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!

Library books I don't have time to read right now!

I went to the library to get a copy of The Goblin Emperor, so I could reread it and get ideas for twisty court politics (for the novel I'm currently writing)(29287 words so far; I'm falling behind target, but there's still a chance I can make 50,000 by the end of the month!). Also I just love The Goblin Emperor so much.

But look what else I found!

Maggie Stiefvater's latest, All the Crooked Saints: it looks like magic realism and I'm really curious about the miracles. People say it's very different from her other books, but I'm willing to go there with her.

Another new one from E.K. Johnston! I didn't even know this one was coming! Everything about That Inevitable Victorian Thing is exciting to me, from the title and cover to the premise: in a near-future Victorian Empire with genetically arranged matchmaking, a princess, a shipping magnate and a scientist spend a summer together of "high-society debutante balls, politically-charged tea parties, and raucous country dances." What is not to like about that plot?!

M. T. Anderson has a really intriguing-looking short book called Landscape With Invisible Hand, about invading aliens who have a thing for "classic" Earth culture. Sounds like lots of potential for satire. The name of the aliens (the vuvv) totally reminds me of The True Meaning of Smekday, one of the funniest books of all time, so I am predisposed to like this one.

Spare and Found Parts, a debut novel by Sarah Maria Griffin about a girl with a mechanical heart who decides to build the boy of her dreams. Sounds cool!

I haven't had time to read any of these, yet, but I'll let you know when I do!

In the meantime, a few pics from Nepal:


Okay, not technically in Nepal. But we stopped to see the Taj Mahal on the way! (Along with 20,000 other people, of course.)

Typical scenery: rice paddies, hills, and four-story buildings.

The ancient royal city of Bakhtapur

One of my favourite pics.

New Maggie Stiefvater!

Thought you might be as excited as I was when I saw her post:

I finally get to tell y’all the release date and title of my next novel: it’s a young adult standalone novel, it’s coming out on 10/10/17, and it’s called ALL THE CROOKED SAINTS.

No cover yet, but definitely go to her blog to see the very cool art she did "inspired" by the novel.

I'm almost as excited about this as I am about the new Megan Whalen Turner. (May! It's coming in May! It's almost May, right??)

If you follow my blog, then you probably already know and love both these authors, but if by some chance you haven't read anything by either of them, you must immediately drop everything you were doing, sweep the rest of your TBR off the shelf, and start either The Thief or The Raven Boys. No, really, I promise, you have to.

Also, just because I'm squeeing about stuff I'm waiting for:

MMGM: A bunch of fun books

Guaranteed to get you out of a November slump (the sun sets so early this time of year, it can be really depressing!) Here are a bunch of books from the Middle-Grade Cybils nominees that I found at my library and greatly enjoyed:

Diary of a Mad Brownie, by Bruce Coville—Angus was a hilarious narrator, and I loved his difficult relationship with his new—very messy—human, Alex. The curse was delightful and the plot resolution was very satisfying. Lots of chuckle-out-loud moments. Yummy like Cherry Blasters (those sour candies in the shape of cherries, like Fuzzy Peaches but better)

Harriet the Invincible, by Ursula Vernon—funny and brilliant on so many levels. I never liked the Sleeping Beauty story until I met Harriet, the Hamster Princess, who realizes the incredible upside of the evil fairy's curse: if she's going to get pricked by a hamster wheel when she's twelve, then obviously until then she can't die. So off she goes to jump off cliffs, rescue princesses from dragons (and dragons from princesses) and deal with those nasty Ogrecats. Really cute illustrations and really clever jokes. (An example: "Princesses do not go cliff-diving." "I bet lemming princesses do.") I just hope it reaches its audience, because the cover makes it look like a very easy reader, and I think it's for the same readership as Captain Underpants, or Diary of a Wimpy Kid. (Every bit as funny as Captain Underpants, which is my benchmark for awesome humour.) Salted caramel chocolate chip cookies—my brother makes them; they're to die for.

