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.

MMGM: The Boy at the End of the World, by Greg Van Eekhout

This is an awesome middle-grade survival story with a snarky robot, a baby mammoth and the last boy on earth. It's imaginative, action-packed, thoughtful, and has a seriously creepy antagonist. There's just so much to love about this book.

The Boy at the End of the World uses a lot of post-apocalyptic tropes: we've totally screwed up the planet; the solutions we attempted to fix our screw ups just made things worse; we tried to at least preserve some of humanity by sealing them away underground; the legacy of genetic manipulation is seriously freaky and generally wants to kill you. Also, creating robots to protect humanity is never a good idea. (Have we not learned this lesson yet?)

The ideas are familiar, but Eekhout makes them fresh and fun with a likeable protagonist named Fisher (because that's the skill-set he got downloaded into him when he was awakened from cryogenic sleep)(possibly not the most useful skill-set he could have gotten) and the mostly clueless robot Click, who is his only help and companion. The plot is actually pretty dark and intense, since Fisher might be the only human left alive, and earth is now full of things that want to kill him, but the bantering and ultimately affectionate relationship between Fisher and Click, and Fisher's unflinching and sarcastic determination to survive, damn it! (I refuse to be killed by a parrot!) make it quite a warm, funny story. Also there's a baby mammoth, who poops a lot. (And becomes a dear character in his own right.)

It's a story with as many Awww moments as Yikes! moments, interspersed with lots of humour. It reminded me a lot of The Prince Who Fell From the Sky. Yes, there are some very obvious environmental messages, (plus the thing about the dangers of robots taking over the world, which, you know, bears repeating) but the true message is that what makes us human are the connections we make with others, and survival alone isn't survival at all.

Medium-rare steak lightly seasoned with garlic and pepper.

You'll find lots more middle-grade suggestions on Shannon Messenger's awesome blog, which hosts Marvellous Middle-Grade Monday every week!

The Prince Who Fell from the Sky, by John Claude Bemis

I have a Marveous Middle-Grade Monday selection this week! It's a post-apocalyptic novel for younger readers, with an intriguing premise: humans have managed to wipe themselves out completely, and nature has reclaimed planet Earth. A bear named Casseomae lives in a Forest ruled by wolves—who claim they are the ones to get rid of the Skinless Ones* many years ago. Then a sky ship crashes in Casseomae's meadow, and a Skinless cub climbs out of the wreckage. Casseomae has never had a cub of her own, and against her better judgement she protects the young Skinless One from the wolves.

The Prince Who Fell from the Sky could have been trite, heavy-handed and cartoonish, but instead it is nuanced and believable, with great character interactions. The animal characters are brilliantly drawn: Casseomae reluctantly teams up with a rat named Dumpster—a viand, that a vora like Casseomae would normally never speak to—and Dumpster's attitudes, speech patterns, beliefs, quirks are all definitively rat-like, just as Casseomae sounds and thinks like a bear, and the wolves, coyotes and dogs are all equally distinct in their culture and characteristics. It's also wonderful how the character of the Skinless One comes across without him ever saying a word that we can understand (he, of course, can't speak vora).

Casseomae's quest to find a place her adopted cub can be safe is a fascinating journey through a convincing world. The animal enmities and alliances are well crafted; their understanding (or misunderstanding) of the Old Devils* and their relics is both humorous and telling. Each character has sympathetic motivations: even the wolf Ogeema is only trying to protect the Forest, and Cassaomae herself is conflicted about the wisdom of protecting one who could turn out to be as dangerous and destructive as the rest of his kind.

Bemis does have a message to convey, but he is subtle and thoughtful about it. There is no easy right and wrong; there are only the choices each character makes based on what they value most.

This was a fun read with humour and adventure that was also deeply moving and beautiful. Cassaomae gets added to my list of favourite characters, and Bemis is an author I want to read more of.

My grandmother's crispy-chewy oatmeal coconut cookies.

*That would be us humans. (It's always salutary to see one's kind from a different perspective. One of the great uses of sci fi.)

For more marvelous middle-grade books to choose from, head to Shannon Messenger's lovely blog every Monday.

Restoring Harmony, by Joelle Anthony

A friend of mine on the Sunshine Coast lent me this book by a local BC author. She thought I would enjoy Restoring Harmony because I'm also writing a post-apocalyptic novel set in the Pacific Northwest. If by "enjoy" she meant "be freakishly envious because Joelle Anthony did such a good job I may as well just quit now," then she was right! Here's what I said on Goodreads:

Not your typical dystopian YA: this one is actually plausible. Set in the near future in the Pacific Northwest, it isn't an epic save-the-world story; it's about characters trying to live their lives while the society we know slowly crumbles around them. What makes it a four-star book is that I cared about the characters. All of them. They had believable motivations and did the right things for the wrong reasons or the wrong things for the right reasons, like real people. The plot hangs together well, too: starts out simple but builds on realistic complexities to an exciting finish.

The premise seems quiet enough: Molly goes to Oregon to bring her grandfather back to her home on a Gulf Island, but she runs out of money so once she gets there she can't get home. And her grandfather isn't very happy to see her. The interest of the book is in the character development. Molly is an engaging narrator, practical and competent, but way out of her sphere of experience. The world beyond her pastoral island isn't a particularly nice place, and she trusts people she shouldn't trust. Her grandparents are running out of food, and their neighbour is in deep with organized crime. There's a good-looking guy who wants to help but he won't even tell her his name.

I loved the music in the book (Molly brings her violin with her); I liked the tentative, problematic romance; I liked the way the collapsing society brings out the best and worst in everyone. I also loved the humour. The final escape-to-the-border scene is quite delicious.

This is a post-apocalyptic story for those who like Anne of Green Gables and family drama and heroines who don't have to kick anyone's butts in order to be kick-butt.

A fresh blueberry tart with a dollop of whipped cream.

Also, my first Canadian book in this year's Canadian Book Challenge. (I'm going to do much better this year . . . I'm off to such a great start . . .) Check out John Mutford's blog for tons of Canadian book recommendations.