MMGM: Fenris and Mott, by Greg Van Eekhout, and Freddie vs the Family Curse, by Tracy Badua

Here are another couple of books from the Cybils Middle-grade Spec Fic shortlist that I can highly recommend. 

Fenris & Mott is a funny and thought-provoking take on the Norse idea of Ragnarok.

What if Fenris, the wolf in Norse mythology who will consume the world during Ragnarok, was discovered as a little starving wolf-pup in a back-alley in California?

Mott is the highly-engaging character who finds Fenris and really, really wants to adopt him, even though she knows she can't. She vows to keep him safe, despite the mundane and mythical obstacles that spring up at every turn. Various characters from Norse mythology show up, either wanting to kill Fenris to prevent Ragnarok, or set him free to begin it. But Mott cares about Fenris himself. Her single-minded devotion forges a path through the middle of all the prophecies: is it possible to save Fenris and save the world, too? The combination of Mott's compassion, integrity and wry humour with Fenris's adorable puppy nature is irresistible. And Van Eekhout throws in some pointed metaphors about climate change and human shortsightedness as the vehicles for the end of the world, with the empowering message that kids still have a choice and can make a difference.

Freddie vs the Family Curse is a very funny and relatable story about a boy whose notorious bad luck and clumsiness aren't his fault: he's been cursed!

If anything can go wrong for Freddie, it definitely will, leading to all sorts of slapstick and embarrassing scenarios. Freddie isn't a victim, however, and he has a staunch supporter in his cousin, who at least understands about the family curse. When Freddie discovers an amulet inhabited by the spirit of his great-uncle, he learns the origin of the curse and how to break it. This leads to more shenanigans, including a road-trip to a break-dancing competition—nothing could possibly go wrong with that!  All along Freddie is a character with a great deal of agency and cleverness in dealing with his problems.

The best part about this book is Freddie's family and the rich representation of Filipino culture. I loved that everyone in the family has a different attitude toward the idea of the curse, and toward religion and superstition in general. I loved how everyone cares deeply about each other but that doesn't prevent conflict and frustration. Freddie's great-grandmother is a wonderful character, and the glimpses we get into Filipino history are rewarding.

Cybils winner! Vespertine, by Margaret Rogerson

I let the Cybils announcement on Feb 14 pass by with nary a word of acknowledgement. Allow me to correct my lapse. The Cybils winners have been announced!

I was surprised and delighted to see Margaret Rogerson win the YA Spec Fic Cybil award this year for her medieval sort-of ghost, sort-of Joan-of-Arc story Vespertine. Surprised, because it's not your typical YA fantasy. (No romance, for one thing!) Delighted, because Rogerson is a great author with a nuance and a depth to her writing that I keep wanting more of.

Assassin nuns have become a bit of a trope, because of course nuns could train to be assassins and that's just cool. Rogerson turns the trope sideways and gives us a nun trained to lay already dead spirits to rest—so there's more of a horror element to it. But there's also this odd comfort that Anastasia has with the dead: she would genuinely rather deal with a nasty undead spirit than talk to most living people. Undead spirits are predictable, they follow certain rules, and they don't judge her for her appearance or her complicated past.

Anastasia is a fascinating heroine: scarred but not frightened, because in a way the worst has already happened to her and she survived. Neurodiverse, possibly on the autism spectrum, though it's never defined in-story, and therefore able to relate to the world in a different way. She knows what she wants, and then the story throws her for a loop and she gets the opposite, and she sighs and deals with it as doggedly as she pursued her original goal.

I won't talk about the other characters because I don't want to spoil them, but Rogerson is great at creating really fascinating, believable people with problematic behaviour and motivations that make complete sense. She never has Bad Guys and Good Guys, because right and wrong are complicated, and everyone can genuinely believe they are doing right while they are doing a great deal of harm. Anastasia has to decide who to trust with not enough information, and all I can say is there is a lot of awesomeness that happens in the process!

It's a story with plenty of action and tension that really makes you think about the situations, and the characters' choices, and what makes a hero, or a saint. 

I eagerly await the second book to learn more about this world (and a character I haven't told you about because I don't want to spoil it for you!)

The Raven Tower, by Ann Leckie

How by all the trees of the forest are you supposed to review this book? The experience of reading it is the most fun, fascinating, mind-warping ride through time, space and existentialism I've had since ... well, since reading Ancillary Justice. But I can't tell you a thing about it because that would ruin your ride.

