13 to Life Serial Blog Tour (July 26th)

Sometimes when I go on vacation things go wrong. In this case, it's a guest post that should have been posted four days ago. My apologies to Shannon Delany.



Without further ado, here is a snippet from 13 TO LIFE: A Werewolf's Tale.

13 to Life: Chapter 4, part F (used with the author’s permission)

Everyone but Pietr and I did. Pietr watched Mr. Miles and then glanced at me to judge my reaction. I loved history class and would never say otherwise. Mr. Miles was so sarcastic and quirky I felt I understood him best of all my teachers. He examined things from all angles — even the improbable ones. Like a good reporter should. I flipped open my notebook and prepared to take a lengthy amount of notes.

Shannon Delany's first novel (and the beginning of her YA paranormal series) is 13 to Life and is available online and in fine book retailers' stores everywhere (http://tinyurl.com/BuyLinks). Learn more about Shannon at her website or her blog and explore Junction at http://13tolifeseries.com/.

You can follow the entire tour here.

Best Authors You Aren't Reading: Julian F. Thompson

Best Authors You Aren't Reading is an IBWB feature. In it I discuss authors who I don't perceive as being popular, but whom I truly love.


Julian F. Thompson doesn't have a Wikipedia page, though this Answers.com article is a great introduction and intimidates me since I'm trying to write something similar, aside from the biography parts. On LibraryThing.com, his most added book is on 90 shelves; the next book is on a mere 26. (I own both, though neither are on my LibraryThing shelf.) He only recently created a website - the last time I looked for one, it didn't exist. Since 1983, he has written eighteen novels for young adults.



His most famous novel, one of his first, and the first I read, is THE GROUNDING OF GROUP SIX. (Check out this awesome article about it on Jezebel.) This is one of the few books I've had to buy more than once. I lent it out and it never returned. I had to buy this when I found it in Half-Price: parents paying someone to off their kids? An exotic premise, yet strangely believable. With a premise like that, an author has a lot to deliver. Thompson did and I immediately went trolling for his books in all the local USBs and libraries. By now I've read all but a very few.

First, you aren't going to like Thompson if you don't enjoy reading about sex at all. Many of his characters have sex; most of them get into sexually embarrassing situations. Second, his books are almost always feature teenagers versus adults. The bad adults are very bad. The books tend to be very cynical about some things, though most of the teen protagonists are optimists (see A BAND OF ANGELS). Third, some parts of the books are very dated. Only two of them came out in the past decade, so it's to be expected.

Here are some of my favorites:



TERRY AND THE PIRATES

Girl tries to escape boarding school by stowing away on a boat. Boat is driven by the wrong guy, who goes overboard anyway. Girl gets captured by pirates. Boy might not have gone overboard. Boy has split personality, in fact. Boy and girl fall in love and escape the pirates and their offspring. TERRY AND THE PIRATES shows of Thompson's lighter side, which definitely made it work picking up for me. I like when he tackles issues, but sometimes you want to read a book that's insane, knows it is insane, and just goes with it. Terry is clever, in a street-smart sort of way, and pragmatic, just the sort of personality you need when faced by her adventures.

SIMON PURE (no cover image on Amazon)

Did you like Doogie Howser as a kid? Well, here's another story about a whiz kid in college. Simon Pure is smart, but he sticks out like a sore thumb among the older college students. Again, this one is on the lighter side. My copy has a stab mark through it, which I suppose means the previous owner would disagree with my recommendation. But hey, I enjoyed it, and I don't care about the opinion of someone who would mistreat a book so.

Thompson's books are strange. They combine fantasy and reality, contain exaggerated personalities, and are full of teen wish-fulfillment. But even the his light comedies contain darker passages - like getting out of a potential rape - that keep the silliness anchored. To me, his books are compelling because of a juxtaposition of sophistication and trashiness. There's a fearlessness to his writing that I respect. If you want to read something different, try Julian F. Thompson.

Review: Shapeshifter

Note: Today is the last day to suggest an insult for Lauren Mechling and Lauren Moser's online serial novel MY DARKLYNG.

By Holly Bennett
Available now from Orca
Review copy



While I'm not most familiar with Irish mythology, I do enjoy it quite a bit. (After all, I do consider myself Irish.) I loved seeing an author play around with a short episode in The Fenian Cycle, as opposed to the more popular Ulster Cycle. I also liked that the publisher included a translation of the original episode for comparison. (Do be careful about reading it first, if you aren't familiar with the story, since it will spoil things.) Readers will also enjoy the glossary, since Irish names often have tricky pronounciations. Holly Bennett makes the fortunate decision to use the romanization Sive for the protagonist instead of Sadhbh.

Sive was the first wife of Finn mac Cumhaill (whom you may know as Finn McCool), a Sidhe woman trapped in the body of a deer. Bennett explores how Sive first came to the attention of the evil druid Far Doirche and turned into a deer. In Bennett's telling, Sive was not turned into a deer by the druid but turned herself into one to escape his unwanted attentions. Sive's singing could charm anyone, and Far Doirche wants access to her power.

