Overheard

Overheard by my friend Destinee:



Bro: Dude?
Bro 2: Yeah dude?
Bro: Have you seen The Princess Diaries?
Bro 2: Why, is it good?
Bro: Yeah, you should see it. Read the book too. The book is better.

Review: The True Meaning of Smekday

By Adam Rex
Available now from Disney Hyperion
2011 Winner of the Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audiobook Production


I have no idea how this book would work as an audiobook.  Some sections are done like a comic.  Others are illustrated by 'photos,' sketches, or other representations of things the characters come across.  The illustrations are well-done, offering information not available in the story. 

But any team that could adapt it well would deserve an award.

Gratuity Tucci (her friends call her Tip) is driving by herself to Florida.  Why?  Because that's where the aliens are relocating the humans and they've already taken her mother.  She doesn't trust their transportation so she's relying on her own.  But then her car breaks and she and her cat, Pig, are stranded at a gas station . . . until one of the aliens fixes their car.  Soon Tip, Pig, and J.Lo the Boov are on a cross-country trip to save the world from even worse aliens.

When I started the novel, I was underwhelmed.  Alien invasion as a satirical critique of Western imperialism has been done to death.  But things improve after the group reach Bland Name Disney World and the storyline becomes more complex.  Adam Rex does do one thing with the satire that I appreciated - an actual Native American shows up and some people are pretty cognizant of the comparisons between the Boov's actions and human action.

I liked Tip's personality from the beginning as well.  She doesn't trust easily, but she doesn't cut herself off from other people either.  She accepts genuine help.  She's also pretty savvy for an eleven-year-old.  But I'll take it because I love a book featuring a strong female character, especially ones aimed at children.  I enjoyed the way Rex portrayed her biracial heritage.  It's not an issue at all when she and J.Lo are alone, but it sometimes bothers the people they encounter. 
The plot peters out a bit at the end as well, when the way to defeat the aliens becomes clear yet takes forever for Tip to figure out.  Luckily, there's lots of great character interaction among her, J.Lo, and minor characters that fills up the space well.  Unluckily, adults tend to be all but useless.  In fact, I can only recall one useful adult.  It couldn't hurt to have more adults act a little intelligently, could it?

THE TRUE MEANING OF SMEKDAY is pretty firmly aimed at older children.  There's a bit of cussing and a lot of violence.  (Some violence which I find disturbing, even.)  At the same time, it's quite funny and charming.  I'd have loved it as a kid.  I still found it absorbing and worth recommending to others, but it does have flaws.  I'm probably passing this one onto my nieces anyway.

Review: Sinful

By Sara Dailey and Staci Weber
Available now from Mundania Press
Review copy
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The first downside is that SINFUL suffers from the same problem as a lot of small press books. Typos, typos, typos. It grates on my nerves a little every time I notice something wrong which doesn't put mean in a mind to be generous.

And boy, does SINFUL need me to be generous.

The back cover blurb introduces Elizabeth Carrington, who moves to League City, Texas after her mother's death. It also introduces the angel Michael who falls instantly for Elizabeth since she's "so alluring that he can't force himself to resist her." (Elizabeth's reasoning is just as simple but more understandable: he's hot.) The problem with this is that Elizabeth, quite frankly, is an asshole.

She thinks rude things about people who try to be nice to her. She calls other girls bitches and hobags with little provocation. She congratulates herself on quips so clever they leave her opponent speechless, when her opponent is likely just speechless that she said something so mean and crass when they weren't even arguing. No, I don't get why Michael would become human to be with her.

Lyndsee, the head mean girl, almost becomes a sympathetic character. Elizabeth accidentally hits her with a car door and a plate of food once. But then she does those things on purpose. (Assault! How heroic!) Lyndsee also gets dumped. Then her boyfriend sides against her in public (twice) because he thinks the humiliation will do good things for her personality.

Oh, and one of those faux-clever clips is delivered to Lyndsee. Yeah, bulimia jokes are real funny.

Lyndsee's significant other is the hottest boy in school (who still isn't as hot as Michael). In fact, he's so hot that everyone refers to him by his full name. Which makes me wish someone had said something to Dailey and Weber, because I couldn't help but laugh everytime his name was said.

That's right. The hottest guy in school is Jason Alexander.



The best character in the story is Daniel, a slightly unhinged former angel. Unfortunately he doesn't show up all that much. Oh well, I'd've probably found something to dislike if he showed up enough.

Review: Trickster's Girl

By Hilari Bell
Available now from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review copy
Read the interview and visit T2T for full tour schedule

TRICKSTER'S GIRL begins with Kelsa Phillips at her father's funeral. Not only is she in mourning, but she and her mother are at odd since they had different ideas about how her father should have spent the last months of his terminal illness. Then Raven walks into her life, saying that she needs to restore the ley lines of North America to prevent the end of humanity. He claims to be the Raven of myth, and says that most of the others like him would prefer to let humans die and then fix the problem, caused by pollution and other ill-treatment of the environment. Oh yes, and this takes place one hundred years in the future.

Hilari Bell's world-building is slight but coherent. She manages to make her high-tech world slyly funny. Future USA is obsessed with security, but it does little to prevent drug-smuggling, border crossing, or other problems. Canada, conversely, does just fine while paying far less attention to the movements of its citizens. The magic is a bit shakier. The folkloric parts are fine, but it is a little weird that Kelsa can fix nodes by suddenly knowing what to say and sprinkling conveniently pre-prepared dust. At least Kelsa thinks it is somewhat odd too.

