Con or Bust 2015

It is Con or Bust auction time again!  The auctions end on Sunday, May 3.

Bid now to win cool stuff and help people of color attend cons.

Some items up for bid that I know y'all will love:

• Rachel Caine's Morganville Vampires prize pack (including vampire bunny slippers)
• Kaoru Mori's Emma (10 volumes) and Shirley - awesome manga set in Victorian England that is out of print
• Natsuki Takaya's Fruit Basket (23 volumes) - this series was the bomb when I was in high school (also out of print)
• Phoebe North's Starglass duology - great sci-fi by a former blogger!
• Martha Wells' Emilie books (signed)
• The classic Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede with the 90s covers

And if you love Tamora Pierce, there is an abundance of riches, not the least of which is a signed and personalized set of the Lioness Quartet.

So get to spending money on a cause!

Review: An Ember in the Ashes

First in a series
By Sabaa Tahir
Available now from Razorbill (Penguin Random House)
Review copy

AN EMBER IN THE ASHES has been getting a massive push from Penguin Random House.  The book was a pretty easy sell, for me.  I was sold on the Roman Empire-esque setting and the heroine being a spy for the resistance, hiding out as a slave at the school where Martial Empire soldiers are taught.

AN EMBER IN THE ASHES is told between dual points of view.  Laia alternates with Elias, a student soldier who plans on deserting right after graduation.  I actually found myself more drawn to Elias' point of view.  He has a lot going on, because he's been chosen as one of four candidates to be the next emperor.  He also has a complicated relationship with his mother, the Commandant, and his best friend Helene, who is also in the running to become emperor.  Beside his action-packed storyline, Laia's seems somewhat wan.  Her goal is to earn the support she needs to break her brother out of prison.  But she happens to be not much as a spy and mostly alternates between getting in trouble and making friends with a fellow slave.

Love triangle haters should avoid AN EMBER IN THE ASHES.  There are two intersecting triangles: Elias must choose between Helene and Laia, and Laia must choose between Helene and a resistance fighter who barely has enough characterization to be even a faux love interest.  I can see why Laia likes Elias: he's not only handsome, but also surprisingly principled and tries to make her life easier when he can.  Elias' attraction to Laia actually made me like him less, because it doesn't seem to have much of a reason beyond she looks good in a dress.  Given how much of AN EMBER IN THE ASHES hinges on their feelings for each other, I wish Elias had been shown being attracted to Laia for things other than her looks.

I do wish more history of the world had been seeded throughout the book.  For instance, Laia is a Scholar, an underclass made up of a people the Martials conquered.  The name of the people instantly becomes interesting when you learn they're forbidden from learning to read.  Do they have tales of knowledge lost?  Secret oral traditions?  What sort of learning made them famed as Scholars the way Martials are known for fighting with scims?  AN EMBER IN ASHES focuses almost entirely on Martial life, which does make some sense given that it is set in a Martial school.

Sensitive readers will want to note that in addition to violence there are a large number of rape threats in the story.  They make sense in context, but it is very prevalent and a bit wearying how much it gets mentioned.  I did enjoy AN EMBER IN THE ASHES despite its flaws.  It's a very cinematic novel with a compelling hero.  I also really liked Helene, who kind of baffles her friend Elias even though he knows not to underestimate her.  I'm excited to read the sequel and find out what happens next.

Review: The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley

By Shaun David Hutchinson
Illustrated by Christine Larsen
Available now from Simon Pulse

Andrew Brawley has a lot of guilt and a big secret.  His parents and sister are dead, and he should've died with them.  But he didn't, and now he's living in the hospital, hiding from the woman he calls Death.  He works in the cafeteria, volunteers the night ER shift, and otherwise hustles to keep people from noticing that he's around all the time.

The something happens to shake him up: a boy named Rusty is admitted.  He was burned badly in a hate crime, because he's gay.

THE FIVE STAGES OF ANDREW BRAWLEY takes on a lot of big topics.  There's death from accident, illness, and suicide - and that's just the beginning. Almost everyone in the hospital has a story, down to the cook that employs Drew in the cafeteria and the woman in a coma he's claimed as his grandmother.  The biggest stories are those of Drew himself, Rusty, and two teenagers with cancer: Zachary and Lexi.   Drew dreams of Zachary and Lexi realizing that they like each other and living the lives they could have, but he's afraid to act on his attraction to Rusty.

Between some chapters are graphic novel excerpts from Drew's story about Patient F.  Christine Larsen's stark black and white artwork, with its brittle lines, is startlingly dark.  It's a tale of people in bodies that don't belong to them, death and torture and repeating it again and again as Patient F travels through time to try to save his family this time.  As a priest who talks to Drew realizes, it reveals a lot about his state of mind and the issues he's trying to work through.