I went to Goodreads to see how other people manage it—it turns out most people just spoil everything, so proceed with caution*—and someone's review said ... oh, mmblefarg, I can't even tell you that without spoiling a lot of things! Here, I'll make it small and yellow so you can't see it unless you highlight it: it's inspired by Hamlet. My brain just exploded. It's frigging Hamlet, people. As in, mad Ophelia, Rosencranz and Guildenstern, Horatio ... it's a Shakespeare retelling and I didn't even notice.

Suffice it to say it's one more layer of utter brilliance that retroactively doubled my enjoyment of the whole book!

What can I say to make you want to read it? People have warned that it starts slowly, and it does. You think it's about an heir returning from the war front to discover his uncle has usurped his place. If you then expect lots of politicking and/or fighting for him to regain his throne, you will be disappointed. The plot is both smaller and much, much larger than that. I think I can safely tell you gods are involved. (I was thinking Greek tragedy as I was reading. Turns out I wasn't far off.)

People have talked about the narrative voice: it starts out in second person, which is clever and technically challenging and could be really annoying after a while, except that you figure out fairly quickly who "you" is, so then you start wondering to yourself who might be talking. That takes a fun while to figure out, and once you piece that together, you wonder why the speaker is addressing the you, and you slowly work that out over the course of the novel (as does 'you').

The whole novel is a mystery, and it's a mystery you the reader are figuring out with a slightly different set of clues from you the character. Leckie does the same thing she did so brilliantly in Ancillary Justice: weaving a past and a present timeline together so that the things you learn in each timeline explain just enough of the other timeline to raise the stakes and make you care more. And keep you guessing!

But I hate books that deliberately withhold information so you can be surprised at the twist ending. Leckie doesn't do that. She gives you enough information to be pretty sure you know what's going to happen, but to be intensely curious how it's going to play out, and then you get the next bit of information and realize, oh, ho, now I see what's going to happen! And now I'm even more curious! And then the ending happens, and you're like, "Woah, didn't see that coming! But she was telling me all along that that's what was going to happen!"

I spent a lot of time while reading this with a big grin on my face, and I wasn't even sure what I was grinning at. I just love the way Leckie plays with my brain, I guess. And her characters. We are told nothing about them; we only know what they say and do, and what they speculate about each other, so it is difficult at first to connect with them, to know who to root for. But words and actions and speculation are what create character, and by the end I just loved the two people whose names I can't tell you because that would be spoilery! Fist-punching yes-shouting love.

There is so much going on in this novel. Leckie dissects human society and power and loyalty and faith and all those things you can play with when you've got kingdoms and gods and war and usurpation. But she's also playing with stories and the power of words and the power of who gets to tell the story. And the fundamental premise at the heart of all stories about magic: be careful how you say what you wish for.

Note that she has been developing this world of gods making deals with humans for many years; there are a lot of short stories available online that will give you a flavour. Try The Nalendar, for example.

At a restaurant recently I had a dish called Roasted Cauliflower in Romesco Sauce that was so delicious I had to try it at home: I roasted tomato quarters and red pepper chunks and onion wedges with the cauliflower florets, olive oil, salt, pepper and paprika for a good hour and a half, until all the flavours were intense and rich. Added a splash of apple cider vinegar and some smoked paprika. (The restaurant version had toasted almonds and crispy capers, and I'm sure there was garlic but I didn't have any on hand.) Lots of complex flavour layers and the surprise of cauliflower tasting that good (really it's just a mild vehicle for the sauce). I was as happy eating it as I was reading this book!

*I have not given you a link to the Goodreads page for this book, because I really, really don't want you to get inadvertently spoiled. This review from By Singing Light is excellent and entirely non-spoilery. Ditto everything she said!

Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik

Spinning Silver astonished me. It astonished me more with every page I turned, and the ending floored me—if I hadn't been sitting down I would have collapsed. It was just so utterly perfect.

The whole book is plotted like an intricate puzzle jewel box, the kind you have to know the trick to open, with little pieces moving in seemingly random ways to make other little pieces able to move, and when it falls open in your hands you don't know how she did it. It is entirely original in its mythology, but drawn so expertly from all the folktales we know and don't know that every new revelation of magic feels inevitable and true.

Novik starts with a kernel from the story of Rumplestilskin, plants it deep into Russian tales like Vasilisa the Brave, and fertilizes it liberally with the history of Jews in Eastern Europe. The tree that grows from these roots has three heroines (shush! I know my metaphor is falling apart!)—three girls representing the narrow possibilities their society would allow them, girls made wise and cold by the necessity of their circumstances.