Pip Bartlett's Guide to Magical Creatures, by Jackson Pearce and Maggie Stiefvater—what if the Tribbles spontaneously caught fire when they got excited? That's the chaos-inciting premise of this fluffy adventure. Fuzzles are smaller than Tribbles: small enough to hide in your underwear drawer, which is a problem when the town is overrun with them, and whenever people find them in their underwear drawers the people tend to shriek a lot, which gets the fuzzles excited, and then . . . lots of slapstick humour in this one. I loved the other hilarious magical creatures, like the paranoid unicorn and the toxically smelly hobgrackle. I also liked that the adults both helped and hindered in realistic ways. Peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

These two aren't actually on this year's Cybils list, but their sequels are (and the sequels weren't in the library yet, so I read these ones in the meantime!)

The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, by Jeanne Birdsall—I adore this family of clever, loyal, proactive sisters who get into the most ridiculous situations just by being themselves. Birdsall captures families perfectly, in all their chaotic, messy, hilarious, fierce and tender reality. I love books with characters so leap-off-the-page fully-drawn that you have to smile just thinking about them. This one (Gardam Street) is the second in the series, and the one that came out this year (Penderwicks in Spring) is the fourth. I'm so happy I still have two more to read (and it looks like there will be a fifth one, too).

Giants Beware! by Rafael Rosado and Jorge Aguirre—what's not to love about this band of friends who march off to slay a giant and only survive their adventures because of the surprising talents they each turn out to have. Clean, bright artwork and a full cast of interesting characters, including the adults (I loved Claudette's father.) This is book one, and the sequel, Dragons Beware!, came out this year.

Blue Lily, Lily Blue, by Maggie Stiefvater

Well, she did it again.

Have you ever used a juicer? You throw whole fruits and vegetables in at the top and out the bottom comes all the flavour and nutrients and juicy goodness extracted into a cup of pure concentrated apple essence. Or carrot. Or whatever.

The point is, Maggie Stiefvater is a juicer. When she writes, she extracts all the emotion and drama and knucklebiting tension and aweful magic out of her ideas and delivers them to us in juicy, concentrated scenes of pure oomph. Every scene. Like a fist to the gut.

If you've been enjoying the Raven Cycle, you know you have to read Blue Lily, Lily Blue, and I can assure you you won't be disappointed in any way. More magic. Greater understanding of Glendower and what he might be doing in West Virginia and why these particular characters are the ones who might be able to find him. More in-depth character and relationship development. You didn't think they could be developed any deeper? Oh! Adam and Ronan and Gansey and Blue. Noah, too. And the Grey Man. (I love the Grey Man.) Just, oh, my heart!

If you haven't yet started the Raven Cycle, you can't start here. (I mean, you could, because she gives enough little hints about what happened before that you probably wouldn't be too confused. But why would you?) Go get The Raven Boys—I'm sure your library has a copy—and get to know the boys as Blue does. I promise you'll get completely sucked into this story of sentient forests and dreams and psychics and ghosts and friendship and sleeping kings. And other sleepers who must definitely not be wakened.

In case you didn't realize, the Raven Cycle is more than three books long. This one ain't the end! Stiefvater is excellent at completing a satisfying story arc while leaving significant questions unanswered so you are heavily invested in reading the next book. Which we now have to wait for. (It's not a cliffhanger, though. Unless you read the epilogue. Then, yeah, not so much hanging off a cliff as stepping off it and wondering when you're going to start falling.)

Sticking with the juice metaphor, I'll say Blue Lily is the freshly squeezed orange juice I had every morning for breakfast in Morocco. (The oranges in Morocco taste so much better than any other orange you have ever had anywhere else. Seriously. You must go to Morocco just to taste the oranges there.)

The Dream Thieves, by Maggie Steifvater

So, it turns out the Maggie Steifvater event is next week. Still excitedly anticipating hearing her speak! In the meantime, I can review The Dream Thieves, which I bought in hardcover along with The Raven Boys, because they're quite beautiful.

