books to choose from this year, but it turned out to be an easy choice, because every judge loved Fireborne. Tense, gripping and thoughtful, with a fascinating premise and heart-grabbing characters, this debut novel blew us all away with its excellent writing and important themes.

I'm so happy this book won, because it hasn't gotten a lot of notice, and it's really, really good.

I don't know about the books they're comparing it to: doesn't seem remotely like Game of Thrones to me (thank goodness!). Seraphina I can maybe see a little. I think the best description of it is Plato's Republic meets the French Revolution, but with dragons. It's very political, but what I loved is that all the political issues are brought to life with characters and their personal dilemmas, and there's no simplistic good-guy/bad-guy dichotomy.

The revolution succeeded—we defeated the unjust, power-hungry aristocracy—but at what cost? And is the new meritocracy we created better enough to justify what we did to achieve it? Questioning the reality behind the rhetoric is a desperately important skill these days, and I love the way this book deals with truth, lies, propaganda—fake news. Then there's blind devotion to a cause, versus finding out your heroes aren't what you thought they were. Really meaty stuff!

I'm all about characters, always, and I loved Lee/Leo and Annie. He's the son of an aristocrat who watched his family get brutally executed. She's a peasant whose family was burned to death by an aristocrat's dragonfire. The story of their friendship is compelling. Their unacknowledged feelings for each other combined with the truths of their past make the tension of their competition to become lead dragonrider riveting!

Loyalty is one of my favourite themes, and I loved watching all the characters navigate through the conflicting pulls of family, friends, mentors, duty, morality. YA books live for impossible choices: what I loved about Fireborne is that none of the agonizing dilemmas felt contrived in any way. I completely believed in, and ached for, all the choices Lee and Annie and their friends had to make.

If I had to say anything negative about this book, it would be that I wished there was more about the dragons and their connections to their riders. But really, there was hardly time, with all the plot twists and action!

The writing was assured and quite lovely. I particularly enjoyed her use of epic poetry (adapted from The Aeneid, apparently) to give heft to emotional beats.

The second book in what looks like a trilogy won't be out until 2021, alas. There was a nice conclusion to this novel but the story continues, and I will be there for it!

Roasted winter vegetables with herbs and lemon (I can't get enough of roasted vegetables lately: the sweetness, the heartiness) and a rotisserie chicken. So satisfying!

Cybils Shortlists Announced!

The Round 1 judges are finished their deliberations (having read many, many wonderful nominated books) and have come up with their shortlists. Here's the YA Spec Fic shortlist, and my reading for the next month:

I'm very excited about all of them! Stay tuned: we announce the winners next month!

Tess of the Road wins Cybil award!

I'm so happy, and so proud of Rachel Hartman (she's not only Canadian—she lives right here in Vancouver!). Tess is such a deserving book. Here's my review of it, in case you need more convincing to try it out. Books like this are why I read and blog about YA literature.

I've been on an unintentional blog hiatus for the last several months. Life has been taking up too much brain space for me to feel like writing, particularly something as self-indulgent as a blog about books I like. But the announcement of the Cybils' winners seemed like a good reason to climb back onto the blogging wagon. There are worthy books out there, and if I can get even one more person to hear about a book they'll love, then maybe that's a tiny bit of good I'm doing the world.

I did want to highlight the other books on the YA Spec Fiction shortlist, because they were all fabulous—and so diverse—and it's too bad only one can win!


Dread Nation I reviewed here. It's gotten quite a lot of press, but it lives up to the hype, and I can't wait for the sequel. I'm really not a fan of zombies, but this was way too much fun to miss.

Mirage was gorgeous and entirely original, and held my attention through an audio book (which I normally can't sit through because they take so long!). It's got a space opera setting, but it feels like intimate fantasy, with a princess, her body-double, a hostage prince and a rebellion. Lovely, poetic but spare writing, believable characters, rich Moroccan-based mythology and imagery, a sweet, impossible romance but an even more compelling relationship between Amani and the princess she first hates, then pities, then comes to understand. Evocative and beautiful.

Summer of Salt: this one was quirky, magical and a little heart-wrenching, with heaps of weather-y island atmosphere and a fascinating cast of characters. Twin sisters from a long line of magical women, a famous, mysterious bird, a very odd murder investigation, lesbian romance and sisterly support. Funny and sweet with a core of wildness and the smell of salt in the breeze.

Not Even Bones is dark, gory, seriously twisted, and I can't believe I loved it as much as I did! A protagonist who dissects the dead bodies her mother brings home so the magical body parts can be sold on the black market—and who really enjoys her work—how could I possibly love this character? But Nita is so brilliantly crafted that I was on her side from the start. She's unapologetic, fierce, resourceful, thoughtful, ruthless and very self-aware. Then there's Kovit—you want complex villains? You want to know how to humanize a monster? You would want Heath Ledger to play this character, I'm just saying. I found this book utterly compelling and the twist at the end seriously messed me up: need sequel now!

Pitch Dark: to be honest, the plot didn't make a whole lot of sense, but I didn't care, it was so much fun! It takes the whole woken-unexpectedly-out-of-stasis-on-a-spaceship-to-find-monsters-chasing-everyone space horror trope and mashes it (quite literally: they crash into each other!) with space-archaeologists-with-political-agendas-racing-to-save-humanity-from-terrorists (because, you know, that's totally a trope). Two strong, likeable protagonists narrate a thrill ride of non-stop action with a side-order of social commentary. If you liked the Illuminae series, you'll love this.

