Previous SFF Author: John Wyndham
Fantasy Literature for Young Adults (over the age of 12).
Empire by John Connolly & Jennifer Ridyard
(Warning, may contain spoilers for Conquest.)
Empire, by John Connolly and Jennifer Ridyard, is filled with action, suspense, and characters we care about. It is YA but adults will enjoy it.
In Conquest, the first book of THE CHRONICLES OF THE INVADERS, Earth had been conquered by a technologically superior race, the Illyri. Syl, a young woman, was the first Illyrian born on Earth.
March 6th, 2015. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | John Connolly | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Hollow City picks up almost immediately after the events of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, the first book in the MISS PEREGRINE’S PECULIAR CHILDREN series. From the very beginning Hollow City is an action-packed adventure in all the places that the first book was a thoughtful, eerie mystery. I enjoyed the change of pace Ransom Riggs set in this sequel, though this new territory brought with it its own problems.
March 4th, 2015. Skye Walker´s rating: 3 | Ransom Riggs | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
Dove Arising is a new YA science fiction novel from Karen Bao, and one which I persevered through despite a host of issues, until I reached the last fifth or so when things really began to go off the rails. I pushed on, admittedly skimming a bit, thinking “I’m this far in, I can finish,” but the cumulative effect was just too much and I ended up giving up about forty pages from the end.
The setting is one of a series of bases on the moon,
February 24th, 2015. Bill Capossere´s rating: 0.1 | Karen Bao | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
The Glass Arrow by Kristen Simmons
I was about as close to a Did Not Finish with Kristen Simmons’ The Glass Arrow as I can get without putting a book down, so you can tell already where this review is going to end up. As usual in these situations, preferring not to belabor the point with regard to what I consider a bad book, I’ll keep this review relatively brief.
Simmons sets her story in a world where women are treated as breeding cattle,
February 23rd, 2015. Bill Capossere´s rating: 1.5 | Kristen Simmons | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett
When Tiffany thinks about her age, she thinks that she’s “nearly sixteen.” On the Chalk, “nearly sixteen” means, for many girls, thinking about marriage. Tiffany might lack her peers’ enthusiasm for boys, but she has delivered babies and tended to the terminally ill. Tiffany has dealt with domestic abuse. As a witch, Tiffany’s job is to take care of everyone, the young and the old alike, and to face the things, every day, that people just do not like to face. Tiffany is wise beyond her years,
February 21st, 2015. Ryan Skardal´s rating: 3 | Terry Pratchett | Audio, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black
Once upon a time, in a town called Fairfold, Holly Black set her story for her stand-alone novel The Darkest Part of the Forest. The dark faerie-tale fuses the fantastical with the mundane, as humans and Fae folk exist alongside one another, the faeries even being a huge source of tourism for the little town. That is an original and intriguing premise if there ever was one, with promises of dark twists and turns. But somewhere along the lines the plot failed in its execution,
February 19th, 2015. Ray McKenzie, Kate Lechler and Jana Nyman | Holly Black | Audio, Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 10 comments |
Thieves seem to be “in” this decade, and Ari Marmell’s Widdershins, from the COVENANT series, is one of the most popular in YA. In Covenant’s End, Widdershins returns to her home city, only to discover that there have been drastic changes while she has been away. Some are huge and affect the entire city. Some are personal, shifting the fault lines in Shins’ heart.
Shins carries a tiny god, Olgun, in her head. Olgun provides insight,
February 18th, 2015. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Ari Marmell | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
There’s a group of Young Adult authors — I’m thinking of Robin McKinley, Juliet Marillier, Justine Larbalestier, and a few others — who write the kind of books that snooty adults who look down on YA in Internet articles have clearly never read. These are books that don’t get made into popular movies, because most of what happens is internal to the characters.
This kind of YA has depth and resonance and significance. It shines a light on the path for young people (young women,
February 16th, 2015. Mike Reeves-McMillan´s rating: 5 | Alma Alexander | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Firefight by Brandon Sanderson
Firefight, second book in the superhero-dystopian RECKONERS series, is a good young adult novel. It’s fun, it’s lively, and the pacing never drags. I do have a handful of quibbles, but none of them are vastly troubling. If all you really want to know is whether Firefight is worth reading or a worthy successor to Steelheart, then you have your answer: a solid affirmative on both counts.
Anyway, our story starts off a few months after the previous novel left off (and shortly after the intervening novella) with the Reckoners struggling to hold Newcago in the aftermath of Steelheart’s demise.
February 2nd, 2015. Tim Scheidler, Tadiana Jones and João Eira´s rating: 3, 4 | Brandon Sanderson | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The young adult genre seems to be moving beyond vampires. They’ve toyed with werewolves for a while, but I think those creatures are being left in the past like their fanged cousins. Now it seems like anyone who really wants to write young adult is going dystopian (thank you, Hunger Games). To be honest with you, I don’t get the thrill with dystopian or after-the-big-catastrophe plots, but whatever. It’s what the public wants, and the authors are delivering. Now, I’m not saying that to gripe,
January 24th, 2015. Sarah Chorn´s rating: 2 | Tim Lebbon | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Previous SFF Author: John Wyndham
What a fascinating exploration of Edwige Fenech's contributions to the giallo genre! I love how the post highlights her unique…
Pretty challenging book. Cut by half, speed up the cadence. Trying to figure out the plot, the main point of…
Thanks for the kind words, Marion! Coming as they are from a professional writer, they are much appreciated!
Wonderful review, Sandy.
The "body count" bothered me a bit less because being dead seemed more like an inconvenience than anything else... unlike…