Review: 100 Sideways Miles

By Andrew Smith
Available now from Simon & Schuster BFYR
Review copy
Read my review of Grasshopper Jungle

GRASSHOPPER JUNGLE is one of the best books of the year, in my opinion.  So I was extremely excited to read 100 SIDEWAYS MILES, Andrew Smith's second book this year and first contemporary since his breakout novel WINGER.

First, I would highly recommend that you avoid reading the blurb.  The blurb focuses on events that happen somewhere around page 250 or a 288-page novel.  100 SIDEWAYS MILES isn't the type of novel to be ruined by spoilers, but it still kills a bit of the momentum.

Finn Easton has been an epileptic since the day a dead horse fell on him.  (The same event killed his mother.)  He finds his epilepsy beautiful, but has trouble feeling like it doesn't define him, especially since his father wrote a famous sci-fi novel that drew strongly on his story.  At the same time, he's mostly a normal teenage boy, hanging out with his best friend Cade Hernandez and making crude jokes.  Things don't completely change for Finn when he meets Julia Bishop, but falling in love does change some things.

Smith has an incredible knack for teen voices.  His books involve outlandish events and outsized personalities, but his books succeed because his characters seem like actual flawed, confused people.  At the same time, it feels like Smith is drawing a bit from the same well.  Perhaps it is because of reading 100 SIDEWAYS MILES and GRASSHOPPER JUNGLE less than six months apart, but there is a bit of a sameness to the style and the mix of the mundane and fantastical.

I know Smith can do stories that sound different (see THE MARBURY LENS), but his recent works have a strong authorial stamp.  They're still wonderful stories, both technically and artistically, and they stand out from the crowd.  But I feel like they stand out less if they blend into each other.

100 SIDEWAYS MILES is well worth reading.  It's a quick, satisfying story about falling in love, growing older, and finding direction.  It's better than most books I've read lately.  At the same time, it felt a little like Smith spinning his wheels.  I'm ready to see him push it full throttle again.

Review: Zac and Mia

By A.J. Betts
Available now from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt BFYR
Review copy

Stories about kids with cancer are more my older sister's speed, but ZAC AND MIA has been racking up the awards and many people I trust have been talking up this Australian import.  It won the 2012 Australian Text Prize, the 2014 Ethel Turner Prize, and the SCBWI Crystal Kite Award.  Not too shabby.

Zac has leukemia and is in quarantine post-bone marrow transplant when Mia moves into the room that shares a wall with his.  She has a leg tumor and a bad attitude.  Zac, who has a fifty-five chance of his cancer coming back, can't believe Mia doesn't know how lucky she is.  Mia can't believe she's missing out on her senior year of high school and losing her looks, which are the one thing she felt she had going for her.

ZAC AND MIA is told in alternating voices, but not in conventional manner.  The first third is told by Zac, the second third shared, and the last third is told by Mia.  I'm not entirely sure why the division is made the way it is.  In some ways Zac's story is more interesting at the end, just as Mia's story is more interesting at the beginning in some ways.  I did like the balance between them.  Zac is, in many ways, the more appealing character.  He's the fighter, obsessed with statistics of death but still upbeat.  Mia is the more dynamic character.  She can't see anything lucky in her situation at first, but she starts to learn the relativity of luck and the difficulties of loving relationships with people who are sick.  I really enjoyed the quiet way she and her mother repaired their relationship.

The setting of ZAC AND MIA helped me approach it as more than just another cancer book.  And no, I don't just mean Australia with its show bags.  (I'm still only partially sure what those are despite several Australians explaining them to me.)  Zac's quarantine in the beginning forces author A.J. Betts to be clever, conveying her protagonist's restlessness, frustration, and boredom while still finding a way to have him be at the center of interesting things despite his confinement.  The second third takes place on his family's olive farm.  It felt very lived in.  The big city parts are more conventional and less memorable.

I don't think cancer narratives will ever really be for me.  But I can see why ZAC AND MIA has been so well received.  Betts avoids the maudlin and puts the friendship ahead of the romance.  It's not entirely unconventional, but it is very well done.  I look forward to reading other books by Betts that don't heavily involve cancer.

Review: Dark Tide

By Greg Herren
Available now from Bold Strokes Books
Review copy

I was looking for summery books to read when DARK TIDE caught my eye.  It promised a lifeguard, a small Alabama town with secrets, and a mysterious disappearance.  Ricky Hackworth is off to earn some money in his last summer before college.  He could really use it, even with his scholarship to swim for the Crimson Tide.

He's suspiciously similar to the lifeguard before him, down to the scholarship.  But the lifeguard before him walked to town on a rainy day and was never seen again.  Many of the townspeople warn Ricky away, lest the same happen to him.  But he's drawn to certain people, and refuses to leave.

