Eon: Dragoneye Reborn by Alison Goodman

Eon is a candidate to become the next Rat Dragoneye, one of the highest ranking positions in the Empire.  Eon is an unlikely candidate with his deformed hip which marks him as an untouchable.  Despite this, his ability to see all of the dragons is unique and makes him worthy to be a candidate.  Eon has learned all he can to prepare himself for the bonding with the dragon, memorizing complicated combat moves to be done in a pattern when approaching the dragon.  But on the day of the selection the rules are changed and Eon faces a cruel teacher who is out to set an example for who should be allowed to be a candidate.  Eon’s amazing adventure continues from there but I wouldn’t want to spoil a second of it for you.

Goodman has created a wonderful world built from both the Chinese and Japanese traditions with just enough of her own personal spin.  Eon is a wonderfully complex character: broken, lonely, trapped but brave and skilled.  Eon reminds me of the wonderful Miles Vorkosigan created by Lois McMaster Bujold, one of the greatest compliments I could give. 

Goodman also excels at pacing, wonderfully playing intense battles against tense moments of anticipation.  There is plenty of action and adventure here that improves the world building rather than detracting from it.

I consider this one of the best fantasy novels of 2008.  The cover is vivid and colorful, only hinting at the delights that wait inside.  Highly recommended for fantasy readers, this one will have you breathlessly awaiting the second in the series.

Same Difference by Siobhan Vivian

Emily feels like a third wheel now that her best friend Meg has a boyfriend.  So when Emily gets the chance to attend a summer art program in Philadelphia, she decides to go even though she has never considered herself a real artist.  Emily’s summer is split between the big city and her suburban home.  She discovers new things about herself and makes a new best friend, Fiona, who is also an artist.  Emily’s friendship with Meg and her relationship with her family suffer as she realizes that she is changing while everyone at home is staying the same.  This is a book about finding who you really are when you don’t know who in the world that is.

Vivian’s tone here is perfection.  Readers see the world through Emily’s eyes and by the end of the book are understanding that Emily is not seeing things as clearly as she first thought.  The book could easily have been one of an artist fleeing their suburban roots, but Vivian makes it much more than that as Emily realizes that home and the past are vital pieces of her too. 

The book has just enough tension to keep things interesting but never moves into melodrama or excess.  There is a natural rhythm to the book, making it all ring true.  Vivian’s characterizations are also nicely done, with even secondary characters shown as complex and surprising.

Highly recommended, this novel will appeal to many teens who see themselves as not fitting in with their background or family or friends.  It is a classic dilemma faced by adolescents that is captured in a wonderfully drawn novel.  Appropriate for ages 13-17.

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

Lia finds out at breakfast that her ex-friend Cassie died alone in a motel room.  Now Lia is left with the question of why she didn’t bother to answer her cell phone when Cassie called.  33 times.  There are rumors that it was drugs or alcohol that killed her, alone in that room.  Lia is fighting her own demons, unable to handle what is happening to her and what happened to Cassie.  Lia has been hospitalized twice for eating disorders and is not on the road to recovery, but instead heading deeper and deeper into the mental maze of weight loss, lies and self abuse. 

What a perfect author for this book!  I have read many books about eating disorders for teens, but none have led me this deeply into the psychological torment.  Lia’s world is filled with obsession, counting calories, avoiding food, lying about it and covering up.  Her world is strange, foreign, but through the skillful writing also amazingly familiar and real.  The book is a slow torture of a novel, building in soft, painful crescendos to what is inevitable. 

Through this haze of pain and self-hate, Halse Anderson offers delectable prose that shines and sings.  Here is just one of the passages that had me gasping with the amazing writing:

This girl shivers and crawls under the covers with all her clothes on and falls into an overdue library book, a faerie story with rats and marrow and burning curses.  The sentences build a fence around her, a Times Roman 10-point barricade, to keep the thorny voices in her head from getting too close.

That is one of many places where Halse Anderson creates such beauty out of what is normal, juxtaposing it with a gentle touch against the agony that is Lia’s existence. 

Highly recommended and perfect for book discussions, this is one of those novels that girls will share, keep overlong from libraries, and want their own copies of.  Destined to be one of the best of the year, I just may hear Printz bells chiming for this a year from now.  Appropriate for ages 13-16.

Absolute Brightness by James Lecesne

15-year-old Phoebe lives with her mother and older sister Deirdre in a house attached to her mother’s beauty salon.  Leonard, their uncle’s stepson comes to live with them and neither of the girls is ready to give him even the slightest chance.  It doesn’t help that Leonard is unusual.  He doesn’t seem to care that his behavior may get him beat up or at the very least ignored by everyone.  He goes ahead and wears the clothing he wants to, which include platform sneakers that he made himself.  Leonard quickly makes a place for himself, catering to the ladies who come to the salon, much to Phoebe’s relief and dismay.  When Leonard disappears, he leaves behind a huge hole in everyone’s lives, Phoebe’s most of all. 

