Etiquette and Espionage, by Gail Carriger

Title: Etiquette & Espionage (Finishing School #1)
Author: Gail Carriger
Year of Publication: 2013
Length: 320 pages
Genre: YA steampunk
New or Re-Read?: New
Rating: 4 stars

I was super-excited to get my hands on Ms. Carriger’s latest novel, her first foray into YA fiction. I thoroughly enjoyed her Parasol Protectorate series, and I’m so glad that she’s decided to continue on in this world even though she wrapped that series up. Etiquette & Espionage did not disappoint me.

Sophronia, a fourteen-year-old youngest daughter in the 1850s, is unusual. She climbs dumbwaiters and gets herself into terrible fixes and is generally an embarrassment to her family, a socially-aspirant gentry . Little does her mother know that when she packs Sophronia off to finishing school, she’s actually giving the girl just what she needs. Her unusual new circumstances first become apparent when she chats with Dimity, also headed to Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality, and her brother Pillover, destined for Bunson and Lacroix’s Boys’ Polytechnique. As Dimity chatters cheerfully about evil geniuses, covert recruits, Picklemen, and Custard Pots of Iniquity, Sophronia begins to suspect something is odd. When her carriage is attacked by flywaymen, their escort goes into unconvincing hysterics, and Sophronia has to take command of the horses and rescue them all, her suspicions are rather confirmed.

It turns out that Sophronia has landed at a school designed not only to turn her into a lady but to turn her lethal as well. Or, rather, the Academy has landed at her — for it’s a floating school, suspended from enormous balloons. A werewolf named Captain Niall (!) serves as ship-to-ground transport and teaches combat, a vampire covers history and deportment, mechanical staff patrol the hallways as prefects, the students learn poisons and manipulation alongside powders and manners, and the headmistress has no idea that any of it is going on. Sophronia begins to settle in at the Academy and into an easy friendship with Dimity, though she has more trouble with the others in her dormitory. Sidhaeg (!) is prickly and recalcitrant, Agatha a shy wallflower, Preshea a snob, and Monique is none other than their escort, demoted back to debut rank for refusing to give up the whereabouts of the mysterious “prototype” which the flywaymen were after. Sophronia and Monique do not get on at all, and their rivalry drives much of the action in the book. Sophronia also uses her climbing abilities to sneak into the restricted areas, where she makes friends with the sooties who keep the ship running, including Soap, a London-born boy of African descent (and props to Carriger for including a non-white character in an English historical novel!). Sophronia, never having seen a black person before, is startled by him at first but gets over it quickly. The two become friends, and Soap introduced her to Vieve (!), niece to Professor Beatrice Lefoux (!) and a budding inventor. As the plot progresses, Sophronia finds them tremendously useful in her various schemes and maneuvers.

I felt as though the story bobbled a bit at the end of the first act and the beginning of the second. There’s a stretch where the sense of character isn’t particularly strong. It is interesting to have a leading character who is so introverted and private, but it also damages the narrative a bit, at least for me. When the POV character is not particularly reflective or emotive, I (a consummate extrovert) find it harder to engage with her. It was hard to feel emotionally connected to Sophronia, and sometimes her actions seemed very abrupt because there had been little build-up to them. I admire that Sophronia is such a practical and plain-dealing heroine, but I could’ve used a larger window into her soul.

The other problem that I had was that when Sophronia first arrives at the floating school, she has absolutely no idea what’s going on, and no one will tell her. Maddeningly, nothing gets explained for a very long time. After a while, this starts to frustrate me as a reader — and I recognise that not everyone may feel this way. It’s a valid literary trope and one frequently used in YA, but I personally struggle with it. I hate being left totally in the dark. It tends to make me rush, hoping I’ll get to the explanation, but then I end up having to go back and re-read chapters in case I missed something. I understand delaying gratification and teasing the reader, but some information in this book gets played a little too close to the chest.

There are still a lot of questions left unanswered at the end of the book, and I’m hoping we’ll get more information on them in future installments — I want to know why this extraordinary pair of schools exists. Right now, the answer seems to be “just because.” I find that unsatisfying. What need does England have for an elite cadre of female assassins and a coterie of admittedly evil geniuses? What role in society are they fulfilling? For what purpose? If the Headmistress has no idea what’s going on, who does? Who drives this whole thing? Who founded it? For what reasons? I love Carriger’s world-building, but I wish we’d gotten just a little bit more on this front at the outset.

I did think, though, that I saw a glimmer of potential for change in the school’s directives, one that I hope we’ll see expanded in future books in the series. Right now, the school seems quite competitive, designed to set these ladies against each other. Sophronia, though, sees more benefit in bringing her cohorts together, drawing on their disparate skills to achieve a communal goal. I would like to see that theme develop further. So much popular opinion, especially when it comes to teenage girls, likes to promote their potential for cattiness, sniping, and backstabbing; I would love to see more YA fiction promoting healthier ideas on what they’re capable of.

The second half of the book improves greatly, though, as a few things do finally get explained and as more action enters the narrative in the final act. Sophronia deduces that Monique must have hidden the prototype at Sophronia’s family home while collecting her, and so she determines to retrieve it with the help of her friends (and new pet, mechanimal dog Bumbersnoot). Sophronia’s skills really get to shine here, and the sense of action and excitement is wonderful fun.

For anyone who wondered why I (!)ed a few times in this review, it’s because there are several connections in Etiquette & Espionage to the Parasol Protectorate series. This book is set some twenty-odd years before that series begins, so there’s a lot of potential for crossover cameos. Even the MacGuffin of the book, the prototype, is a component of technology that becomes crucial by the time of the Protectorate series. Carriger also takes a few moments to poke fun at the steampunk world in general, through a clique of boys at Pillover’s school, the Pistons, who sew gears to their clothing for no reason but fashion, smudge their eyes with kohl, and like to crash parties and spike the punch. It’s a good-natured and, let’s face it, well-deserved ribbing.

