Review: In the Shadows

By Kiersten White
Art story by Jim Di Bartolo
Available April 29, 2014 from Scholastic Press
Review copy
Read my review of Mind Games

You might wonder what this book is about, since the title is super bland and the cover features pretty colors, but little other detail.   Then, by design, it's a little hard to figure out what it's about once you start reading.  There are plucky children and zombies and mysterious meetings, and it all ties together in the end in a cathartic, rewarding ending.

Jim Di Bartolo is an artist probably known by most for his work in his wife Laini Taylor's novel LIPS TOUCH: THREE TIMES.  He conceived of IN THE SHADOWS and created somewhere around half of the finished work.  His half of the book is a wordless graphic novel following a young man with a distinctive scar through the years.  Since there are no words, the reader must piece together who the man, his enemies, and his goals are for themselves.  The art is beautiful and full of little details that are quite rewarding upon a reread.  (After I finished IN THE SHADOWS, I went back though the graphic novel sections only.)

Kiersten White's half of the book is a prose novel following a pair of sisters, a pair of brothers, and a mysterious orphan boy.  They come together partially because they're the only young people in the boarding house, but they stick together after they witness a suicide-that-didn't-happen and seek to figure out what in the world happened.  I loved the feel of White's prose, which had a nostalgia to it.  As events got creepier, it still felt like the characters' world was constantly bathed in golden sunlight.  It made an interesting contrast to the increasingly modern graphic novel interludes, and made me question by perception of when the prose events where happening in relation to the graphic novel events.

I loved how much IN THE SHADOWS prompted me to use my mind.  It is an easy read in many ways.  Di Bartolo's sections have no words, White's could come from a middle grade novel.  But the connections between events and characters are obscured.  One half of my mind was unraveling the mystery with Minnie, Cora, Thomas, Charles, and Arthur, and the other half was unraveling the mystery of the boy with the scar, and both halves exclaimed every time they recognized a green necklace or a man with a beard.

IN THE SHADOWS is a bold, inventive work that will delights fantasy fans.  It's dark, clever, and a brilliant mix of conventional and unconventional storytelling, right down to the two endings.  Life and death are perennial themes of literature, and White and Di Bartolo speak of them beautifully.

Review: Mind Games

First in a series
By Kiersten White
Available now from HarperTeen (HarperCollins)
Review copy

I've never read Kiersten White's popular Paranormalcy series, but I wanted to read MIND GAMES based on her reputation as well as the interesting premise.  Fia and Annie are two sisters who will do anything for each other and that's their downfall.

In the world of MIND GAMES, there are some women with psychic abilities.  Annie is a Seer - one of the few who can begin to predict Fia's actions.  There isn't a name for Fia, but she has an amazingly accurate intuition.  They've fallen into the hands of an evil organization that trained Fia as an assassin and keep Annie hostage to ensure she follows orders.  Then Fia decides to save nineteen-year-old Adam because he helps a puppy right before she's supposed to kill him.

MIND GAMES alternates between Fia and Annie's point of view.  This helps puzzle together various characters' motivations and plans, because the two girls are rarely allowed to communicate.  Therefore, they each have a totally different idea of what is happening.  Often, they end up messing up each other's plans for freedom because they don't even know if the other is planning something.  Annie's chapters are told in a straightforward manner, but Fia's voice might annoy some readers.  She's been damaged by her childhood, and often repeats phrases and does things without thinking about them first.  Think River Tam from Firefly-style crazy, rather than any real world mental illness.

A lot of MIND GAMES worked for me.  I liked the slow reveal of the evil conspiracy and how it managed to get a hold of the sisters.  I liked how the story reveals that Fia might have killed three people, but she's definitely not a cold-blooded assassin.  I liked James - the son of the man behind the conspiracy - and his relationship with the sisters.  He's bad news, and both girls know it, but Fia feels an affinity with him. 

Adam, on the other hand, is almost completely extraneous.  He's supposedly important, but he gets shuffled to the side for flashbacks and such.  I wouldn't call it insta-love, but Fia is attracted to him and instantly concerned about his safety and well-being for no real reason.  When he keeps dropping out of the narrative, it's hard to care much about him.  I suppose he (and his research) could be more important in the next book, but he felt like a footnote who kept being treated as a main character the few times he actually showed up.

I wouldn't call MIND GAMES a thriller though that is how it is being branded.  It's a bit too meandering to be a thriller.  The structure was interesting and useful to understanding the characters, but it sometimes killed the pace.  After all, we know that the boarding school is sinister from the start considering the present, so the flashbacks to Fia and Annie figuring it out are pretty useless, aside from showing that Annie can be dense. 

Aside from that, MIND GAMES just doesn't feel very developed.  Annie and Fia are developed as characters, but the world feels half-formed.  Why are only women psychic?  Why is Adam, a student, the first person to really notice anything?  What happened to the aunt?  Why aren't there more consequences from James' drunken confessions?  Keane is very sinister because he's awful to the women under his control, but he's much lamer than he should be.  There's no hint of his plan and thus no raising of the stakes.  An evil conspiracy should threaten something!

I read MIND GAMES quickly, and enjoyed it quite a bit, but when I finished I felt disappointed.  MIND GAMES has some interesting ideas, but it never does anything with them.