The writing here is nearly incandescent with beauty.  It is writing that makes one pause, sometimes gasp, reread and then think for awhile.  It is writing one reads aloud to another person just to hear the words spoken.  It is the writing that makes this book so exceptional and such a gem of a novel.  Here’s just one passage amongst so many that shine:

I had suddenly realized that I didn’t have the slightest idea who Travis was.  For the past month, I’d been making up a picture of Travis in my head, and in the process I had refused any information about him that came to me from the real world.  If it didn’t fit with the picture of Travis that I already had in mind, I had no use for it.  Travis Lembeck was my creation, my Frankenstein.  Even the very real business of kissing him, smelling him, being pressed up against him in the dark couldn’t disturb my fine-tuned, half-baked fantasy.  Now with the revelation that he was going to join the service, that he blew up cyberpeople and destroyed cybervillages just for fun, the Travis I’d been cherishing in my heart suddenly seemed trumped-up.  Like those life-size, cardboard cutouts of presidents and movie stars that you can stand beside and have your picture taken with so you can give everyone the impression that you hobnobbed with the genuine article.

Lecesne crafts realizations and sudden insights with such care.   The novel is filled with corners that you round just to come upon a moment like this.  It is appropriate that a novel that starts as a character study becomes a mystery and then a court drama.  As Lecesne leads us through these conventional novel settings, he continues to write a book that surprises, quite an accomplishment.  His characters are unconventional, interesting and thoroughly complex.  They act like real humans, people you would know, and the joy is that you get to experience things through their eyes. 

Highly recommended for teens ages 14-17, this novel is piercingly intelligent and will reflect your own life and choices back on you. 

The Savage by David Almond, illustrated by Dave McKean.

Blue has been told that he should write things down to help him deal with his father’s death.  It all seems forced and useless until he starts to write a story about The Savage, a boy who lives alone in the woods near their small town, eats animals and murders anyone who glimpses him.  Blue has to deal not only with his own grief and his mother’s and sister’s but also with a bully named Hopper.  Hopper is featured in the stories about The Savage as are others in Blue’s small community.  As Blue begins to share his story with his family, something changes and The Savage becomes real.

The depth in this book is incredible.  It is like submerging in icy lake water and viewing things through that swirling lens of blue and green, distorting everything but also clarifying too.  Almond has once again created a book that is strange, unexpected but also shouts with truth and beauty.  Pairing his work with McKean’s art was a masterful choice that deepens the book, bringing both a level of reality and a subversive quality to the book.

Highly recommended, this is another book that will resonate with male readers.  Appropriate for a strangely broad age range: 12-16.

Also reviewed by Fuse #8.

Hurricane Song by Paul Volponi.

Miles has been living with his father for a few months in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hits.  He and his father, a jazz musician who often pays more attention to his music than his son, and his uncle try to drive out of New Orleans before the storm but when their car breaks down they are forced to head to the Superdome.  They spend the length of the storm there, in stifling heat, among crowds of people, and with broken toilet facilities and little food and water.  As the situation deteriorates and gangs of thugs appear in the Superdome, Miles and his family must decide whether to just take care of themselves or to risk themselves to help strangers.

I saw this on several best books of the year lists and had to try it.  My synopsis above barely scratches the surface of this novel.  It is taut with the tensions between a teen son and his father even before Katrina arrives.  Take that tension and place it under even more pressure and you have this book which magnificently captures the racial divide during the crisis, the dire situation people found themselves surviving in, and yet also the hope, the community and the strength of people.  Volponi also weaves music through the story as well as choices.  The voices of his characters are real, individual and ring raw and true. 

Ideal reading for teen boys, some people may be turned off by the strong (but very accurate) language in the book.  Appropriate for ages 14-17.

The Compound by S. A. Bodeen

When the US was attacked with nuclear weapons, Eli and most of his family were the lucky ones with an underground compound where they were safe.  To be safe, they had to stay in the compound for 15 years.  Six years have now passed and Eli has grown into a solitary teen who hates to be touched.  His twin brother Eddy and his grandmother had both been accidentally left out of the compound when the door was shut.  Though he tries not to think of his brother, he finds himself often dwelling on him.  His other siblings who are in the compound with him and his parents are either ignored or heaped with abuse.  The pace of life in the compound is slow and steady, with everyone relying on their routines to keep sane.  Something is about to happen to shatter that complacency and make them question everything.

Bodeen has written a taut thriller that male teen readers will enjoy.  The dynamic between Eli and his family rings true as does his desperation to be separate and alone.  As the truth about their life is revealed to the reader in tantalizingly brief glimpses, readers will be unable to put the book down.  Bodeen’s pacing is masterfully crafted from the slow, almost claustrophobic early part of the novel to the breakneck speed as their world changes.  Eli is a distasteful protagonist who is neither kind nor interested in others, one might think this would make him less effective, but instead it makes the book even more gripping and fascinating as the reader deals with this unreliable narrator.

Highly recommended for teen readers who enjoy Scott Westerfeld’s dystopian fiction.