Overall, I’m quite pleased with Etiquette & Espionage. There were a few bumps that kept it from perfection, in my opinion, but — that’s true of the first couple Harry Potter books as well. For a first foray into YA fiction, Carriger’s done a lovely job. I absolutely devoured this first installment, and I’m excited to see where the rest of the series goes.

Leviathan, by Scott Westerfeld

Title: Leviathan
Author: Scott Westerfeld
Year of Publication: 2009
Length: 448 pages
Genre: YA steampunk
New or Re-Read?: New
Rating: 3.5 stars

I hoped for more out of this book.

I like the story. It’s an interesting premise and a great use of steampunk themes to build an alternate universe. Leviathan re-envisions the start of World War I as a conflict between two pathways of technological development. The Darwinists, in England, France, and Russia, have gone into biodevelopment, discovering things like DNA coding a bit ahead of time, and using that knowledge to create fantastical new creatures. Airships made out of floating air-whales with other creatures grafted on, balloons out of jellyfish/blowfish type things, lizards who can memorise and deliver messages, wolf-dog-tiger hybrids for security or searching. The Clankers, in Germany/the Holy Roman Empire (still hanging on, apparently) and most of Eastern Europe, have chosen traditional mechanical technology, viewing Darwinist creations as hellish abominations.

The trouble is that, well… there sort of just wasn’t enough there. I know it’s a YA book, but that’s really no excuse. Plenty of authors manage to write YA novels and still use sophisticated storytelling devices. The later Harry Potter books are probably the most famous example, but the honest-to-goodness best example is probably Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Westerfeld’s style is a bit slapdash for my preferences. The vocabulary is basic, the sentence structure largely unvaried, the characterisation fairly flat. This disappointed me, and it’s not just because I’m an adult reading a YA book — it would have disappointed me just as much at age 11. You don’t have to write simply to tell a story on a level that young people will understand. (Quite the opposite, I’ve always thought — half the point of reading is to stretch your brainpan out a bit, to introduce new things rather than just dumping in what it’s already familiar with, and that goes for the language itself as much as for the story).

I found myself wishing that the book either had a lot more illustrations — I think it would’ve worked brilliantly as a graphic novel — or a lot fewer, with a lot more verbal description. It seemed in many places as if the illustrations were serving as a crutch for insufficient description in the text. This is particularly true of the Darwinist creations, which I found a little confusing to follow. I can tell there are good ideas there, that the dynamics of how these things operate has been thought out — I just sometimes had trouble following along with exactly what those dynamics were. It became clearer with illustration, but still not perfectly so.

I still haven’t said anything about the actual plot yet, have I? Prince Aleksandr, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, is fleeing after his parents’ assassination (the event that, y’know, starts World War I). His path improbably collides with that of Deryn, a British common girl with aspirations of aviation, who has disguised herself as a boy in order to join the crew of one of the dirigible-creatures. And… that’s pretty much the plot. It doesn’t really get to going much of anywhere in this first book. We meet the characters, we learn about the world, the war starts, there are adventures on the ground and in the air. That’s not to say nothing happens. Quite a bit happens, in your typical adventure-story sort of way. But it’s all rather thin and entirely unfinished — this is clearly the first book in a series, and it doesn’t wrap up on its own in any significant way.

So, this was a sort of interesting read, but not a really gripping one. I imagine I’ll get the next book the series eventually, but I’m in no rush. And when it comes to YA steampunk, I’ll be anticipating Gail Carriger’s new series a lot more.

Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Title: Good Omens
Author: Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Year of Publication: 1990
Length: 367 pages
Genre: well, I shelve it at the end of my historical fiction section, but that’s because I’ve got a somewhat warped sense of humour
New or Re-Read?: Re-Read, many, many times
Rating: 5 brilliant, glittering stars

When I’m reading a book and come across a passage I really like, some quote I want to write down later or remember forever, I have a terrible habit of dog-earing the bottom corner of the page.

The bottom of Good Omens looks like a particularly jagged comb.

Apart from being one of my all-time favourite novels, Good Omens just has so many of my all-time favourite passages in it, and I attribute that to the combination of genius you get by mixing up Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett — two of my all-time favourite authors. Pratchett’s irreverence and Gaiman’s ethereal qualities, with the sense of the ludicrous profundity that they both possess, together make for a fantastic book, capable of being laugh-out-loud funny and spiritually transformative in the same paragraph.

So what is this book about? Well, the Apocalypse. Happening on a Saturday (in 1990). Eleven years earlier, the demon Crowley manages to misplace the Antichrist (with some help from a Satanic nun), so that while the powers of Heaven and Hell think they’re focusing their efforts on influencing him towards Good or Evil, they are in fact just confusing a normal child, while the Antichrist, alias Adam Young, grows up as normal as you could please in an idyllic English country village. He’s a good-natured troublemaker, the leader of his gang, the Them, and has astonishing powers of imagination and a limitless capacity for belief in the incredible. When he turns eleven, gears start moving to start the Apocalypse — but Crowley and his angel friend Aziraphale, who have been on Earth for six thousand years and rather gotten to like the human race, decide to try and put a stop to it. Swept up in this mess are Anathema Device, professional descendent, whose ancestress Agnes Nutter wrote the only truly accurate book of prophecy in the history of the world; Newton Pulsifer, a would-be computer engineer who breaks everything electronic he touches; and a whole host of villagers, Atlanteans, Tibetans, and other phenomena.

I never can decide what my favourite aspect of this book is. The moral center, as it were, is obviously Adam, who starts to get caught up in the idea of remaking the world in a more favourable image, the ichor in his soul tugging at him, and has to decide what would really be best. He and the Them are pretty amazing. The description of Pepper (and the explication of her name) is a dog-eared page; sensible Wensleydale and grungy Brian fill out the quartet in excellent balance, and through them, the reader experiences the awe of an idealised childhood. This certainly doesn’t mean that everything is perfect and flawless — do you remember being a kid? The best days were the messy adventures, the ridiculous schemes, the trouble you got into but had had too good a time to care. Adam makes sure his friends have that damn near every day — until Armageddon starts spinning things out of control. So that’s a lot of fun to watch happen. (Though I do wonder if it will resonate quite as strongly for this generation’s kids, who are less used to taking off on their bikes, taking over the quarries and ravines that adults won’t go near, scaling trees, skinning knees, finding impossible messes, tangling in nettles, staying out until the last possible minute you could get away with, and all the other things that used to be de rigeur for an active childhood. I remember that from my early years; I don’t know that all modern kids have the same experience — which is sad).

