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!

2020 Reading Report

Like many of you, despite having more time alone at home this year because of the pandemic, I read far fewer books—at least, fewer new books. It was a year of rereading old comfort reads, rewatching favourite Korean dramas, and listening to a lot of comedians (generally the only way I could handle the news).

I do not keep the scrupulous records that many bloggers manage, so I can't tell you how many of what sort of book I read, but I can go through my kindle purchases and library borrows and get some idea of what the year's reading was like.

Most anticipated and didn't let me down:

Network Effect, the Murderbot novel! 

Return of the Thief, the final book of Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series, and the long wait was so, so worth it! One of my first goals in 2021 is to reread the entire series.

New books from writers I like:

Call Down the Hawk, Maggie Stiefvater's spin-off from her Raven Boys series, which I liked a lot but didn't love as much as I'd thought I would.

The Once and Future Witches, by Alix Harrow. I loved The Ten Thousand Doors of January so much that I was nervous about this one, but it had three awesome characters and a great premise and was imaginative and gripping and now I know I like Alix Harrow!

Tuyo and Nikoles, by Rachel Neumeier. I cannot believe how prolific Neumeier is! Not one, but two new books in a completely new series, that I enjoyed so much I've already re-read them. And she also put out a new book in her Black Dog series, Copper Mountain! Have to say, the pandemic would have been much bleaker without Rachel Neumeier. (She also kept up her interesting blog, which I appreciated.)

Plus there were two new Penric novellas from Lois McMaster Bujold, two new novellas from T. Kingfisher, the latest Invisible Library novel from Genevieve Cogman—oh, look, there's an even newer one! Yay!—, a new short story in Andrea Höst's Touchstone world, a cool novella from Zen Cho ... you know, I did read some really enjoyable stuff this year!

New-to-me Authors:

M.C.A Hogarth: the Dreamhealers series was so utterly perfect for this year. Gentle, wise, fun but not taxing world-building. Much of the suspense was the fascination of exploring a new friendship between two very different species. Quite refreshing and delightful.

Margaret Rogerson: I don't know why I read very little YA and Middle-Grade this year. But Rogerson is a new author I will be looking out for. I read Sorcery of Thorns for the Cybils and then went looking for An Enchantment of Ravens, her earlier book. Both were good; Thorns was better, and I look forward to seeing what she does next. I'm also highly anticipating the sequel to the Cybils winner, Fireborne, by Rosaria Munda.

Nghi Vo: I was blown away by the novella The Empress of Salt and Fortune. Haven't picked up the second one yet, but I will definitely.

Books I tried to read but couldn't:

I was very excited about A Memory Called Empire, The Starless Sea, The Lovely War, and The Priory of the Orange Tree, but in the end I didn't finish any of them. Maybe the world-building required too much of my brain? Or I wasn't quite grabbed enough by the characters? They were all good and interesting and had lovely writing, but I put them down and never picked them up again.

But I'm glad I did this post: I feel better about last year's reading, and I'm quite excited to discover new books to love in 2021!

Noteworthy, by Riley Redgate

This is another random choice from the New shelves at my library. The tagline, "A cappella just got a makeover" drew my eye, and the premise hooked me (but you have to know that I've sung in choirs all my life and I love a cappella music, so I couldn't really help it): girl with a low voice pretends to be a guy so she can get into the exclusive all-guy a cappella group on campus.

Noteworthy could have been a cute cross-dressing caper and I would have liked it, but it turned out to be so, so much more.

For starters, the writing is fantastic. Redgate crafts her sentences with tight finesse (rather like a good choir arrangement). Here's a random example:

I snuck the word out into the air. "Yeah." It hung there for a moment, hesitant, before settling. Then smiles started creasing faces, heads started bobbing, and the inimitable relief of crossing some sort of finish line rushed into me, cold and overwhelming.

I may be using a lot of music analogies to describe this book, because Redgate is musician herself and it shows. She interweaves themes like she's writing a symphony. Friendship, identity, belonging, truth—plus some countermelodies about race, sexuality, privilege, status, family dynamics—if you look at all the things she manages to cover you might wonder if it's a mess, but everything ties together harmoniously.

Also, all the songs in the book are Redgate's songs. As in, she wrote them. And sings them. Can I just spend a moment here to be envious of the girl with all the gifts?

Our narrator, Jordan/Julian, is a wonderful head to be in: dryly self-depreciating, witty, brave, open and thoughtful.

Find a dog whistle and blow it, try to sing that note, and the resulting gurgling shriek will probably sound like my attempt to sing a high F-sharp.

I loved all the Sharpshooters, each with their own sense of humour, their own passions and hangups and fears. Redgate describes them all so well, physically and personality-wise, that I would instantly recognize them if I saw them in a cafe. It was a pleasure to spend time with them. The Crow's Nest is a vividly realized hang-out space that made me wish I'd gone to school at an uppity New England college that might have an old tower room like that. (And I've never, ever before wished I'd gone to an uppity New England college!)

The book Noteworthy most reminds me of, despite being not the least bit fantastical, is Stiefvater's Raven Boys. Redgate is just as good at characters, and at showing the bonds of a friendship so real it feels like another character. The members of the Sharpshooters coalesce into a family full of jokes and tension, secrets and loyalty. Jordan/Julian is lonely for various reasons—I love all the ways that she is an outsider, because every reader will find at least one to relate to—and she values her connection with them so much it's painful. She risks so much, because it's so worth it.

