Review: Love in the Time of Global Warming

By Francesca Lia Block
Available now from Henry Holt & Co. BFYR (Macmillan)
Review copy
Read my review of The Elementals

Sometimes I love Francesca Lia Block's novels.  Sometimes I don't.  LOVE IN THE TIME OF GLOBAL WARMING definitely falls on the love side.  This is a retelling of The Odyssey, set in modern-day California.  There's a major earthquake, then giant cyclops start roaming and eating people.

Like most of Block's work, the story is told in a dreamy style.  I thought it really worked in this case, since Pen's story is something of a fairytale or fable.  She's a girl on her own, hunting for her family, especially her little brother, Venice.  Along the way she makes several allies and discovers how little she knew about herself or her talents.

The cast is fantastic.  There are few characters, but they're diverse in color, sexuality, and personality.  Hex, Ezra, and Ash all bring something to the quest, although they aren't all fighters.  And of course everything centers around Pen, who is just wonderful.  She's willing to believe in the best of people, even at the end of the world.

I didn't like that The Odyssey was still a story in Pen's world, and that two of the characters read and reference it throughout.  It felt a bit too on the nose, especially since the story is followed fairly closely.  At the same time, it's a story I love, and this magical realism take is enchanting.  Block twists it into something just as fantastical, yet thoroughly modern.

Macmillan has made the first five chapters available for free online (just search for them), which is good, because it gives you a chance to try Block's style.  If it's not for you, it's not for you.  But if you can fall into it, it's a real treat.

Review: The Elementals

By Francesca Lia Block
Available now from St. Martin's Press
Review copy

Francesca Lia Block's style is as beautiful as ever, dreamy and almost more poetry than prose.   It can lean toward the purple, but I think it works with her lush stories wherein fairytales clash with harsh reality.  In THE ELEMENTALS, college freshman Ariel Silverman searches for her best friend Jeni, who went missing on a trip to Berkeley.  While searching, she falls in love.

THE ELEMENTALS may be published as an adult novel, but it reads very similarly to Block's YA novels.  Although, since it covers Ariel's first three years at college, it fits nicely into that new category of YA-style novels aimed at twentysomethings.  ("New adult," but that name is terrible.)  The sex is slightly more explicit than Block's YA novels, but she's never been an author to shy away from sexiness.  Her style revels in the sensual.

The various threads of THE ELEMENTALS don't always fit together neatly.  There's the search for Jeni, in which Ariel does not prove to be a master detective.  She's a teen looking for any answer in her grief.  There's her mother's cancer, which she ignores for much of the first year the novel covers.  There's her classwork and attempts to interact with her classmates which mostly fade away once she meets John Graves.  Ariel falls very deeply into John Graves, along with his strange roommates Tania and Perry.  Each element is important to Ariel's growth, but the novel felt episodic.

However, it's a beautifully told story.  I thought the person who took Jeni was pretty obvious, although others might not - there were several red herrings.  But the book is about Ariel's journey, not whodunit.  Block's magical realism is more intriguing than ever, as there's a sense that nothing magical at all is happening in THE ELEMENTALS.  Instead of this being a setting where some of the rules of are world simply don't exist, it feels like there is an explanation in line with our world.  It's a trick I haven't seen Block pull before.

I devoured THE ELEMENTALS in a single sitting.  It's a book that moves between lovely and creepy without blinking an eye.  It's cathartic, to see Ariel overcome her depression and grief, ready to make a future for herself.  When she enters Berkeley, she mostly attends the college in order to find out what happened to Jeni.  By the end, she's there for herself.  It's a fantastic story with an ending full of love and hope.

"Waiting On" Wednesday (7)

Meme began by Jill of Breaking the Spine.

I adore Francesca Lia Block's lyrical writing, so I'm looking forward to her June 2nd release, THE WATERS & THE WILD.



Isn't that cover beautiful?