But then there are Aziraphale and Crowley, who, while not the center of the story itself, are nonetheless the impetus behind the narrative. For six thousand years, they’ve organised a careful neutrality between them; when Crowley does something evil, Aziraphale balances it with something good, and vice versa. Neither side gets an advantage, but everyone can demonstrate what brilliant progress they’re making. Aziraphale currently runs a used book store, mostly as a place to store rare books where no one will take them from him; Crowley wears sunglasses at night, drives a classic car, and practises horticulture by means of terrorism. But they’ve realised they actually have more in common with each other than with their ostensible colleagues and immediate superiors. They’re a classic odd couple, and it’s a brilliant pairing. As they put it, towards the end of the book:

“I’d just like to say,” [Aziraphale] said, “if we don’t get out of this, that… I’ll have known, deep down inside, that there was a spark of goodness in you.”
“That’s right,” said Crowley bitterly. “Make my day.”
Aziraphale held out his hand.
“Nice knowing you.”
Crowley took it.
“Here’s to the next time,” he said. “And… Aziraphale?”
“Yes.”
“Just remember I’ll have known that, deep down inside, you were just enough of a bastard to be worth liking.”

Aziraphale and Crowley are probably the ultimate fan favourites of the entire book. When fancastings get discussed, it’s usually about them (and I’m all for Jude Law and Tom Hiddleston, respectively, for what it’s worth). But then you get some of the other humans. Anathema Device is a witch in the same cast as Discworld’s, practical and quick-thinking. Poor Newt is sort of charmingly pathetic. The history of the Witchfinders’ Army is entirely ridiculous. Andthen there are the Four Horsemen, riding inexorably towards Adam (on motorcycles), who are some of the most evocatively drawn characters I’ve ever experienced. From them, I get what might be my favourite passage in the entire book, if only because I have so often found it applied to myself. And it is, well, rather perfect.

The men in the room suddenly realized they didn’t want to know her better. She was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful: something to be admired from a distance, but not up close.

And that’s sort of the way the whole book is written — the language isn’t but so sophisticated, it’s not a difficult read, but it’s nonetheless complexly woven, layered and nuanced, and capable of striking you right to the core. Gaiman and Pratchett both have an ability to make the reader know exactly what they mean, to pull memories and feelings out of you.

So I don’t know what my favourite part of this book is, or even who my favourite cast members are, because the whole thing works together as a single organic unit, breathing and pulsing, as a truly excellent book should. My real favourite thing about it, then, is probably what it has to say about being human — about making mistakes, about how we create the world we live in, what our brains can cope with and how they slide around the things they can’t. The last two pages of this book may be the most incredible commentary on the grace of the human condition I’ve ever read.

The book is also hilarious. It’s fantastically witty, and broadly comic, and delightfully absurd. It’s crammed with sly references, as is so often the case with both Gaiman’s and Pratchett’s works, little nuggets of brilliance for an avid reader to discover (individually or with the help of annotations). But none of that is what makes it great. What makes this a five-star book for me is that incisive quality, that ability the words have to cut straight through me and expose my soul. Only the very best books have that magic. Good Omens possesses it in spades. And that’s why I’ve read it so many times, why I can return to it again and again and always feel the book in a new way.

At the end of this re-read, I find myself suddenly dying for — not a sequel, precisely, but just some sort of follow-up short story. And wouldn’t this be the year for it? 2012, with all the histrionics that entails? And Adam Young, I realised, would be 33 this year, and how perfect is that? I just want to know they’re all doing — him, and the Them (but especially Pepper), and Anathema and Newt, and Aziraphale and Crowley. What does the world look like for them, 22 years on?

Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love, by Chris Roberson

Title: Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love
Author: Chris Roberson
Illustrator: Chrissie Zullo
Year of Publication: 2010
Length: 144 pages
Genre: graphic novel – magical realism
New or Re-Read?: New
Rating: 3 stars
Spoilers: Up through at least Fables 11

This is a spinoff from the Fables graphic novel series, focusing on the character of Cinderella — to most eyes, a flighty socialite whose shoe-selling business funds her obsession with designer brands and jet-setting travel. In truth, Cinderella is a spy for Fabletown, a covert operative constantly in and out of danger. If you’ve read the rest of the Fables series, you know this already, because you’ve seen her at work already. She’s ideal for the job because, as the heroine one of the world’s most popular and enduring stories, her legend is strong enough to make her nigh-invulnerable. She can take a point-blank shot to the head and be back on her feet in a matter of hours.

This collection makes reference to some recent happenings in Fabletown, which is why I put up the spoiler alert, but it doesn’t rely heavily on the main series. The plot is self-contained. The sheriff of Fabletown needs Cinderella to stop a black market trade in magical goods, which are in danger of finding their way into mundy hands. Her search leads her to Dubai, where she is first attacked by Arabian Fable Aladdin, then teams up with him when they realise they’re on the same mission, just dispatched from different groups. Aladdin is a pretty smooth charmer — which doesn’t impress Cinderella. As the infamous Prince Charming’s third (and thus-far final) wife, she’s jaded and now impervious to that particular power. As they work together, though, and he proves his prowess as a secret agent, he does start to grow on her a bit. I quite like him as a character — although I thought he was cuter before he lost the goatee. We also get to meet Cinderella’s three associates, agents who work for her without even the knowledge of her boss, the Fabletown Sheriff: Puss in Boots, Jenny Wren (of nursery rhyme fame, and lover of the slain Cock Robin), and Dickory Mouse (of Hickory Dickory Dock). Each has special talents, and she can summon each one once during her mission, wherever she is, thanks to a charm bracelet provided to her by the famed witch Frau Totenkinder — in exchange for an as-yet unnamed favour. Frau Totenkinder, after all, has her own agenda and keeps her own counsel.