This Mortal Coil has yet another insane premise: people can now rewrite their own DNA, and our survivalist heroine is a genius gene-hacker hiding from a "shadowy organization" that has kidnapped her father, the only man who can cure the plague decimating the world. There's post- (or rather mid-) apocalypse on-the-run-from-scary-people-while-trying-to-save-the-world (with-a-really-hot-soldier-you-probably-shouldn't-trust) shenanigans and enough plot twists to make you question your own version of reality, as Cat certainly has to question hers.

So many good books! Such diversity of characters, writers, settings, atmospheres and themes. This is why YA literature is so awesome! Yay Cybils for celebrating all these good writers: go check out all the categories and find out what you have to read next.

Cybils nominations are open!

It's official: the 2018 Cybils Awards have begun! You can now nominate your favourite kids/YA books of 2018. Yes, you, whoever you are! Here is the announcement page with all the categories you can nominate in. And here is the link to the nomination form.

Please nominate awesome books that deserve to get awards! And then go ahead and use the nominee lists to make your TBR pile even longer!

My job is to read as many of the YA Spec Fic nominees as I can and collaborate with my fellow Round 1 Judges to come up with a short list, from which the Round 2 judges will pick a winner next February. I will be posting quickie reviews of as many of the books I read as I can, so follow along, and feel free to weigh in on which books you loved. The more conversation that goes on, the better! That's what the awards are all about.

Song of the Current, by Sarah Tolcser

February was flu month. 'Nuff said.

In consequence, I completely missed blogging about the Cybils Awards, which is a shame, because they were fun, but hey—books keep existing (it's one of the great things about them), so I can still talk about the winners and finalists and ones I loved even if I'm a bit late.

Song of the Current was my favourite of the YA Spec Fic nominees that I read (though I was quite happy that we all agreed on Scythe as the winner, because it was also great).

I may have liked Song best because the setting on a river boat in the fens reminded me of Swallows and Amazons, one of my favourite childhood book series. (And I love books about boats that let me pretend I'm an expert sailor myself!) Or maybe I loved it because one of the main plot elements (which I almost spoiled for you because it's pretty easy to see coming, but I'll be quiet about it!) is a trope I particularly enjoy.

But I think mostly I loved it because of Caro: daughter of a wherry-boat captain, raised on a boat, still waiting to hear the river god's voice so she can be a captain herself, but when needs must she ups and does what has to be done, whether she feels qualified for it or not. I love practical, competent heroines; I love watching them be skilled and confident and then stretch themselves by using those skills in new, scary situations, like piracy.

I also get a kick out of the exasperated banter you get when two people with very different competencies underestimate each other, and there's lots of that! And I'm a fan of romance that starts with exasperated banter and ends up with characters learning to respect and trust each other.

The plot had just enough politics and intrigue to be interesting without getting confusing. Plus pirates, so, yay! (I mean, hurrah!) There was a great cast of characters, including Caro's two very different parents who have their own goals and priorities but are still supportive and loving (here's to more supportive, loving parents in kidslit!). Also cousins and sisters and various other family relationships that I'm a fan of.

The worldbuilding was immersive and gorgeous—I've mentioned the boats once or twice, I think! I was quite happy when the ending seemed to indicate a sequel would be forthcoming (not a cliffhanger, but we definitely want to know what happens next), because I want to spend a lot more time in this world with these characters.

Seafood chowder, home made with potatoes and cream and big chunks of salmon and cod and scallops (and mussels if you like them, but you'll have to eat mine for me).

Cybils Nominees that caught my eye: YA Spec Fic

I'm a Second Round Judge for the YA Spec Fic category again this year—really looking forward to it!—but I've been a bit preoccupied with Nepal and NaNoWriMo, and I haven't been paying attention to the nominees. Turns out there are a number of awesome books (of course), some of which I've already read, and some of which I happened (completely coincidentally)(except that there's probably a reason the librarians put them out on the New and Notable shelf)(gotta love librarians) to pick up at the library recently.

In this post I'll just quickly let you know which nominees I've read and which books sitting on my shelf are nominees this year. In my next post I'll highlight books I'm excited about for various reasons (mostly because fellow bloggers have raved about them).

Of the books I mentioned in my last post, Maggie Stiefvater's All the Crooked Saints, E.K. Johnston's That Inevitable Victorian Thing, and M.T. Anderson's Landscape with Invisible Hand are all nominees. I (and my librarians) clearly have excellent taste in books. I also was back at the library a few days ago and was thrilled to see a new Kristin Cashore book, Jane Unlimited. So that's now on my shelf, too, and it's a nominee.

Nominees I've read (with links to my reviews):

Spindle, by E. K. Johnston
Strange the Dreamer, by Laini Taylor
The White Road of the Moon, by Rachel Neumeier. (Afraid I never got around to reviewing this one.)
Thick as Thieves, by Megan Whalen Turner







And here are a few more Nepal pics. Last time I gave you pretty pics. Here are some more urban scenes:


Colorfully decorated buses

Crazy vehicles in Bhaktapur

Note the sign for the Cyber Cafe in ancient Bhaktapur

Cows really do just wander around everywhere

I found myself using the word "juxtaposition" a lot in Nepal

Colourfully decorated trucks, and the terrifying road we took to get to our trek in Langtang Valley.