When I was looking through for quotations to use, I got sucked right back into the story and probably would have reread the whole thing if I'd had time. I love writing like that, so comfortable and assured that I can feel at home in it.

Must do a music analogy for this one, of course. It's not an a cappella choir, but Vienna Teng's "Level Up" is both upbeat and heartfelt enough to capture the feel of the novel. (I love the video: the dancing is beautiful.)



And if you want a choral version of it, I love this choir. The expressions on the kids' faces make me so happy.



I also adore this song, (also Vienna Teng), and hey, it's a cappella:



And now I'm going to drop everything else I was doing and watch all the rest of the videos from Indiekör. This choir is awesome!

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:

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.)

Maggie Stiefvater, Maureen Johnson, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, oh my!

I have to squee a little about yesterday's Vancouver Writers Festival events.

In the morning I got to see Maggie Stiefvater, author of The Raven Boys and Dream Thieves and Scorpio Races, all of which are brilliant and I love them.

And Maggie was funny and smart and down-to-earth and incredibly likeable. And she owns miniature silky fainting goats. (I thought maybe she was making them up, but when I got home I googled them. And apparently they exist!)

Maggie Stiefvater graffiti-ed my books!

Then in the afternoon I went to see Silvia Moreno-Garcia, a local author and a friend of mine, who has an anthology of magic-realism/fantasy/weird short stories set in Mexico, very intriguing and cool. And she was paired with Maureen Johnson, whose name didn't ring a bell, but turns out I had read her book 13 Little Blue Envelopes, and I remember it grabbed me with its characters and its quirky plot. She just released the second book of a series about ghost-hunting police in London, so she and Silvia were there to talk about spooky stuff.

I've already read the first book and it's great!

Silvia had all kinds of interesting things to say about zombies and vampires (vampires as a metaphor for sexually transmitted disease--why has no one else thought of that?!) and crazy stuff that goes on in Mexico. And Maureen told us she decided to write about ghosts because she really hates ghost tours and ghost-hunter tv shows, so of course writing a ghost book was the logical response. And they were both entertaining and intelligent and it was a great discussion.

So when I heard that Maggie and Maureen were together in an event in the evening, and there were still tickets left, I abandoned my family and went back to Granville Island, where I got to hear the most random, quirky, funny, completely unscripted panel discussion ever. (Shannon Ozirny, the moderator, literally threw away her script.)

Maureen talked about adopting a puppy from the rescue society--and we all learned that you don't mess with Maureen. She will find you. Maggie talked about racing cars (which she does)(race cars, I mean) and doing her best to get pulled over at the border (and succeeding). Maggie, by the way, owns a Mitsubishi Razer--you'll know why that's cool when you've read The Dream Thieves--and she painted a knife on the side of it! (Also from Dream Thieves, and way, way cool!) Maureen started a brilliant internet phenomenon called Coverflip (see the photos at the end of the Huffington Post article) that highlights how differently male and female authors are treated (and if you look at the covers for Name of the Star, you can totally see what she's getting at). Maggie told hilarious stories about her fainting goats. (One audience question was, "do you ever run out of ideas?" and I thought: how can she run out of ideas? she has fainting goats!)(Her answer was no, except once when she was writing a short story every month for a blog.)

Did I mention that she painted this herself?
And then, she let her fans graffiti all over it!

If you thought these were all different books by different authors, which one would you think was by a guy?

The panel wrapped up with this amazing interaction (I may not have gotten it exactly right, but this is the general gist of it):

Audience question: what do you do if you've written a first draft and when you read it it seems really cheesy?

Maggie: I think what you're really asking about is self-doubt, and how do you deal with it. Turns to Maureen. Do you ever feel self-doubt?

Maureen: Yes.

Maggie: Tilts head at Maureen, waits for more. 

Maureen: Looks innocent.

Maggie: Keeps waiting.

Maureen: What? You asked a question. I answered.

Maggie: Keeps looking at Maureen.

Maureen: Gives in. All writers feel like they are terrible. And also that they are very bad. And their work is a war crime. It causes cancer. Goes on a bit in this vein.

Maggie: Interrupts her. And they're not always wrong.

Maureen: Glares in astonishment at Maggie.

Maggie: We all write crappy stuff. I guarantee, Maureen and I have written thousands of terrible words. The thing is, you take this war crime, and you say, "I can work with this. I can make it better."

Maureen: In a throaty, gangster voice.  I'm gonna spin this shit into gold.


Brilliant words from two brilliant writers. And I was 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.

Sequels I'm Excited About

While we all wait for Sherlock Season 3 and the new Doctor Who, it's time for fall book releases, so there are lots of things to get excited about. Even more exciting are the sequels I didn't notice have already been released, so I don't even have to wait!

And, even more exciting, I'm going to see Maggie Steifvater tomorrow at the Vancouver Writer's Fest!

Maggie Steifvater: The Dream Thieves, sequel to The Raven Boys (review here)
Sarah Rees Brennan: Untold, sequel to Unspoken
Rae Carson: The Bitter Kingdom, Girl of Fire and Thorns Book 3 (quick review here) She's got some stories and a novella to round out the series as well.
Elizabeth Wein: Rose Under Fire, companion novel to Code Name Verity (review here)

And these aren't sequels, but are new books by authors I love, so pretty exciting too:

Holly Black: Doll Bones
Anne Ursu: The Real Boy
Robin McKinley: Shadows
Patrick Ness: More Than This

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.