I liked this collection, but there’s nothing super-special about it. The art was a bit plain, and I found myself wanting it to be a bit more sophisticated, to give that sultry, scandalous spy-thriller feel. I did like that we got a bit of jet-setting and plane-hopping (quite literally, in fact). It gave the story the chance to show off some different locales, and I enjoyed the surprise in the endgame. This is a nice supplement to the main storyline and a fun quick read, but overall, I prefer the more detailed, connected arcs.

Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins

Title: Mockingjay
Author: Suzanne Collins
Year of Publication: 2010
Length: 390 pages
Genre: young adult – dystopian thriller
New or Re-Read?: New
Rating: 4.5 stars
Spoiler Warning: Armed and active for entire series

This book was not at all what I expected. And I sort of love it for that.

I knew right from the start that it wouldn’t be, that I wasn’t getting Return of the Jedi. District 13 is about as far from a utopian paradise as you can get. It’s a complete military state, to the extent that each citizen’s schedule for the day is temporary-tattooed on their arms when they wake up. Everyone has a place and a responsibility, cogs in a machine. Practical, but creepy — and it clearly rubs Katniss the wrong way. Fortunately, since she’s still classified as “mentally disoriented”, she can get away with not following orders all the time, but it doesn’t take her long to start finding out just how far she can push her new allies. They want to use her as the Mockingjay to unite all of the Districts in rebellion against the Capitol, but they’re having some trouble stabilising her moods, not to mention dredging her out of despair about Peeta. She’s pissed as hell that the rebel operatives chose to save her and leave him behind, and when she finds out he’s not dead but captured, controlled by Snow, she’s naturally pretty concerned for his safety.

So, a lot of the book is Katniss adjusting to life in 13, pushing her limits, and trying to come to terms with having to live up to the image the public has of her. What does it mean to be the Mockingjay? How can she be that and stay true to herself?

There’s something really beautifully subversive in this book, and I don’t just mean about that reversal of expectations. On the surface, this book seems to be so unlike the first two. The situations are entirely different. The characters have changed, some to be nigh-unrecognisable. But the mechanics are gruesomely similar. Katniss is still stuck in the Hunger Games. Only they’re playing for keeps now. The Games were, of course, always deadly serious to the 24 combatants, and to an extent to people in the Districts, but they were still so choreographed, so thoughtfully executed. War isn’t, even when you try. There’s no hope of begging aid from on high, of getting sponsors, just for being impressive. In war, reinforcements and supplies come only when you’ve planned for them, not dropped as if by magic out of the sky. Critical differences — but critical similarities, too. Collins, brilliantly, doesn’t harp on this theme much — but she lets it shine in tiny details (details that I’m wondering if they would be as apparent if I hadn’t devoured all three books in under 48 hours). Like when, during the mission in the Capitol, Katniss tries to reckon up who they’ve lost, repeats the list to herself, just as she did her list of opponents during the Games, to keep track — only now it’s not to keep track of who’s still a threat, but to remember who they’ve lost. Similarly, the Capitol broadcasts those suspected still alive (even when some are already dead), which echoes the projections of dead tributes during the Games. And then there’s how Katniss still has to play for the cameras, still has to put on a good show, not to win sponsors, but to keep up the spirits of the rebels in the Districts. She’s still styled, throughout the book, both in 13 and on the road, still putting on a show. Still accompanied by a camera crew (a rather morbid commentary, I feel, on our current 24/7 news cycles). Even down to those damn silver parachutes at the end, even down to what ultimately happens with Prim, so many details of this book echo the Games and the first book, but in such brutal, sadistic, horrifying ways.

I also enjoy how this book subverts so many expectations. Katniss doesn’t turn into a 100% badass warrior chick. The love triangle between her, Peeta, and Gale does not consume the story. The rebels are not necessarily the good guys. The story is not one of glory and triumph. It’s dark, definitely edgy, and occasionally hard to read. It’s a lot of psychological trauma for a young adult book to deal with, but I think Collins handles it pretty deftly. The subversion of the romance angle is particularly nice. Gale turns out to be just a little too violently inclined, a little too gung-ho about playing just as rough and mercilessly as the Capitol does. Katniss isn’t sure what to do about that, and she clearly struggles with what these revelations about Gale’s character, about the man he’s grown into, mean for any potential future between them. Meanwhile, Peeta has been brainwashed by the Capitol via a form of psychological poison. By the time the rebels retrieve him, he thinks Katniss is a genetically engineered abomination trying to kill them all, and he nearly strangles her. It’s a far cry from the contrived images of the happy couple they had to create earlier. Getting him back is a long, slow process, and with both Peeta and Katniss suffering some pretty severe PTSD, Collins isn’t shy about stating that neither one of them will ever come back completely. Part of them will always live in this dark world, in these terrifying circumstances. They will never be what they were before or who they were before. But that doesn’t mean they can’t salvage something out of the ashes. (Salvage is, incidentally, a pretty big although subtle theme throughout all three books).

There were some flaws. A couple of times the action jerked around so fast that I got a little lost and had to back-track to figure out just what had happened. A significant character’s death got sandwiched in a way that I nearly missed it entirely. And Katniss possibly spends just a little too much of the book out of it — either literally or psychologically. In some ways it’s effective, to display the effects all of this is having on her, but in some ways it’s just really frustrating to have your heroine and narrator continually knocked out of either consciousness or sanity.

This paragraph has an extra spoiler warning on it because it really is the granddaddy spoiler, since it’s about the ultimate endgame. So. Be ye warned.

I knew Katniss was going to have to kill Coin even before she knew it. Coin proved, so thoroughly, that she wasn’t any better than her opponent. Rule by 13 would have been no better than rule by the Capitol — just restricted in different ways. While the Capitol celebrates excess and indulgence, flinging human life away for entertainment value, 13 buckles everything down until there’s no room left to breathe. Individual life and choice don’t have any meaning there, either, but for completely different reasons. There, it’s all about serving the cause, being the well-functioning machine you’re meant to be. Each civilisation represents one end of the Evil Empire spectrum, but they’re both pretty horrific to consider.

