Death, Rebirth, and a Book Club Recommendation: Matched, by Ally Condie

My computer died! Life came briefly to an end; I was bereft; I was useless. But all turned out well in the end, because I have an automated backup program. My life was returned to me, intact, with a new hard drive and all the same ridiculously unorganized data I can't seem to live without. It's a little scary how dependent I am on this screen with the little icons lined up at the bottom. (And if Google wants to take over the world, I don't think it would be very hard: we're all little Google slaves already!)

Speaking of taking over the world, I recently read Matched. Apparently it's now on bestseller lists, so it doesn't exactly need my recommendation. However, the other day I was a bit intimidated to discover that someone's book club was looking to my blog for a new book recommendation. (I hope they all like The Lost Conspiracy!) (I hope they can find enough copies; there are a couple in my local library, but that might be a bit far to come!) Considering books for a book club is a quite different matter than recommending to individual readers: you want something that appeals to a wide range of tastes and sensitivities, and something meaty enough to generate discussion (other than "she should have picked the other guy"!).

Given those criteria, I would have to suggest Matched as an excellent book club choice. It's science fiction in so far as it's a dystopian vision of the future, but it's a quiet, introverted kind of dystopian novel. The anti-Hunger Games, if you will. And it's a love story, of course. (The theme song could be from Muse: "Love is our resistance.")

Condie creates a perfect world where every decision--what to eat, what to wear, what job to choose, who to marry--is made by the Society. There is no violent repression or coercion: everyone willingly participates because they believe this is the best way to be happy. At least, that's what Cassia thinks. Her doubts about the beneficence of the Society begin when she Matched to her best friend, Xander, but her information packet shows her the face of Ky. Is Xander the one she is meant to be with, or is it Ky?

I thought it was brilliant of Condie to present this society to us from Cassia's point of view: as a teenager who has grown up in this peaceful, controlled world, she takes it for granted and is invested in its continuation. This is what life is like, and it works, and there's no reason to question it, is there? The subtle and obvious ways she is manipulated are all the more horrifying to the reader because Cassia thinks they're normal. Cassia wants nothing more than to take her place as a contributing adult in her society, but her growing relationships with Xander, Ky and her family start her wondering, and once she starts to question, there is no going back.

Matched is not an action-packed violence-fest. The suspense is quiet but constant and the conflict is almost entirely internal. The critical moments are not so much Cassia's actions as her decisions.  I loved that her first rebellion was over poetry. The actions are all so small, but the decisions they represent are huge. Holding a scrap of paper can be terrifying. Each decision Cassia makes leads to a slightly larger action with wider repercussions, until she makes a life-changing mistake. There is a sequel, due Fall 2011. I won't say it's a cliffhanger ending, exactly, but I am quite anxious to read the next one!

Matched is like salted caramel ice cream: a smooth, quiet surface with surprising hidden piquancy.

I'll leave you with a friendly reminder: when was the last time you backed up your hard drive?

The Lost Conspiracy, by Frances Hardinge

This is a really, really good book, and you must read it. Go see if your library has a copy. Even quicker, it's on Kindle and it's cheap (by its original title, Gullstruck Island). (No, I don't get a cut of every sale!)

I don't want to tell you anything about the plot, because I don't want to give anything away. This is a book about secrets and lies, conspiracies and betrayals, murder and revenge. It's also about family and loyalty and myth and redemption. It's dark but it has a light heart.

Here is our first glimpse of our heroine:

As it happened, the girl supporting Arilou had a name too. It was designed to sound like the settling of dust, a name that was meant to go unnoticed. She was as anonymous as dust, and Skein gave her not the slightest thought.

Neither would you. In fact, you have already met her, or somebody very like her, and you cannot remember her at all.

If that doesn't give you a frisson of anticipation about the coming story, then I give up on you entirely!

The Lost Conspiracy is set on a marvelous volcanic tropical island. On this island and nowhere else, some children are born with the ability to send their senses out of their body independently, so they can see, hear, taste, touch, and smell things at a far distance. Before they learn to control this ability, they are often absent from their bodies, so a child who has trouble walking or talking or who doesn't seem to connect with their surroundings might be disabled or they might be Lost. Arilou is one such child. She and her younger sister (oh, have I not mentioned her name yet? I must have forgotten. Hardinger doesn't even tell us until Chapter 2) get caught up in an island-wide plot masterminded by a man with no face, that threatens all of the Lost and all of Arilou's kin.