I re-read The Raven Boys before starting Dream Thieves, and let me tell you, it's an entirely different book when you read it knowing what happens at the end! Wonderful, getting all the things you missed the first time around (wondering how on earth you missed them when it's so blatantly obvious what's going on!) (My Goodreads review of it is here. It definitely gets 5 stars on the reread.)

Man, I love Blue, Gansey, Adam, Ronan, Noah. The most interesting characters are always the wounded ones, the scarred ones, the ones with baggage. Does Steifvater ever know how to give her characters pain!

Dream Thieves is about Ronan. (Yay!) We learn more about his past, his fraught relationship with his brother, his inheritance from his father. His magical power is pretty cool and scary. The relationships amongst the friends get more complicated. The plot thickens in all dimensions. And there are two new totally awesome antagonists (I tried to think of a more intellectual way to say 'totally awesome' but really I just want to squee about them.) I love the Gray Man! (You know, in the way you love terrible bad guys because they're so good at being terrible.)

The Raven Cycle so far is tense and juicy and full of conflict, and have I mentioned the character development? The Dream Thieves is a great second book: it has its own plot arc, so it doesn't just feel like "and the characters kept doing stuff until the third book happened"; but it still tantalizes you with developments that you need to know more about. I anxiously await the third book in the cycle (wonder if that word means it's more than a trilogy?).

Slow-cooked beef and mushroom stew with red wine and caramelized onions: rich and savoury with layers of all the flavours, sweet, tangy, salty, bitter, umami. Something you can really get your teeth into.

Overdue Books

I've got a stack of library books collecting fines on my desk because I still want to blog about them, so I think I'd better do a bunch of quickies and clear the desk for the next lot.

I have been doing relatively short reviews on Goodreads for some of the books I finish, and I guess it is considered kosher to copy reviews from your blog to Goodreads and vice versa, so that's what I'm going to do.

I was hooked as soon as I heard the premise of Seraphina, by Rachel Hartman. Seraphina is assistant court musician in a renaissance-like country that is renewing a peace treaty with dragons. Her job is to create the musical entertainment for the dragon king's state visit--but Seraphina has secrets of her own that may make the difference between peace and war. Hartman has a great take on dragons--original and fascinating. I loved how the novel explored the idea of peace between two species with such a history of violence. It reminded me of Speaker for the Dead with its exploration of how we could possibly coexist with a race so Other, and so dangerous to us. Can we afford to trust them? Can we afford not to?

Great characters: complex, interesting, real. Loved that Seraphina is a musician, loved the use of music in the novel. Loved the dragon characters and their wrestle with human emotions. Especially Orma--oh, he was wonderful! And the creatures in Seraphina's garden were way cool.

Cool plot: unpredictable, intelligent. Doesn't end on a cliffhanger but there will be a sequel and I'm excited to find out where she takes it.

If you're looking for something different than all the other YA fantasy out there, check this out. (If you like Sherwood Smith and Robin McKinley, this will be up your alley.)

When I reviewed The Scorpio Races (on my blog), I said it "grabbed me with its sharp teeth and carried me out to drown into a stormy sea." The Raven Boys wasn't as immediate or violent in its effect on me, but in the end I think it was just as powerful. It was more like being led hesitantly into a forest--following a raven that stares at you and hops from branch to branch and looks back to see if you're coming. And by the time you realize that you're completely lost it doesn't matter, because there's so much to discover in the forest and you never want to go home.

This book has to do with psychics and ley lines, omens, sentient forests, and a sleeping king; but really it's all about the characters. Deep, fascinating, quirky, wounded, unpredictable, annoying, vulnerable, break-your-heart characters. Every one of them. I loved them, I wanted to throttle them, I couldn't wait to see how their relationships would develop. There's so much more I want to know about them!

My Goodreads review is somewhat longer; you can go here to see it if you want. I won't tell you anything about the plot, though. It's best if you don't really know anything.