What we come to learn is that, for District 13, this war was never about liberation, never about freeing the Districts from the yoke. President Snow was right about that — 13 could’ve helped them in the first rebellion, but instead they cut and ran. No, for District 13 and for Coin, this was about revenge and domination. She wanted her own empire to rule, larger and more satisfying than subterranean 13, and she didn’t care who she had to throw under the bus to get that. Individual life meant as little to her as to Snow; she would sacrifice whoever and whatever in order to win. With her out of the picture and someone saner at the wheel, there’s hope that Panem might yet turn into a functioning republic, as the District rebels hoped.

So. Overall, it’s hard to say I enjoyed this book, because so much of it was so painful. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t exquisite. Collins crafts a fantastic story in a complex world (a world that I’m sort of annoyed I still don’t know enough about, but that’s my own private obsession with dystopian world-building, there). Katniss is a remarkable heroine, who defies expectations at every turn — both of her handlers, her friends, and of the reader. She won’t be what anyone else wants her to be, and that includes us. I appreciate that. Collins has done something different, which is quite an achievement. I want more heroines like Katniss in the literary world.

Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins

Title: Catching Fire
Author: Suzanne Collins
Year of Publication: 2009
Length: 391 pages
Genre: young adult – dystopian thriller
New or Re-Read?: New
Rating: 4+ stars
Spoilers: Armed and active for both this and The Hunger Games; I don’t know how to talk about this book without them, unfortunately.

The last time I felt this way about a series was starting Harry Potter, back almost a decade ago. Nothing else in recent memory has matched the sheer irresistibility of this series. I’m a little floored, honestly, by how much I’m taken with this series and how desperately I need to move on to find out what happens. But I thought it important to pause and capture my thoughts now.

Catching Fire ups the ante in a big way. It continues more or less seamlessly on from the end of The Hunger Games. Katniss and Peeta are expected to go on a Victory Tour around all of the Districts. The trouble is that unrest has been sizzling in some of them for a long time, and Katniss finds herself the inadvertent mascot of rebellion. No true uprisings have broken out yet, but you can feel them simmering, low-burning embers, all through this book. And that’s terrifying the living hell out of the Capitol. Enough so that the President himself feels compelled to visit Katniss and make a few well-placed threats against her family and friends.

This includes Gale, who was kind’a-sort’a Katniss’s boyfriend before she went to the Games, but who she’s had to treat as an amiable “cousin” ever since she got back, since her only thread of protection lies in being able to claim that love for Peeta made her act so defiantly. There’s a lot of emotional entanglement between the three of them, and I think it’s handled very well. It’s not overblown or made into the stuff of melodrama. Instead, all three act in the time-honoured manner of teenagers everwhere: with extreme awkwardness. They don’t know what to say to each other, how to act. And it doesn’t help that just as soon as poor Katniss is thinking she’s set her heart on one, the other will do something spectacular to sway her around again. And yet, all without turning her into just some pathetic chick.

Is it wrong of me to hope that Katniss will get to live polyamorously happy-ever-after with them both? Yes. Yes, it is. That would barely pass muster in fairly edgy adult fiction; it’s going to be another century or so before you could get away with that in young adult. What I then assume is that either Gale or Peeta has to die. So, then, is it wrong for me to hope that it’s Gale? Nothing against the guy at all, but he’s not the one we, the readers, have spent as much time with. My emotional investment lies far more in Peeta.

So. All of that’s going on, and then District Twelve has a really hard year. It’s partially to punish Katniss — law enforcement becomes really strict, the minor infractions (like hunting in the woods) that folk used to be able to get away with, they can’t anymore — and it’s partially just bad luck, from a really hard winter. Desperation’s sinking in, and even while Katniss feels the urge to rebel burning deep inside her… she can’t. Not with so many people relying on her. Not with so many innocent lives at stake.

And then the Capitol changes the rules on everyone again, and announces that for the 75th Hunger Games, they’ll be drawing only from a pool of prior victors — who are supposed to be exempt for life. The second half of the book deals with this. With no other female victor living, Katniss has to go for 12, and though their mentor Haymitch’s name is chosen, Peeta immediately volunteers to take his place. So they’re back, and have to quickly determine who among the other tribute-victors they might be able to trust at least long enough for a temporary alliance. The arena designed for the 75th Games is diabolical and utterly ingenious, and in some ways I wish they’d gotten to it earlier in the book in order to spend more time examining it.

Some other reviews I’ve seen charge that Catching Fire suffers from middle-of-trilogy syndrome and that it’s slow to get going, that too much time is spent on exposition in the beginning. I couldn’t disagree more. I think this book is superbly strong, and I don’t feel it has any of that lag. In fact, I sort of wish they’d spent more time on the Victory Tour, describing the various Districts — but that’s because I’m obsessed with world-building, especially in dystopias. I want to know everything. From what I can gather, District 4 is probably Gulf Coast (wherever the coastline actually is now), because their main industry is fishing. 3 seems like it might be Detroit-ish, as they focus on electronics and manufacturing. 7 seems like Wisconsin-Minnesota, timber country. 11 I can’t quite place, because it might be either the South or the Midwest. I’m guessing Midwest because the agriculture seems a bit more wheat-and-corn, though in Book 1 Rue does talk a lot about orchards — but also because, if part of the cataclysm leading to this world setup was rising waters, most of the agricultural south is probably under the Atlantic Ocean now. Anyway — I wish I knew more. I want to know about all the Districts, where they are, how many people, how they got to be the way they are. What we do learn along the way is that District 11 is much more strictly controlled than 12 has been, and that the people there seem to be getting sick of it.

So. This book is fabulous, the series is fabulous, I’m moving on to Mockingjay as fast as may be — and it looks like it’s going to have pretty much my favourite thing over. Not just a dystopia, but a dystopian rebellion. I am aquiver with excitement.