The richness of Hardinge's fantasy setting reminds me a lot of Laini Taylor. Flitterbirds peck at your shadow and when they fly away they unravel your soul with them. The volcanoes King Fan and Lord Spearhead are rivals for the affection of a third volcano, Lady Sorrow. Implacable bounty hunters, called Ashwalkers, gain strength and protection by dyeing their clothes in the cremation ashes of the criminals they catch. The original inhabitants of the island, the Lace, have become outcasts, because when settlers first built a town in the valley between two volcanoes, the Lace kidnapped townspeople and sacrificed them to turn away the volcanoes' wrath (and save the town). The Reckoning is a secret group of Lace who have sworn to take revenge for murderd kin: they get a half a butterfly tattoo on one arm when they take the oath, and the other half of the tattoo on the other arm when they complete their vengeance.

It's not always easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys; in fact, not a single character is what he or she first appears to be. But at the end, right and wrong are clear and everyone gets their true name. (Oh, right. The heroine's name. It's Hathin.)

Hardinge's prose is jungle-lush and full of imagery: "they swung into battle like leaves on a water eddy"; "the king of tricks hatched in Hathin's brain like a baby dragon"; "a young child's despairing cry drew its serrated edge across Hathin's soul." All the strands of myth and symbol come together in a very satisfying way when the nameless girl defeats the faceless man.

Have I convinced you yet? I've read one other book by Hardinge: Fly By Night. It was pretty good, too; also had an interesting fantasy world with conspiracies and secret organizations and a nobody heroine (named after a housefly). I'm going back to the library to pick up Verdigris Deep, also known as Well Witched. And I just checked out Hardinge's amusing webpage.

The Lost Conspiracy is like a dish I had in Hawaii: mahi-mahi crusted with macademia nuts in a lime/coconut-milk sauce served with mango-pineapple salsa. (Oh, I really want to go back to Hawaii!)

Monster Blood Tattoo, Book 1, The Foundling, by D. M. Cornish

Imagine a world where the oceans are vinegar, the wilds are infested with monsters of all shapes and sizes, and chemists are people who develop monster-killing compounds. It's a world that has elements of 18th century Holland and a hint of steampunk and a great deal of adventure potential. Cornish is brilliant at world-building, endlessly inventive in his details and gorgeously evocative with his language. A vinegaroon is a sailor, one who plies the vinegar seas. A lahzar is a person who has had their body surgically altered to give them unusual monster-fighting powers, like the ability to throw electricity. A monster blood tattoo is an image of a monster that you killed, using the monster's blood as ink. That is just . . . wicked.

Now into this world throw an orphan boy with a girl's name: Rossamund, the Foundling of the title. He is earnest, bookish and sensitive, but eager to go out into the world and find his place in it. His straightforward plans get derailed, of course, and the rest of the book is one adventure after another as he tries his best to get where he's supposed to go. Some fantasy novels (particularly those written by artists (Cornish began his career as an illustrator)) have characters and plots that are merely an excuse to go wandering around the wonderful fantasy world. Not this one. Rossamund is a compelling protagonist and we are completely invested in his story. The world, rich as it is, unfolds as the necessary backdrop to Rossamund's trials, not as the primary interest of the novel. The supporting characters are all complex and fascinating, and there are mysteries yet to be explained.

Cornish's illustrations are wonderful, conveying a sense of both the characters and the atmosphere.

This is the cover image I found on the web; not the cover of the book I bought, which is dark red-brown with several character portraits. This one is the new North American edition of the series, which, if you look closely, is now called The Foundling's Tale, not Monster Blood Tattoo. I suppose that since librarians and parents are the most likely purchasers of the books, the publishers thought Monster Blood Tattoo might be too off-putting. (If it were 12-year-old boys with the disposable income, there's no question which title is more appealing!)

I'm trying to think of something comparable to Monster Blood Tattoo, but there really isn't anything else like it. You might enjoy it if you like steampunk, even though it isn't steampunk. It's probably the same reading level and similar adventure-style as the Septimus Heap books. There are horror elements, but I was never biting my nails in anxiety. Although it is a dark world and a dark story, there is a certain humour underlying it all. Cornish might just be doing a little satirizing here and there.

I'm going to call this book a thin-crust wood-oven pizza with spinach, garlic, roasted red peppers, pineapple, and feta. Original, multi-flavoured and quite delicious. (Feel free to substitute your own gourmet pizza combination if you don't like mine. Just don't make it pepperoni green pepper extra mozza.)