Miryam is the daughter of a moneylender who is too kind to be any good at it. Wanda is the daughter of a drunkard who beats her and wants to marry her off for whatever dowry he can get. Irina is the daughter of a duke, who doesn't beat her, but wants to marry her off for whatever dowry he can get, despite her disappointing lack of beauty.

I loved that this is a story about their choices. They are not given agency but they take it anyway, and their choice to stand up and exercise it transforms their world. I love the courage they each forge in different ways from their desperation, the various moments when they say "No!" because nothing could be worse than what they are saying no to. And the power they get from that realization.

I love that Miryam's power to transform silver into gold is economic: she's smart and knows how to value things and how to invest. It's a magic as potent as the magic of reading and figuring that she teaches Wanda. Knowledge is power; knowledge transforms. All kinds of transformations going on, in all the characters, in their perceptions, in the readers' perception of them and their perceptions of each other. The power of perception.

The themes in this book! I absolutely loved the way she started with a moneylender and blossomed off into an examination of promises and debt, honour and generosity, justice versus fairness. Value: who gives it? Where does a person get their value from? Power. Ooooh, all kinds of angles of looking at power: male power, female power, political power, magical power, the power of promises. Bonds, covenants, bargains. Fascinating! I've never found bookkeeping to be so emotionally resonant.

It was also a brilliant illumination of faith. Miryam is Jewish—I don't know if Naomi Novik is Jewish, but she certainly depicted that religion as if she understood it in her bones—and the concept of religion, of faith, the purpose of it, is lovingly represented by Judaism.

I had not known that I was strong enough to do any of those things until they were over and I had done them. I had to do the work first, not knowing.

... high magic: magic that came only when you made some larger version of yourself with words and promises, and then stepped inside and somehow grew to fill it.

Somewhere I hope someone is writing a PhD thesis about this book, because there's just so much going on in it! But you don't need to analyze it: you just need to let Novik's writing carry you away into a magical, entirely real land, full of heart-stoppingly lovable characters.

Miryam, Wanda and Irene are each fierce and clever and brave on their own, but it is unutterably wonderful when they reach across what divides them and come together to help each other. In the words of a Goodread reviewer (whose name I can't tell you because it's written in Arabic, sorry!): "I love this book so much—the kind of love that is peculiar to inhabiting the perspective of young women with agency and the relationships they form when relying on each other." (Her whole review is wonderful and says everything I want to say, but it tells you a lot more of the plot than I'm willing to—I don't want you to have too many expectations going in!)

I'm a bit late reading this book, so you all probably know how wonderful it is already, but if you don't: stop everything, swipe off your TBR and read this book!

This has to be something with layers: lots of different layers of flavours and textures that highlight and complement each other, so when you taste it you taste each individual thing but also something greater than the sum of all the parts. I'm making myself hungry and I don't even know what food I'm thinking of! Is there a Russian version of lasagne? Or maybe Black Forest Cake, or some Russian variant thereof. Mmm, going to eat lunch now!

Tess of the Road, by Rachel Hartman

I finally got around to reading Tess of the Road, and I don't know what took me so long! As usual, all the Bloggers I Trust were absolutely right: this is a fantastic, moving, meaningful book.

It's also a very hard book to talk about. It's not what you expect: it doesn't fit into any categories. It's a quest fantasy, sort of, but Tess has no idea what she's questing for. It's a coming-of-age story, but before Tess can come of age she has to overcome her childhood, which is not usually what fantasy coming-of-age is about. There is magic, but it looks more like religion—and oh, interesting and thought-provoking take on religion in general, which almost never happens, especially in fantasy. There are dragons, sort of, but not in the same way as in Seraphina. The one on the cover is metaphorical. There are lots of metaphors.


Okay, let's start with Tess. I loved Tess. She is so. messed. up. I wish I still had my copy of the book so I could find the amazing quotation about how she wouldn't just cut off her nose to spite her face, she'd ... (someone help me out here, it was such a great line!). Stubborn, angry, alcoholic, she's in so much pain and she is trying. so. hard. It just isn't working. Tess has been taught to hate herself, and she's doing an excellent job. She's difficult to read about, at first, because she's so frustrating. (Then she punches someone who really deserves it, and you're like, "yesssss! but noooooo, you shouldn't have done that!"