DARK TIDE deploys some excellent twists.  They're unexpected, recontextualize everything that's happened in the book to that point, and still make sense with the characters.  Ricky seems like a pretty straightforward guy (sweet, athletic, gay), but there's definitely a brain clicking away beneath the brawn.  As the cliche goes, not just a pretty face.  There's nothing that doesn't convince him more to find out what happened to his predecessor.

DARK TIDE is very short.  I felt like the denouement in particular could've been much longer - everything wraps up pretty neatly in a single chapter.  There's a great deal of atmosphere building, and then the mystery unravels with a snap of the fingers instead of being slowly teased out.  (Although given the truth, I'm actually somewhat relieved that Herren didn't linger on it longer.)  Anyway, it took me about half an hour to read DARK TIDE, which is fine for a by-the-pool read.  I don't want to say it needed to be much longer, because I liked that DARK TIDE was streamlined, but I just think the end needed a little more meat.

This small-town mystery was a nice change of pace for me.  I really liked Ricky, who was wonderfully developed throughout the novel.  I'm not a swimmer, but the detail that went into the swimming and what Ricky needed to do to stay in competitive shape added nice flavor to the text.  (However, Ricky seems to spend very little time actually doing his job.)  There is no romance, but there are some romantic elements that add to the tragedy of Latona's secrets.  I highly recommend DARK TIDE to anyone looking for a quick summer mystery.

Review: Julia's House for Lost Creatures

By Ben Hatke
Available now from First Second (Macmillan)
Review copy

Ben Hatke is known for the Zita the Spacegirl graphic novels, the third and final volume of which came out earlier this year.  Now he is venturing into children's books with JULIA'S HOUSE FOR LOST CREATURES, and his skills transfer very well.  His art is adorable and immensely appealing.  The trolls and mermaids and dragons and patchwork kitties (lost creatures all) are absolutely adorable.

From Julia's House for Lost Creatures by Ben Hatke

There's a great deal of detail in the illustrations, perfect for kids who like to go over every page to point out every little thing.  (Yes, that would be my niece and nephew.)  I really think this helps add to the re-read value of JULIA'S HOUSE FOR LOST CREATURES.

The text itself is a short and sweet poem about Julia's house filling up with creature after creature and how she handles it.  It's a good length for a bedtime story, and I think JULIA'S HOUSE FOR LOST CREATURES is perfect for reading aloud to a child.  At the same time, it's simple enough to be a good text for really early readers.

If you're looking for a story with a walking house (that is too quiet), a lonely girl, and whimsical monsters, then JULIA'S HOUSE FOR LOST CREATURES is a real treat.

Review: Sea of Shadows

Book one of the Age of Legends series
By Kelley Armstrong
Available now from HarperCollins
Review copy

SEA OF SHADOWS throws the reader into the deep end of a world with complicated social rules and magic.  There's curses on scrolls, strict honor codes, a Kitsune clan, and it's all very Japanese except for the things that aren't Japanese at all -- like the characters' names.

This means, for me, that the horror elements of this horror-fantasy took awhile to gel.  Horror takes much of its force from perverting the normal.  When you're still getting a barometer of what normal is, then it's just sort of people disappearing left and right for some reason that maybe has something to do with a plague or a curse.  Meanwhile, the back of your head is pondering why the book is titled SEA OF SHADOWS when it appears to take place in a sinister forest.

But I though the novel picked up pace and I really started to get into it.

SEA OF SHADOWS is the story of twin sisters Moria and Ashyn, the Keeper and Seeker of Edgewood, respectively.  Moria is the warrior, but Ashyn is the one who must go into the woods to gather the dead and lay their spirits to rest.  But something goes horribly awry, and their town becomes infected with the strange, zombie-like sickness that has been lurking in the woods.  The spirits that usually guide Moria and Ashyn go silent.  They have only their skills, their respective guard pet, and the two convenient love interests.

I think that SEA OF SHADOWS is a very enjoyable read, but not one that hangs together when you think about it too much.  Kelley Armstrong threw so much at the wall when building this world, and I'm not sure how much she though about how the various pieces fit together.   The whole exiling people to the woods to become zombies thing never made much sense.  Hopefully, the future books in the series can smooth some of that out.  However, the first book of trilogy is usually handles the introductory material, and SEA OF SHADOWS had trouble with that.  And, well, the ending is a bit of a cliffhanger, which I always hate in a first book.

I think Armstrong fans will enjoy SEA OF SHADOWS, as will fans of fantastic and J-horror.  But this book felt like it could have used a few more rounds of editing to fill in the plot holes and help the world building cohere.  I also feel like a stronger sense of the world and how it works would help some of the pacing issues to.  I had fun reading SEA OF SHADOWS, and I'll probably be back for the second book, but it isn't Armstrong's best effort.