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

Title: The Hunger Games
Author: Suzanne Collins
Year of Publication: 2009
Length: 374 pages
Genre: young adult – dystopian thriller
New or Re-Read?: New
Rating: 5 stars

It has been a long, long time since I tore through a book as quickly and as avidly as I tore through this one. The word for The Hunger Games is, absolutely, “compelling.” This is a book that grips you by the throat and doesn’t let go.

The book takes place in a dystopian future — which gets me right there. I love a good dystopia. North America as we know it has fallen to pieces, thanks to what the heroine vaguely describes as “the disasters, the droughts, the storms, the fires, the encroaching seas that swallowed up so much land, the brutal war for what little sustenance remained.” The civilization that replaces America is called Panem, a cluster of districts ruled by the Capitol. There were once Thirteen Districts; now, after a failed rebellion, there are only Twelve, with the Thirteenth having been obliterated in the war. As a reminder to the Districts of its power, and to prevent further rebellions, the Capitol holds the Hunger Games each year. Each District sends two tributes each year, a boy and a girl between the ages of 12 and 18.

In coal-mining District 12 (probably situated in what was once West Virginia, based on the descriptions), Katniss Everdeen volunteers to take her sister’s place when twelve-year-old Prim is chosen. The “reaping”, as the ceremony is grimly called, is a stark look at how the government can so easily manipulate poverty. A twelve-year-old has his or her name entered once, a thirteen-year-old twice, and so forth — but, you can also choose to enter your name more times in exchange for tesserae, allotments of grain and oil. This is a frequent occurrence in District 12, impoverished and struggling. Katniss has been her family’s provider since she was 11, when her father died in a mining accident and her mother slipped into a deep depression. She’s now sixteen, with her name put in 20 times; her friend Gale, with more siblings to support, has his name in 42 times. And yet it’s Prim, with her name only in once, because Katniss wouldn’t let her take on any more risk, who gets called.

And this is all just in the first few chapters.

Katniss goes to the Capitol to prepare for the games, along with Peeta, the male tribute from her District — a boy who once threw her bread when she was starving, near-death, before she learned to hunt and trap. They’re up against others like themselves, unwilling tributes who’ve never had a full belly in their lives, but they’re also up against tributes from wealthier Districts, where the Games are not a punishment but a chance for honor and glory, who’ve trained their whole lives for this moment. Katniss experiences the shock and confusion of being treated like a pampered pet even though she’s really a beast for slaughter, and through her eyes, we see the horrific, casual cruelty of a society that places enormous monetary value on her life but no spiritual or moral value on it whatsoever. Because the Hunger Games are entertainment, televised and trumpeted.It’s the Olympics as bloodsport. (It’s no surprise that everyone in the Capitol seems to have a Roman name — Flavius, Octavia, Cinna, Portia — because there’s certainly a smack of the Colosseum about the whole thing). The tributes have to compete not only against each other in the field, but also for sponsors, who can send them life-saving gifts during the Games — and the tributes who put in the best show during the opening ceremonies, training, and interviews. Katniss, both feisty and sullen, unable to conceal her resentment, is saved from making a total mess of things partially through her own audacity and partially through the machinations of the District 12 handlers, who manipulate circumstances so that Katniss and Peeta look like star-cross’d lovers. The burden for that is on Peeta (and for a long time Katniss isn’t sure if he really has feelings for her or if he’s just playing the game), but Katniss reaps some benefits of it, and eventually learns to work the angle herself.

The strength of this book is in the relentless way that Collins builds suspense. Even when Katniss is on something resembling “downtime”, healing from wounds, feeding herself, scoping out the lay of the land, it never feels as though the action slows down. There’s always another threat, always something else lurking on the horizon — and those things explode into action with magnificent force. The Games are a fascinating look at survivalism; the “Career Tributes” from the wealthy districts may know how to fight, but they don’t know how to hunt for food, find safe berries to eat, or bandage up their wounds. Eleven tributes are killed outright in the first battle, but from then on, it becomes a matter of playing advantages and covering for weaknesses. It’s gruesome, deeply troubling, heart-poundingly thrilling, and unexpectedly emotional. There was one moment that got to me, not because of who died or the way in which she did, but because of Katniss’s reaction to it — and the unexpected benefit that Katniss received afterwards. I don’t want to throw in a spoiler, but it’s a really poignant moment, and it made me tear up. And then it’s right back to breath-holding suspense.

So, this book is fantastic. Collins has created not only a fascinating dystopia, but also an eminently relatable heroine. I’m usually not a fan of first person narratives; they have to be done really well for me to like them. And this one is. Katniss’s voice is wonderful, practical and laced with sardonic humour, but you also get to hear her struggling with vulnerabilities she doesn’t want to admit to. She is not a perfect person, but she’s a tremendously engaging protagonist.

I know I’m late to the train, and I don’t know why. It wasn’t for lack of interest, I just somehow never got around to picking this book up. Probably no one actually needs my recommendation to read this book, as I suspect I was the last person in America not to have done so already. But if you do need it, here it is: Read this book. Immediately if not sooner. I’m off to get Catching Fire and Mockingjay right now, because I can’t stand not knowing what happens next.

Heartless, by Gail Carriger

Title: Heartless (Parasol Protectorate #4)
Author: Gail Carriger
Year of Publication: 2011
Length: 374 pages
Genre: steampunk paranormal mystery
New or Re-Read?: Brand new!
Rating: 4 stars and a bit of an extra twinkle
Spoiler Warning: Quite active, not just for Heartless, but for the end of Changeless up through Blameless.

This  may be my favourite of the Parasol Protectorate series thus far. The wit is sharp, the action crisp, and the plot tight, all of which make for a highly enjoyable read.

In Heartless, Alexia receives a message from a ghost indicating that someone is planning to kill the queen. Naturally, Alexia does not see her considerably advanced pregnancy as any reason not to get to the bottom of the plot — not any more than her move into Lord Akeldama’s second closet should disrupt her affairs. (Why has she taken up residence with the new vampire potentate? Well, it appears to be the way to get the Westminster Hive to stop trying to kill her and her infant-inconvenience, which was really starting to become a considerable distraction to her). Investigating the matter takes Alexia deep into the worlds and secrets of vampires, werewolves, and ghosts alike, forcing her to put brainpower and sheer stubbornness together until she uncovers all the pieces of the puzzle.