Tess finally runs away from her (mostly) quite horrible family. She has no idea where she's going; she's seriously contemplating suicide, but she isn't quite committed enough; she wakes up every morning and decides to "walk on" for one more day. Then she runs into her childhood friend, a quigutl named Pathka, and woah, quigutls have some interesting customs! And Pathka has some past trauma ko has to get over as well. (Ko is the non-gendered pronoun quigutls use.)(They have a very cool language, too.)

The plot seems random: Tess and Pathka are going down the road and meeting random strangers and doing random things. At one point Tess joins a road-building crew. (Pretty sure that's never happened in a quest fantasy before!) Pathka is looking for a mythical giant serpent, and Tess is like, sure, why not? Let's go look for something that might not exist. But then things start to come together in very satisfying ways. Tess is trying to forget her past, but every encounter she has brings up some memory, and gives her a new way to process it. She doesn't realize that she's on a quest for healing, but that's what starts to happen. It isn't easy. It's incredibly painful, actually. But she finds wisdom and grace and acceptance and she begins to reclaim herself. The fist-pumping that happens in this story is nothing to do with action and defeating enemies and all about interior journeys and defeating inner demons.

Don't give up on this book if you hate the beginning, with Tess's self-defeating flailing and the horrible women-hating religion and her awful, awful mother. All of these things are dealt with in surprising, nuanced and powerful ways. Motherhood, sisterhood, family, love—it's all turned inside out and held up to the light, and Tess comes away with some truth she can stand on, a woman she can be. (Oh, yeah, and she's disguised as a boy most of the time. There's some serious identity stuff going on!)

The writing is beautiful. I would quote endlessly if I still had my copy (I got it out of the library, but I'm going to buy the real book for myself because I like it that much, and that cover!) E.K. Johnson says Hartman can "kill your heart with her grammar" (which, by the way, is something Johnson is really good at, too!) and that's a great way to put it. There are some lovely, lovely, bits: wise or heartbreaking or numinous or just really funny. (If you love E.K. Johnson, you'll love Tess of the Road.)

Don't read it if you want flying dragons and, I don't know, anything typical of fantasy in general. Don't expect it to be a sequel to Seraphina and Shadow Scale: it's an entirely different book (Seraphina does show up in it, and it's great to see her, but it's not her story at all)(I want to re-read Seraphina now to see what it says about Tess: I don't remember her from it). Do read it if you like your fantasy to deal with real stuff in thoughtful, realistic ways, if you like characters who learn and grow and figure themselves out, if you like interesting, original fantasy worlds. (The more I read, the more I appreciate books that are interesting!)

I feel like I'm not conveying how much I liked Tess. I loved how different it was from expectations. Nothing was predictable; everything was fresh and surprising and fun. I'm making it sound painful but it's actually very funny most of the time. Tess is a mess but she's a compelling, hilarious narrator. Your heart breaks for her, but she could care less what you think! She makes you root for her all the way, and I loved where she ended up.

This is apparently book 1, and I can see where the sequel will go, but this had a satisfying ending. I will be happy to read more of Tess's adventures though!

Really dark chocolate with a flavour you wouldn't think would work with chocolate but somehow does. Maybe ginger? Or something less immediately identifiable. Cardamom, maybe, or black pepper.

The Clocktaur Wars, by T. Kingfisher

You'll have to excuse me while I fan-girl some more about T. Kingfisher. She just presses all the right buttons for me.

A few facts you need to know about her:

1. She goes by Ursula K. Vernon when she writes graphic novels and kids' books, and they're all fantastic and quite well-known (see: Harriet the Hamster Princess). Anything written as T. Kingfisher is probably not appropriate for readers younger than, say, 13-ish? It's not just that there might be sex, and possibly more daggers through eyes than you might want a younger reader experiencing, but her themes are deeper, her focus is more ... philosophical, for want of a better word. The world is a more complex place, both grimmer and more humane.

2.  She really gets fairy tales. As in, she has obviously imbibed so many, from so many different traditions, that folk-tales run through her veins, but also she has a genuinely weird imagination that works easily with fairy tale logic. The things she comes up with!

3. She is hilariously funny.

Clockwork Boys and The Wonder Engine—really just one novel broken into two—are a bit different than the others of hers that I've read. Not so much fairy/folk-tale inspired, but more of a re-imagining of the fantasy quest, with a healthy serving of vaguely steampunky Lovecraftian horror thrown in (and if you think that sounds weird, you're right!)