THE FIVE STAGES OF ANDREW BRAWLEY is not a happy book, although it has many humorous moments and a hopeful ending.  It was hard for me to read at times, since it seemed like bad things just kept happening.  I expected the twist involving Rusty, but not the ultimate fate of Zachary and Lexi.  It's definitely a strange book, one that will stick out in my mind as a unique reading experience.

I particularly liked how the stories each character told wove throughout the story.  THE FIVE STAGES OF ANDREW BRAWLEY is a novel about how we see ourselves and how others see us (among other things).  It's a portrait of its enigmatic eponymous hero, but also of the people in his life.

Review: Ask the Dark

By Henry Turner
Available now from Clarion (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Review copy

Henry Turner's debut novel ASK THE DARK is about a boy who encounters a serial killer, but it isn't straight horror.  At the Houston Teen Book Con, Turner said HUCKLEBERRY FINN was a huge influence on this novel, and I can really see that.

Billy Zeets used to be pretty wild, vandalizing people's cars and egging homes and more.  It's earned him a bad reputation even though he's managed to mostly turn himself around.  His mother died and his dad got sober, but an accident left him disabled and unable to work.  It's up to Billy and his sister to get the money to keep their house out of foreclosure, and his sister is really pinning it on Billy. 

The kids in town are on curfew because boys have been disappearing, and the first two to disappear have been found murdered.  But Billy just can't stay inside.  He's always roamed the neighborhood in the dark.  And he's started to realize that he sees things when he roams.  That maybe he has the pieces he needs to find the killer.  He needs proof, however, because no one will trust him.

I really enjoyed ASK THE DARK.  Billy's voice is compelling, the dialect present but not distracting.  As a boys' adventure story gone wrong, it's aces.  I particularly like how much Turner leaves to the imagination.  There's no description of the bodies, nor of exactly what he does to the boys he's taken.  Billy alludes to things, is traumatized by things, but he wants to maintain some privacy.  And imagining what might've happened is both scarier and without the unpleasantness of those authorial descriptions of torture that seem to into it.

Those looking for a horror story or thriller might be disappointed by ASK THE DARK.  But it is a terrific dark coming of age tale, a boy finding his mettle in the worst circumstances possible.  Turner has a very developed sense of character voice for a debut author, and I look forward to his future works.

Interview with Bobbie Pyron

Bobbie Pyron is the author of LUCKY STRIKE, which was released last month.  She currently lives in Park City with her husband and her animals (two dogs and two cats).  Fun Fact: she's the great-great-great niece of author Harriet Beecher Stowe.  I asked her five questions about LUCKY STRIKE and her life; her answers are below.

For more, visit other stops on her blog tour.

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1. Have you ever been particularly lucky?

Not to sound predictable, but I DO feel I was so very lucky when I met my husband, Todd. I’d been divorced for ten years and had some rather “interesting” relationships during that time. I’d gotten to the point where I’d decided I’d never meet a man that I could enjoy living with as much as I loved living with my dog—and then I did! He’s incredibly funny and supportive; he’s handsome AND handy!

2. You grew up in Florida. Did you use anything from your own childhood to develop the setting?

Oh yes, that was part of the fun in writing this book. Although the town of Paradise Beach is fictional, it’s a mash-up of several different town in the Florida Panhandle I lived in as a child: Okaloosa Island, Ft. Walton Beach, Destin. In Ft. Walton there is, in fact, a miniature golf place called Goofy Golf. We went there to play often when I was a kid. It’s still there, T-Rex and all! In Destin, which used to be a little fishing village, we had the Blessing of The Fleet every year, and in Ft. Walton, we had the annual Billy Bowlegs Festival.

3. Dogs are one of your passions in life and at the center of your last two books. Did it feel strange to move away from dog stories with LUCKY STRIKE?

That’s a great question. In some ways, it did feel strange, but I have a horror of getting pigeon-holed as a particular type of writer, even if that’s being boxed in as a “dog writer.” I want to surprise myself and my readers, and stretch myself as a writer. However, I’ll always have a dog in my books.

4. Which of the characters is least like yourself?

Oh wow, that’s a hard question! There’s a lot of Nate and Gen in me, and even Chum Bailey. Perhaps the Reverend Beam is least like me. He is so very sure of everything and is a commanding presence. I’m neither of those things. I’m always seeing the gray area, always the observer.

5. Can you share a favorite sentence from LUCKY STRIKE?

Gen looked up from her book on theoretical physics and sighed. “Nathaniel, a toaster cannot have a ‘plan’ because a toaster does not have a brain.”