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Briefly noted: two YA fantasy books
Oct. 1st, 2008 03:35 pmYsabeau S. Wilce. Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog.
Magical castles/castle-butlers, a huge power struggle between two sets of conquering nobility, unreasonable parental expectations, a crazy relative and a cast of unusual sidekicks. A lot to get into a few hundred pages. Flora Segunda is the surviving second daughter of the Fyrdraaca family of Califia; she lives in a decaying mansion whose magical butler/castle presence has been banished by her mother. In a few weeks, she will reach her 14th birthday, become an adult, and be sent to military college-- all the Fyrdraacas are soldiers-- but she doesn't want to go. She meets the butler in an inaccessible part of the house and sets out to save him (along with a few other people along the way) but in the end needs to hunt for help for herself. The plot line, though complicated, is fascinating. There are echoes here of Garth Nix's Abhorsen and Keys to the Kingdom series, older Patricia McKillip, and even a certain amount of Ellen Raskin-ness. Despite her spirit and inventiveness, Flora is also subject to the angst of a 14-year-old girl; I see myself in her.
Definitely recommended.
Melissa Marr. Wicked Lovely.
Despite the title and the expectations raised by the cover art, this is not, thankfully, another teen vampire book, though there are some plot similarities. This is Urban faery fantasy in the Charles De Lint vein, though with some threads of folktale retellings. The settings are dark, dangerous, and sometimes bloody. Aislinn has Second Sight; she can see the fairy folk, though her grandmother has drilled her to never let on to them that she sees them, never attract their attention, never speak to them. But suddenly, two powerful faery figures are watching her and taking an interest in her life. Keenan, the Summer King, hopes that she will be able to take up the mantle of Summer Queen and free him from his mother's domination-- but every girl who has tried in the last 9 centuries has failed to be *the one* and ended up the Winter Girl, bound to cold and winter until the next candidate agreed to the trial. Donia, the current Winter Girl, is sworn to discourage Aislinn from trying, not only to fulfill her vow but to protect herself and Aislinn-- but Donia also wants to see Keenan freed. On Aislinn's side is Seth, a slightly older friend of Aislinn's whose attraction to Aislinn she feels unsafe in exploring. The ending is . . . unexpected. There's certainly a certain amount of Princess Diaries type characterization, but the writing is cinematographic (is that what I mean?)-- we don't get deep backstories for most of the characters, and there's a lot of changes of point of view. I liked it, but a lot of reviewers felt it lacked character development; I don't think it did, but perhaps I just liked it that much.
Magical castles/castle-butlers, a huge power struggle between two sets of conquering nobility, unreasonable parental expectations, a crazy relative and a cast of unusual sidekicks. A lot to get into a few hundred pages. Flora Segunda is the surviving second daughter of the Fyrdraaca family of Califia; she lives in a decaying mansion whose magical butler/castle presence has been banished by her mother. In a few weeks, she will reach her 14th birthday, become an adult, and be sent to military college-- all the Fyrdraacas are soldiers-- but she doesn't want to go. She meets the butler in an inaccessible part of the house and sets out to save him (along with a few other people along the way) but in the end needs to hunt for help for herself. The plot line, though complicated, is fascinating. There are echoes here of Garth Nix's Abhorsen and Keys to the Kingdom series, older Patricia McKillip, and even a certain amount of Ellen Raskin-ness. Despite her spirit and inventiveness, Flora is also subject to the angst of a 14-year-old girl; I see myself in her.
Definitely recommended.
Melissa Marr. Wicked Lovely.
Despite the title and the expectations raised by the cover art, this is not, thankfully, another teen vampire book, though there are some plot similarities. This is Urban faery fantasy in the Charles De Lint vein, though with some threads of folktale retellings. The settings are dark, dangerous, and sometimes bloody. Aislinn has Second Sight; she can see the fairy folk, though her grandmother has drilled her to never let on to them that she sees them, never attract their attention, never speak to them. But suddenly, two powerful faery figures are watching her and taking an interest in her life. Keenan, the Summer King, hopes that she will be able to take up the mantle of Summer Queen and free him from his mother's domination-- but every girl who has tried in the last 9 centuries has failed to be *the one* and ended up the Winter Girl, bound to cold and winter until the next candidate agreed to the trial. Donia, the current Winter Girl, is sworn to discourage Aislinn from trying, not only to fulfill her vow but to protect herself and Aislinn-- but Donia also wants to see Keenan freed. On Aislinn's side is Seth, a slightly older friend of Aislinn's whose attraction to Aislinn she feels unsafe in exploring. The ending is . . . unexpected. There's certainly a certain amount of Princess Diaries type characterization, but the writing is cinematographic (is that what I mean?)-- we don't get deep backstories for most of the characters, and there's a lot of changes of point of view. I liked it, but a lot of reviewers felt it lacked character development; I don't think it did, but perhaps I just liked it that much.