I quite liked the twists and turns in the plotline. I was able to guess enough of them to feel clever, but not so many that it felt predictable, which is really the perfect balance in a thriller. The red herrings aren’t just thrown out for the sake of being there; they lead down paths of their own, vitally important to the characters and to the overall series, even if they’re not tied to the main mystery of this book. I appreciate that, because few things are so frustrating in a story as a loose end dangling out there without payoff. We also get to see the enmeshing of supernatural politics in thorough detail, picking up some of the threads from Changeless (probably my second-favourite of the series).

This book also uses technological elements a little more deftly than previous books in the series have. On the whole, the Parasol Protectorate series is more paranormal-heavy than techno-heavy, but Heartless weaves mechanical porcupines and the increasingly fearsome inventions of Madame Lefoux more neatly into the rest of the story. They feel more integrated, less like window-dressing and more like real facets of Carriger’s alternate universe. And there’s a lot to be said for the mental image of an actress walking a mechanical porcupine on a leash down the middle of a busy London street.

What I liked best about Heartless, though, was how much we got to explore the emotions and the psychological landscapes of the various characters — Lyall, Ivy, Genevieve, Akeldama, all of them get new revelations, new layers, and new facets. Alexia’s explorations, as she attempts to get to the bottom of the threat against the queen, unveil a lot of personal history. My favourite of these is Lyall’s — he’s such a perfect Beta, and in Heartless we get to see more of just what he’s done to hold his pack together with both, er, paws. Alexia thinks of Lyall as someone who no one would remember as being part of a group, except that, because of him, the group stays together — that’s a powerful skill and an incredibly valuable person to have around. Carriger also didn’t disappoint when it came to poor Biffy, Akeldama’s former drone who had, rather unfortunately, to face eternity as a werewolf instead of a vampire as he’d intended. His struggle is poignant (although not without its touches of humour, when Biffy comes to his senses after destroying wallpaper or silk breeches), and it’s a nice exploration of some of the consequences that the supernatural set faces from their actions. These character explorations — emotionally and psychologically real and satisfying ,without ever losing the effervescent tone of the book — are some of the best bits.

Add to all of this Carriger’s usual quick wit and frothy sense of irreverence, and you’ve got a thoroughly compelling read. Some of my favourite bits are the one-liners that she slips into the narrative, casual snippets which are so absurd or so sharp that they’re laugh-out-loud funny. Carriger recently mentioned on her blog (and has apparently mentioned before, though as a newcomer to the series, I hadn’t heard it before) that each of the books in the Parasol Protectorate series has been in mimicry of a particular style. Soulless was an emulation of Austen-esque early romance novels (which explains, at least, the far-too-saccharine prose of the first book), Changeless of Gothic tales, Blameless of travel-adventure novels, and Heartless of Sherlock Holmes mysteries. And it isn’t that Carriger doesn’t do these emulations well (although in Soulless I found it more a detraction than anything) — it’s that I wish she’d just trust her own style more. Timeless, out next year, is due to be the last in the series (and, judging by the cover, an Egyptology expedition), and while I’ll be quite sad to see Alexia and all the rest go, I’ll also be hoping that Carriger’s next project will showcase her own style more, rather than these experiments with genre. As I said in my review for Soulless — she’s at her best when her wit shines through.

Overall, I recommend Heartless as strongly as the rest of the series — Alexia’s story just keeps getting better. These books are inventive, intriguing, and just plain fun. They embody a lightheartedness, a willingness not to take themselves seriously, that I think the steampunk genre can really benefit from — I’d love to see more like this, and I can’t wait to keep following Carriger’s writing, hopefully for many years to come.

Every Which Way But Dead, by Kim Harrison

Title: Every Which Way But Dead (Hollows #3)
Author: Kim Harrison
Year of Publication: 2005
Length: 501 pages
Genre: urban fantasy / magical realism
New or Re-Read?: New
Rating: 3.5 stars

These books are weirdly addictive, considering that I still find the heroine too stupid to live, that I still think it would be better told in the third person than in the first, and that I like almost all of the secondary characters more than the heroine.

And yet… I tore through this. I mean, it’s not a challenging read, by any means, but it is longer than the first two in the series, and long for a MMP. And it’s engaging. The plot of Every Which Way But Dead is a lot tighter than in the first two books, and it moves along at a better pace.

In Every Which Way But Dead, Rachel has to deal with the implications of having become a demon’s familiar, in The Good, the Bad, and the Undead, in exchange for his testimony against the vampire Piscary, who was trying to kill Rachel at the time the deal was struck. Piscary now being in jail, Rachel also ends up having to deal with the fallout from that: a city-wide scramble to take over his former areas of influence. Unsurprisingly to anyone who’s been following the story thus far, Trent Kalamack is mixed up in it. There’s also a new player on the field, a Mr Saladan, an accomplished ley line witch. Thanks to this mess, the danger in this book gets amped up a bit.

The characters also all get a little more well-drawn in this book. Ivy’s fallen off the wagon and is a practicing vamp again, which is troubling but also seems to have a good effect on her temper. Jenks has a temper fit when he learns Rachel’s been keeping the secret of Trent’s species from him. Kisten turns from a vapid playboy into someone we see really struggling, hurt by Piscary’s dismissal of him in favour of Ivy, trying to hold Piscary’s business together with both hands. Trent lets Rachel in on more of her own background as well as his, and his current situation and elven politics. We also meet Ceri, the demon’s former familiar, a 1000-year-old elf, and David, a Werewolf insurance agent. As I said — the rest of the cast is intriguing and complex. It’s Rachel I find annoying and dim. My biggest problem with her is that she will full-out know something is a bad idea, will admit that it’s stupid and going to get her into trouble… and then, invariably, does it anyway.