The story definitely picks up once Raven and Kelsa hit the road. The beginning does a good job of setting up Kelsa's emotional state and her own need for healing, but it just doesn't have much forward momentum. TRICKSTER'S GIRL is aimed at a slightly older audience than Bell's most famous books, so Kelsa does face sexual threats on her sometimes-solo journey.

In general, I enjoyed TRICKSTER'S GIRL but felt the ending was rather abrupt. Kelsa does complete a full emotional arc, but her task still ends rather suddenly. In addition, she spends much of the book thinking about Raven's attractiveness. That's not odd for a teenage girl on the road with a good-looking guy. At the same time, it feels kind of pointless when no romance develops. Raven and Kelsa are just friends, so she doesn't really need to dwell on his physical appearance.

If you like quest narratives, you'll probably enjoy TRICKSTER'S GIRL. Dystopia fans will probably enjoy it as well. This version of the future might not be a burned out wasteland, but it's certainly not a utopia. I do enjoy the blending of science fiction and fantasy, which is perfect for the YA market. (Yay genre busting!)

Interview with Hilari Bell

Let's welcome Hilari Bell! She's the author of the Goblin books and the Farsala trilogy, among others.  (I discovered her due to the Farsala trilogy, which confused me when the books kept changing names!)  She's a former reference librarian who now writes first time.  TRICKSTER'S GIRL is a little different from her previous books - there's a little more science fiction to it and it's a bit more grown up.  The sequel, TRAITOR'S SON, will be available in 2012.  This interview is part of a T2T tour, as is the review that will be posted later today.  You can catch Hilari at All About {n} on the fourteenth or at her previous stops.
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1. Some of your books are directed more towards a middle grade audience and others are aimed at young adults. What do you think makes a book MG or YA? Are you conscious of the audience when writing a novel?


The main differences between MG and YA are the age of the main characters, complexity of the plot, and pace of the story--also sometimes length. In MG, because the characters are younger they also have somewhat different problems and concerns, and the younger your reader the faster your pace needs to be. The age of the reader also impacts how many and what kind of subplots you have going on. But when I sit down to write a story, I think of the story I want to write. Only when I've decided that a particular plot would be best as middle grade or YA do I start thinking about the rest of it. And I also love writing for tweens (ten to fourteen) which falls right between the two age categories, but that's awkward for publishers, bookstores and libraries, because the books have to be shelved in one section or the other. They end up being labeled either younger YA or older MG, but in fact quite a bit of my YA and middlegrades are actually tween.

2. TRICKSTER'S GIRL is a science fantasy instead of fitting neatly in science fiction or fantasy. What was the hardest part about combining the genres?

I don't find it hard to combine them, which probably says something bad about me and categories. (Note the above paragraph, about how many of my books falling in between the normal age ranges?) But if you can have fantasy elements in a middle ages setting, or fantasy elements in today's modern world, why not fantasy elements in a futuristic SF setting? And it's a total kick to write, because you get the best of both genres--the coolness and freedom to explore the future that comes with SF, and the fun of magic. The first book I ever sold, SONGS OF POWER, is also a near-future SF/fantasy. So in some ways writing TRICKSTER'S GIRL and TRAITOR'S SON felt like coming home.

3. TRICKSTER'S GIRL is also quite different from your previous works, which tend toward traditional fantasy. What sort of territory do you think you'll explore next?

The next thing I'm going to work on is a gypsy steam punk novel, but (what is it with me and categories?) it's set in an alternate just-post-WWI setting instead of Victorian. In this world most magic has become just another branch of science, with recognized principles that are well understood and harnessed, but gypsy magic is different. And WWI fought with magic was every bit as brutal as the real one. I'd like to say more brutal, but it would be hard to be more horrible than WWI, which seems to me to have combined the worst of both modern and primitive warfare--it was ghastly. What's at stake in this story is the success of a peace conference that stands a chance of ending that war. It will be very cool.

4. In your site bio, you mention that you enjoy a decadent sort of camping with your mother. I couldn't help but wonder if that influenced your portrayal of Kelsa's relationship to her father.


Not so much their relationship, but Kelsa's love of nature, of the beauty and peace of the open places comes from me. And it was very frustrating, because Jase in the next book lives in one of the most stunningly gorgeous places I've ever seen, but he's a total city kid whose first love is his car! He does get better eventually, but seeing the world through his mind I couldn't do Alaska justice--and that hurt, because Alaska is incredible. Until I wrote these books I didn't realize that my editor had also been to Alaska, but she told me that when they first went there she and her husband were "stunned silent" by it's beauty. And that's just about right.


5. Who are some of your favorite authors writing now?

Lois Bujold, Eric Flint & David Weber are my top three, but there are a lot of others.

6. Do you ever write yourself into a corner? How do you salvage a good idea when your first attempt at executing it goes wrong?


I'm one of those people who plots out the whole story before I ever start to write--because I don't want to write myself into corners! I also don't want to have to go back and throw out a quarter (or more) of my manuscript backtracking all those paths that turned into blind alleys. But I do know quite a few writers who can't bring themselves to give up the joy of discovering the story as they write, even though I think they end up doing twice as much work as we pre-plotters. And when they write themselves into a corner they usually agonize and write in circles for a long time, and then bring their stalled story into the writers group and tell us what they've got so far and where they're stuck. The group brainstorms for a while and comes up with several different directions they could go, and several interesting ways to get there. But they almost always have to throw out huge chunks of what they've written so far, because what they've got is what lured them into that dead end in the first place.