We interrupt this blog to bring you: The Kneebone Boy

Yes, I am still working on my review of Foundling, but while I was in the library picking up Monster Blood Tattoo 2, Lamplighter, I noticed that Ellen Potter's The Kneebone Boy was available. I've been looking out for this one, so I picked it up. I just opened it to get a taste, you know, read the first page, see what I'm in for. Well, the Hardscrabble children grabbed me by the throat and wouldn't let me go. I was enjoying it all the way through, and then came the ending and I was blown away. This is a seriously good book!

But I'm not going to review it now because there's a whole queue of book reviews to do first. This is just a teaser!

A cool photographer

Got lots of reading done in Hawaii! Brought a bunch of e-books on my iPod--though it turns out that e-books aren't the best choice for beach reading (the sun's too bright!) Four of the books I read were the first books of series--what was I thinking?!

I'm working on a review of Foundling, first book in the Monster Blood Tattoo series by D. M. Cornish. I'm reviewing this one first because I now have my hands on Book 2 so I want to immerse myself back into this world. Foundling is 312 pages of text with another 120 pages of appendices--so when I say "immerse" I'm talking ocean rather than bathtub. (Book 2 is even bigger--have you seen it? 500-odd pages not including the appendices.) Cornish apparently spent more than 10 years developing the world of the Half Continent, and it's a completely original fantasy setting. Everyone compares him to Tolkein (appendices, anyone?), and I think it's quite justifiable--but don't think the Half Continent is anything like Middle-Earth.

That's just to whet your appetite. In the meantime check out this photographer. I discovered him in a magazine in the hotel room, but he's Canadian. I love the balloons; they're just so random, and yet somehow right.

Dreamdark Silksinger, by Laini Taylor

A few days later than promised, and it's going to be short, because it's 2am and I'm leaving for Hawaii tomorrow (but if I'm sleep-deprived I'm more likely to sleep on the plane, right?), but here's the review of the second book in Laini Taylor's Fairies of Dreamdark series.

"Whisper Silksinger knew two kinds of death."

Great opening line, neh? Silksinger continues the story of Magpie Windwitch trying to fix the Tapestry of Creation, but Taylor introduces two new characters. Whisper and Hirik are entirely different from Magpie and Talon: shy, reluctant heroes who are thrust into a quest and have a hard time believing they are capable of achieving it. Their story forms a nice counterpart to Magpie and Talon's on-going action-hero saga. We still get to see plenty of our favourite characters from Blackbringer, and we learn more about this world and its history. There's another great bad guy who I won't say anything about so as not to spoil it, and there's Slomby, who has to pick the leeches off the firedrakes. There's failure and betrayal and people doing things you never thought they would. This story arc gets completed, but the world isn't saved yet, so we can happily anticipate at least one more fascinating, original story about characters I absolutely love.

I'm going to go with beef short ribs as my food metaphor, probably because I recently saw a recipe that looked delicious that I want to try (Braised Short Ribs with Potatoes and Apples Risotto-style). Think sweet-salty-meaty, sink-your-teeth-in, hearty. (I just checked, and I said Blackbringer was like Lamb Tagine, so I'm sticking with the theme here!)

Note: Do not look at the fairies pictured on the front cover and think that you don't want to read this book because it's about fairies. Trust me, these are no fairies you've ever imagined. (I do love the cover, though.)

New Year's Resolution:

Be more consistent about writing in blog.

So, in an attempt to be disciplined about this, I'm going to promise to write something every Sunday. Tomorrow: the promised review of Fairies of Dreamdark: Silksinger

In the meantime I can tell you that I greatly enjoyed Scott Westerfield's Leviathan and Behemoth, (they're too popular for me to do a full review, since I'm supposed to be recommending lesser-known books). What's not to like in a story with a prince on the run, a girl disguised as a boy, and an airship that's actually a giant floating whale. I love the way Westerfield re-imagines the Allied and Axis powers of WWI as the Darwinists and the Clankers.  Tesla cannons, Perspicacious Loraxes, mechanical elephants: it's clever, imaginative, and a whole lot of fun. There were a couple of places in Behemoth where my suspension of disbelief was stretched beyond the breaking point, but once you've swallowed the floating whale, you're pretty much in for the duration!

I'll leave you with some pictures of awesome chairs--who knew there was such cool furniture out there! (And how does one choose which iconic chair to put in the living room?)

The Bouloum Lounge, designed by Olivier Mourgue, made by Arconas (in Canada!):

The Tongue chair, designed by Pierre Paulin, made by Artifort:

The Voido rocking chair, designed by Ron Arad, made by Magis:

Little Globe, designed by Pierre Paulin, made by Artifort:

I got all these images from Hive Modern, a store that makes me wish I lived in Portland.