I thought Bennett fleshed the story out well, developing an interesting and original cast to accompany the epic figures. She did have little sections marked off by [Character] Remembers . . . that I thought were fairly useless. The book was in the past tense and slipped into people's heads anyway, so the those sections felt redundant and flabby. (Actually, almost all of Bennett's use of POV tricks could've been tightened up.)

The ending, focusing on Sive and Finn's son Oisin, moved a little too quickly for my taste. SHAPESHIFTER truly is Sive's story, but I would've liked to get to know Oisin as well as Sive. SHAPESHIFTER is fairly short, so it probably wouldn't have tasked readers attention spans.

SHAPESHIFTER contains adventure and romance, but will probably appeal most to people interested in mythology. If you aren't familiar with Irish mythology, SHAPESHIFTER is a good place to start. It doesn't ask you to come in familiar with the stories. SHAPESHIFTER is a little rough, but still good light entertainment. The language is easy enough for preteens, but there are oblique sexual references.

Review: Raised by Wolves

The mosquitos in North Dakota are nuts. I have welts up and down my arms, as well as on some more uncomfortable places. I will miss my niece and nephew when I leave next Monday, but not the bug life.

By Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Available now from Egmont
Review Copy

Jennifer Lynn Barnes has an interesting livejournal, which is where I first heard of her. It prompted me to pick up TATTOO, which I enjoyed. (I'm still looking for a copy of FATE.) I'm amazed at how prolific she is, considering the whole college thing and that she's now going off to research in the UK. I'm also amazed that given those constraints her books are so much fun.

RAISED BY WOLVES is the story of Bryn, a young woman who was . . . raised by wolves. She knows how to walk the walk and talk the talk, having lived with werewolves since her parents' murder when she was just a child. But now that she's pretty much a grown-up, she's starting to push the boundaries even more and figure out her place in the world, which has never really existed. Unfortunately, this self-exploration coincides with the arrival of a new werewolf: Chase. Chase was bitten by a rabid, but Bryn always thought you couldn't become a werewolf through a bite.

Perhaps Bryn would recover from this information without much trouble, but she and Chase feel and strange connection and start exhibiting special, unique qualities. This is what I love about Barnes's approach. Normally, I'd be getting annoyed by the human raised by wolves who has super special powers. Yet there always appears to be some reason that Bryn is special aside from the fact she's the main character and it turns out she's not the only special one.

Personally, I felt more attached to most of the secondary characters other than Chase. He's sort of bland and never fleshed out aside from what he means to Bryn's self-discovery. Her old werewolf pals, however, are brilliant. The world's first metrosexual werewolf and a werewolf girl who likes to find out people's secrets and has a weapons fetish would of course be friends with the human Pack member. Callum, the Pack alpha, is also quite compelling. He obviously cares for Bryn, but he just as obviously is caught between a rock and a hard place as he has to enforce the laws and ideals he's shaped.

There's complexity lying beneath RAISED BY WOLVES. There's an exploration of family ties, chosen and natural. There's analysis of a different sort of society, what makes it work and what it's weak points are. There are questions about strength. Ali, Bryn's foster-mother, another human Pack member, may be the strongest character in the book. She sees things more clearly than the younger Bryn and, like Callum, can make the tough decisions needed to keep her family safe.

While some of this complexity slows things down at points (infodumps, mostly), RAISED BY WOLVES generally doesn't feel like it's more complex than your standard paranormal romance. Barnes keeps things moving along and tends to make the proceedings humorous when possible. She has a charming authorial voice that's just what's needed to keep a headstrong and impulsive protagonist like Bryn empathetic. I hope that there will be a sequel just because I enjoyed the world so much.

"Waiting on" Wednesday (While on Vacation)

"Waiting on" Wednesday is a meme hosted by Jill.

I am waiting for STAR ISLAND by Carl Hiaasen, coming out in hardcover July 27th. Both my mom and I love Hiaasen's books because they're utterly insane, funny, and sometimes gruesome. (Due to Hiassen, my mom refers to my dad as my "ex-father." Here's the summary, from Amazon:

Meet twenty-two-year-old Cherry Pye (née Cheryl Bunterman), a pop star since she was fourteen—and about to attempt a comeback from her latest drug-and-alcohol disaster.

Now meet Cherry again: in the person of her “undercover stunt double,” Ann DeLusia. Ann portrays Cherry whenever the singer is too “indisposed”—meaning wasted—to go out in public. And it is Ann-mistaken-for-Cherry who is kidnapped from a South Beach hotel by obsessed paparazzo Bang Abbott.

Now the challenge for Cherry’s handlers (über–stage mother; horndog record producer; nipped, tucked, and Botoxed twin publicists; weed whacker–wielding bodyguard) is to rescue Ann while keeping her existence a secret from Cherry’s public—and from Cherry herself.

The situation is more complicated than they know. Ann has had a bewitching encounter with Skink—the unhinged former governor of Florida living wild in a mangrove swamp—and now he’s heading for Miami to find her . . .

Will Bang Abbott achieve his fantasy of a lucrative private photo session with Cherry Pye? Will Cherry sober up in time to lip-synch her way through her concert tour? Will Skink track down Ann DeLusia before Cherry’s motley posse does?

All will be revealed in this hilarious spin on life in the celebrity fast lane.