I was sucked in from the first scene, in which a forger fetches a murderer from a dungeon to go on a suicide mission. Oooh, dark, grim, edgy, you're thinking, and yes, it is, but the forger has a mysterious sixth sense that manifests as an allergic reaction, so she's sneezing to death the whole time. Plus her interactions with both the prison warden and the murderer (who is actually a paladin knight who got possessed by a demon, so that's a little complicated) are off-beat and unexpected (by both warden, paladin, and reader), so the whole scene is mind-bogglingly, hilariously interesting.

Then they go off to get the horrifically inventive safety measure that ensures they have to complete the mission (don't want to spoil it for you, but if they don't die trying they will just die painfully), and they meet their team-mate the assassin ("I don't like people unless I'm stabbing them."). Then they meet the 19-year-old self-righteous scholar who's never been outside his monastery and thinks women will turn his bowels to water. Who is also coming on the mission.

So it's the most extreme version of incompatible quest-mates I've ever encountered: the banter and drama is endlessly amusing. (As in, every second sentence made me smile, and every second page I was laughing out loud. Then came the scene with the horses, and I was gasping and wiping tears from my eyes the whole chapter.) Kingfisher knows how to structure a running joke, and that's basically what the whole first book is. (Something along the lines of "I wonder if we're going to kill each other before we even get to the place where we're likely all going to die.")

But, by the end of Clockwork Boys, the trust the four of them have built in each other is as moving as their differences were funny, and I genuinely cared about each one of them and about the fate of the team. Slate, Caliban, Brenner and Learned Edmund kill me in all the best ways, whether they're trying to kill each other or not.

The Wonder Engine is still funny, but it's also an intriguing mystery, a realistic adult romance, and a brilliantly explicated treatise on prejudice and marginalized people. When I wasn't laughing my jaw was dropping. Or I was just straight-up crying, because now these people I care so much about are having serious character development in some seriously tense situations.

Also, most hilarious torture scene ever written.

I think if you like Terry Pratchett you'll probably like T. Kingfisher. She's an auto-buy author for me now; I have yet to be disappointed in anything she's written.

The Clocktaur Wars is a balsamic/maple braised pot roast with red peppers and sweet potatoes (and I threw some kale in because you can hide kale in a sauce this rich and flavourful). Sweet, tangy, not exactly your normal pot roast, but still hits the pot-roast receptor in your brain most satisfyingly.

God Smites and other Muslim Girl Problems, by Ishara Deen

I read a review for this one right before I left on my Spring Break trip (can't remember which blog it was: thank you whoever you are!); since she's a Canadian author (and I'm a little patriotic) and the book was only 4.99 on Kindle, I decided to buy it (note to price-setting people: 4.99 is cheap enough that I'll buy something on a whim).

I did not regret my purchase.

God Smites is a very, very funny book about a Muslim girl who just wants to lead a normal life. Oh, and solve a murder. And maybe have a conversation with the boy she has a crush on.

Asiya's voice is so real, you can't help becoming best friends with her. Her inner and outer conflicts are achingly, hilariously believable. I loved the conversations she has with God, where she's genuinely trying to figure out the right thing to do, while justifying what she wants to do. I'm sure anyone who believes in God has the same kinds of conversations all the time. (I know I do!)(not that I've ever tried to justify breaking-and-entering, but, you know, same general idea!)

I loved that faith was presented matter-of-factly as a part of life. Asiya believes in God and is striving to live her religion. She chafes against her parents' strictness, she questions whether Satan will really appear if she's alone with a boy, she strongly dislikes her Imam (she and her friends have a great nickname for him that becomes a running joke), but she doesn't question being Muslim. It's a part of her identity and she's happy with it.

What was the last YA or children's book you read in which religion was a positive, normal part of characters' lives (what was the last book you read in which it was even mentioned??)

So, kudos for cultural and religious representation (and #OwnVoices). And for having a brown girl on the cover with her whole face showing, looking confidently out at the reader (what was the last book you saw ...). But mostly kudos for being well-written, engaging, and highly entertaining. I loved all the characters, particularly Asiya's parents, who are well-rounded and play important roles in the plot, not just as obstacles. Great relationship dynamics within her family, with her friends, and even with the other adults. The murder mystery was fun—there were a few scenarios that tested my suspension of disbelief, but any story with a teen sleuth is going to be a tad unrealistic.

There is room for a sequel, and I will be looking for it. I think Ishara Deen is going to be another Susan Juby or Eileen Cook—we've got some great humourous writers up here in Canada!

(Also you should go read the Book Wars review of this book, because it's hilarious.)

I'm going to go with fish pakoras for my food metaphor, because now that I've thought of them I'm craving some: crispy on the outside, tender on the inside, little bites of yumminess.