And, I’m not afraid to admit it — I like the smut. Wish there was more of it. I will cheer the day Rachel and Trent get it on (because I simply can’t believe the series won’t end up there sooner or later), but in the meantime, Kisten’s pretty entertaining. I like him better than Nick, who runs off, unable to deal with the backlash from Rachel accidentally making him her familiar. (And are you noticing how all the plot points are the result of poor decisions or incompetence on Rachel’s part?). He always seemed like a placeholder, though; Rachel’s vague thoughts about being truly serious with him always rang pretty false.

Also, if the combined forces of Kisten and Trent can get Rachel to stop dressing like she collided with the clearance rack at Hot Topic, I will be so thrilled. I cringe every time Harrison starts describing leather pants and red halter tops. I can’t decide if she’s trying to be ironic or if we’re genuinely meant to find that cool, but either way, it’s pretty dreadful.

So, overall — I’ll probably stick with this series. It’s not a priority, but I’ll keep alternating them into my schedule so long as they keep getting better rather than backsliding. These books are Twinkies for the brain — no nutritional value, pretty empty fluff, not going to fill you up, but, y’know, tasty enough for a quick sugar fix.

Blameless by Gail Carriger

Title: Blameless (Parasol Protectorate Book #3)
Author: Gail Carriger
Year of Publication: 2010
Length: 355 pages
Genre: steampunk paranormal romance
New or Re-Read?: New
Rating: 4 stars
Spoiler Warning: Not only for Blameless but for Changeless. Do NOT read this review unless you’ve read Changeless.

Seriously. Unless you want to be spoiled for Changeless, stop reading.

Okay. (Yes, taking up space so people can scroll away).

Blameless opens just about exactly where Changeless left off, give or take a couple of weeks. With Conall in a foaming rage about her supposed infidelity, as evidenced by her supposedly impossible pregnancy, Alexia flees his house to return to the less-than-warm bosom of her family. When word gets out about her indelicate state, however, Alexia faces censure from the Queen and shame from Society. In a very short amount of time, she’s gone from overlooked to quite prominent to entirely ostracized. Fortunately, Alexia doesn’t give so much of a fig for Society; she mostly seems to find its disapproval an inconvenience (which is, incidentally, how she refers to the fetus growing inside her).

So, Alexia takes to the Continent, partly to avoid murderous vampires, partly to escape her alarmingly empty-headed family. No bets on which would prove ultimately more fatal. As in Changeless, she has a traveling party with her, but this time it’s a far more high-functioning crowd: her father’s erstwhile dogsbody Floote, clever inventor Madame Lefoux, and former Woolsey pack claviger Tunstell. They end up in Italy, land of the super-religious Templars, hoping that their religious tomes will hold some clue to the nature of preternaturals and an explanation for this unexpected pregnancy.

And they do. We learn a lot about preternaturals, both in Italy and along the way. We learn some various theories about how they interact with supernaturals, about their place in the cosmos, and we see that the Templars treat Alexia rather like an infectious plague, in fact considering her a demon (or, rather, daemon, but I have trouble spelling it that way thanks to His Dark Materials where that’s something completely different). The metaphysics here are really quite fascinating, if you like that sort of thing (which I do), and some of the Continental scientists are pretty excellent satires of Victorian-era medicine. The hysteria, the casual sexism, the bizarre theories and even more bizarre solutions — it’s a nice bit of parody. And kudos to Carriger for taking her story out of England. So much steampunk stays firmly rooted in the U.K., so it was nice to sojourn elsewhere. I wish, though, that the rest of the world felt as fleshed-out as her Britannia does. Bits of it felt rather slapdash. The Templars, particularly, feel more like an amalgamation of stereotypes than a well-thought-out alternate universe incarnation — which is strange, considering how detailed Carriger’s historical and sociological divergences usually are. The Templars come off feeling a bit villain-of-the-week, without enough nuance or veracity to make them feel like a true, tangible threat. The whole Italy plot is also awfully, well, predictable. Considering what we do know about the fanatical Templars, it comes as exactly no surprise when they stop playing nice and imprison Alexia. Likewise, I don’t know if Carriger meant for Channing’s identity to be a mystery or not, but it was pretty much clear as day — he disappears from England on some vitally important mission, and meanwhile in France and Italy, this pure white werewolf is constantly saving Alexia just in the nick of time? Not much of a shock. I could’ve done with a nice red herring there.

The best parts of this book, though, are actually back in England. I always liked Professor Lyall before, but we never saw enough of him for him to really take as a fave for me. In this book, though, he’s just magnificent. With Lord Maccon drinking himself into oblivion, Lyall has to step up to hold the Woolsey pack together with both, er, paws. I do love a good Beta. His dry wit and no-nonsense behaviour shows remarkably well in Blameless. Lyall not only has to defend against challengers and attempt to knock sense into Conall, but he also ends up investigating the disappearance of Lord Akeldama. It’s that last twist which actually leads to a fantastic subplot: the accidental transformation of Biffy, formerly a vampire drone, into a werewolf. He doesn’t get a lot of time to react to this in this book — and neither does Lord Akeldama, nor do his new packmates — but I imagine it will be a prominent subplot in Heartless, and I’m looking forward to it. Carriger’s put in a creative twist that I definitely wasn’t expecting.

Like other readers, I felt like the reconciliation between Alexia and Conall was a bit too pat. For as feisty as Alexia is, I rather expected more from her than a few half-hearted protests, a few more sniffles, and then open arms. Love can make up for a lot, but considering just how awful he was to her, I was rather hoping to see a more psychologically satisfying resolution to the conflict. As it was, it sort of felt like Carriger just needed the plot to be able to move on, so she squeezed the reconciliation in where she could crowbar it. I know that Carriger aims for light-hearted fare, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all — but there’s also nothing wrong with taking a moment to let the emotions breathe. It would be a nice contrast to the predominant frivolity.

Overall, I quite enjoyed this book, as I’ve enjoyed the others in the series. It’s a quick and entertaining read. I’ve already pre-ordered Heartless, which comes out at the end of the month.