I read Girl of Fire and Thorns when it came out a few years ago, and was impressed. Court, magic, adventure, romance--but a unique take on it all, and a unique heroine. The romance isn't at all predictable, and Elisa develops in interesting and believable ways as she tries to be the queen her people need her to be.

Crown of Embers is as good or better. There's danger, treachery, and the difficult decisions a queen has to make, when she has to do what's best for her country rather than following her heart. I like that Elisa has to experiment with trusting people she doesn't want to trust, including herself. This book ended in an interesting place, so I'll definitely be looking out for the sequel.

Catherine Fisher has gotten a fair bit of press for her very original and compelling books Incarceron and Saphhique. When I saw this earlier series in the library I was intrigued. I've only read the first book, The Dark City, so I think I'll wait to do a full review when I've read the rest, but I'm definitely hooked. It's an interesting take on the advanced-technology-looks-like magic and repressive-regime-tries-to-suppress-it plot line. What sold it for me was the characters: bitter Galen, his patient apprentice Raffi, and complicated Carys. Fisher has a thing for dark, broken underground places which I don't necessarily share, but I was willing to follow these characters anywhere.

The Scorpio Races and Grave Mercy

Carnivorous horses and assassin nuns: what's not to like! (I'm actually very mild-mannered and I hate conflict. Really, truly.)

I have to start by confessing that I'm not a huge Maggie Stiefvater fan. At least, I wasn't until now. The Scorpio Races grabbed me with its sharp teeth and carried me out to drown into a stormy sea. Everything about this book was vivid and compelling. The island, with its scent and its storms and its modern mask over an ancient culture revolving around the water horses. The capaill uisce themselves, terrifying, unpredictable, horse-like but so not horses. (They were so convincingly frightening that I had trouble believing that Puck would actually race them--my one quibble about the plot.) I loved the two characters who alternate telling the story: mysterious, skilled, respected-but-not-liked Sean, and fierce, desperate, angry Puck. I loved the romance, nicely understated and full of conflict, because they both really need to win.

The Scorpio Races is about carnivorous horses who come ashore only on this island and are captured for the annual race, which has mythic significance beyond what the tourists recognize. But really it's about the people, their relationship to the horses, to the island, and to each other. No, that sounds boring. It's about  dreaming, longing for something that is denied. It's about taking huge risks and making huge sacrifices. No, that doesn't adequately convey it. I can't really explain what it's about. It just oozes with atmosphere and intensity. Maggie Stiefvater writes beautifully. Her previous novels (about werewolves and fairies) just weren't that interesting to me, but this one was meaty and satisfying. Steak and mushroom pie.

Assassin nuns. I have to say it again, because, really. Why has no one else come up with this concept? (Maybe they have and I just don't know about it: if so you have to tell me what I've been missing!) Grave Mercy is Robin LaFevers first book about girls from the convent of St. Mortain, otherwise known as Death. They are trained to be His Fair Assassins and carry out his will, which appears to be saving Bretony from those treacherous French, so once Ismae is trained in all the cool ways there are to kill people she gets to dress all pretty and sneak around court looking for spies to assassinate. I liked the idea of Mortain. I liked the spying, the girl kicking the butt of arrogant men, the romantic tension between Ismae and the guy she doesn't know if she can trust. Grave Mercy was entertaining--not as good as Sherwood Smith or Megan Whalen Turner, but along the same lines. I think there is a lot of potential in the premise that LaFevers can still explore, so I'm going to read the next book in hopes that she does more with the depths that Grave Mercy hints at. This book was a mocha cream puff.

In the meantime, I had to go and reread Sherwood Smith's Crown Duel, because she does such a good job of the romance between people who don't trust each other. And because it's just so good. And then I had to read more Sherwood Smith, so I downloaded the Inda books. When I emerge, gasping, into the real world again, I'm going to devote a whole post to Sartorias-delas.