Previous SFF Author: John Wyndham
Fantasy Literature for Young Adults (over the age of 12).
Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare
And then comes the final test, the infallible touchstone of the seventh-rate: Ichor. It oozes out of severed tentacles, it beslimes tessellated pavements, bespatters bejeweled courtiers, and bores the bejesus out of everybody.
~Ursula K. Le Guin, From Elfland to Poughkeepsie
Cassandra Clare stumbles straight out of the gate in Clockwork Angel. In the opening sentence… “ichor,” one of Ursula K. Le Guin’s perfect tests for bad fantasy.
April 1st, 2011. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Cassandra Clare | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
Mau returns home from a rite of passage concerning his transition from boyhood to manhood to discover that every member of his island village, the “Nation,” has been killed in a tidal wave. Who will teach him to be a man now that he has only himself to rely on?
Daphne, a distant heir to the British throne, is shipwrecked on a small island in the ocean. She has received the best education that a woman of her station can receive in Victorian England, so she is well versed in English customs,
March 27th, 2011. Ryan Skardal and Ruth Arnell | Terry Pratchett | Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
Clarity, the debut novel by (the confusingly named) Kim Harrington, is a solid young adult mystery with a paranormal twist. Clarity, called Clare, comes from a family of psychics. She possesses the power of psychometry, while her mother is a telepath and her brother can speak to the spirits of the dead. They live in Eastport, a picturesque Cape Cod tourist town, and do readings for the tourists. The locals see Clare as a freak.
Clare’s life is shaken up one summer when a pretty young tourist is murdered and the prime suspect is someone very close to home.
March 24th, 2011. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4 | Kim Harrington | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
The Chaos is the sequel to Numbers, and is a much better book. The way the numbers work is explained better and the plot is more consistent. The Chaos also has the effect of making Numbers feel like a prequel. Jem is long dead in this installment, and her son’s story has a much larger scope.
It’s the year 2026, and things are a little different: climate change has led to many towns being flooded,
March 4th, 2011. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4 | Rachel Ward | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Falling Under by Gwen Hayes
Hi, my name is Kelly, and I’m addicted to underworlds.
And it’s the fantastic realm of “Under” that, for me, was the best part of Falling Under. Gwen Hayes uses several tropes that have become overused in YA paranormal romance, but the book is better written than many of its peers, and Hayes’ creativity bursts out of the bounds of the formula every time she shows us a scene from Under.
At first, this feels like a lot of books we’ve read before.
March 3rd, 2011. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 3 | Gwen Hayes | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
There are YA books that translate well to an adult audience, and there are those that are best appreciated by their actual target audience. I suspect Firespell is one of the latter. I found it an average read, but I think I’d have really liked it at the age of thirteen or so.
Case in point: Here is how magic works in the Dark Elite series. If someone has magical talent, that talent manifests at puberty. From puberty to the age of twenty-five,
February 14th, 2011. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 3 | Chloe Neill | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Kaye is not your typical 16-year-old. For one thing, she’s spent the last few years of her life acting as mother to her mother: holding Mom’s head as she vomits, following Mom around to her various unsuccessful singing gigs, working in a Chinese restaurant to make enough money so that she and Mom can eat from time to time. She doesn’t attend school and she isn’t happy in the least.
For another thing, as a child she used to have a few fairies as dear friends.
February 13th, 2011. Terry Weyna´s rating: 4.5 | Holly Black | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
When I learned that Consumed (Fire and Rayne in the UK) was being released stateside, I was excited. I enjoyed the previous book, Possessed, and was eager to find out what lay in store for Rayne and for Morton’s Keep. Kate Cann has done a great job with this sequel, giving us a hair-raising tale that tops the first book and brings Rayne’s story to a thrilling conclusion.
Sir Simeon Lingwall’s modern-day pawn has been defeated and his basement chamber of horrors filled in with concrete — so why is Rayne still seeing and hearing uncanny things,
January 31st, 2011. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4 | Kate Cann | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Behemoth is Scott Westerfeld’s follow-up to Leviathan, the first book in a new steampunk series set in an alternative Europe on the edge of WWI with the Austro-Hungarians and Germans (“Clankers”) using steam-driven machines and the British and their allies (“Darwinists”) using genetic engineering. Leviathan was one of my best reads of 2009, and Behemoth would have been on my list for 2010 had I gotten around to reading it by the time I compiled my list.
January 17th, 2011. Bill Capossere, Rebecca Fisher and Marion Deeds´s rating: 4, 4.5, 5 | Scott Westerfeld | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Wereworld: Rise of the Wolf by Curtis Jobling
Drew Ferran was raised on a rural farmstead in an area called the Cold Coast. Drew lived the simple life with his family until tragedy struck one night while his father and brother were away at market. A monster invades their home. While terrified, Drew unleashes a beast from within himself that he never knew existed. His father and brother return to a gruesome scene of Drew huddled over his bloodied mother. Confusion and rage ensue as the blame quickly falls on Drew. He is forced to flee his own home to the forests where he has to survive on his own.
January 14th, 2011. Justin Blazier´s rating: 4 | Curtis Jobling | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Previous SFF Author: John Wyndham
Do it! One of the best things I've read in recent years.
This reminds me. I want to read Addie LaRue.
We’re in total agreement David!
I felt just the same. The prose and character work was excellent. The larger story was unsatisfying, especially compared to…
Hmmm. I think I'll pass.