A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

 I had read some of Novik's Temeraire series a while back, and she seemed like a good author, so I took a chance on her new YA series. 

The first book was quite entertaining; enough so that I checked out a copy of the 2nd book in what appears to be destined to be a trilogy. 

The Scholomance is like Hogwarts without a sense of humor, perhaps more like a Marine Corps boot camp which tries to eliminate, in this case with extreme prejudice, most of the recruits before their incompetence might kill other fighters. Or maybe it's got a bit of a deadly serious version of Clouseau vs. Cato, where one can be attacked at any time without warning.

Good fun.

The Great Library Series, by Rachel Caine

Seem to be on a YA kick here. Perhaps it's a result of more of the genre being made available for free via Overdrive than the adult stuff, which the funding folks probably figure we can afford to pay for, while the teens can't (being too busy getting tattoos, and bling for their iPhones).

This one has been a fun ride. The premise is that the Great Library of Alexandria was saved, rather than destroyed, and that the librarians have been the sole arbiters of what knowledge the human race is allowed to read and have. Enter a world of black market book smugglers, anarchists called The Burners, and where the invention of the printing press has been suppressed more than once. Nearly non-stop action.

Every Day by David Levithan

 This book came highly recommended by Orson Scott Card. He has a (more or less) weekly review column on his web site called "Uncle Orson Reviews Everything", and he definitely reviews EVERYTHING. He talks about board games, movies, books, restaurants, snack crackers, candied nuts, kitchen gadgets, music...and anything else that he experiences. Card is always a delight to read - I've spent many a sleepless night over the years finishing off one of his novels - and so I like to read his reviews every once in a while, just for new things to check out.

Every Day is the story of A, a person...entity...who begins each morning inhabiting the body of someone different. He has done this as long as he can remember, and has no way to stop the daily migration. When the book begins, at Day 5994, A is sixteen years old, and has landed in the body of Justin, a typically self-absorbed high school student with a typically infatuated teen sweetheart, Rhiannon. While A controls Justin's body for the day, he falls head over heels (evidently for the first time) in love with Rhiannon, and decides that he must somehow do something he has never attempted before - stay in contact with her from day to day, and to reveal his great secret to her, in hopes that she will love him, too, and that their love will conquer all obstacles.

Of course, we all realize that there are only two ways this can go, if she does indeed fall in love with A. First, she would have to be able to accept any incarnation of A and be willing to disrupt her life every day for the rest of their mortal spans in order to be physically together, or A must find some way to fix himself in the same body for the long haul. No spoilers, but this is the conflict about which Every Day's solar system revolves.

The most interesting part of this young adult novel for me was how Levithan really seems to get into the minds and life situations of each of the people whom A briefly inhabits. We have a fair selection of what I'd consider statistically "normal" teenagers, and then there are the "Odds" - a girl who cuts herself and wants to commit suicide, a happy well-adjusted gay teenager, a drug addict who can barely get through the day without his fix, a "male" trapped in a female body who is loved by a girl who loves him/her despite his incorrect gender, a mean girl who delights in putting people down, a knockout fashionista, a pair of student athletes, a homeschooler raised by Jesus Freaks, an alchoholic who killed his brother in a car wreck, and so forth. A also ends up in the body of Rhiannon, herself, at one point, and makes a point of not seeing her...herself... naked, as that would be taking advantage of the situation.

Levithan makes it all very interesting, though as a science fiction reader I really want to know more about the nuts and bolts of how it works, and where the "souls" of the people A occupies go while it's happening. A can concentrate on leaving them certain selective memories of the day, or just let them have a very vague recollection of an ordinary day. A tries never to interfere in their lives, or change anything radically, and  only breaks that rule a couple of time in the course of the novel. It's also pretty clear where Levithan's sympathies lie, as an author and probably as a person, as the LGBT characters of the story seem to be the happiest, all in all, and those "judgmental" religious types are portrayed as villains, jocks are just dumb, and handsome and beautiful people are vapid and vain.

A well-told tale, suitable for mature teens in its themes.

Bliss by Kathryn Littlewood

 As I've mentioned before, I don't read a lot of YA fiction these days, but this was a Free Friday selection at Barnes & Noble, so I downloaded it. It was a fairly amusing little tale about a family who own a magical bakery in the town of Calamity Falls. The four children in the family are Parsley, Sage, Rosemary (Rose) and Thyme (Ty), of course. Rose is at that awkward twelve year old stage where she's becoming aware of boys, and when social standing and what people think of you becomes all-consuming. She has worked faithfully in the family business, where her parents create magic muffins, breads and desserts, which cure people's ailments, as well as more mundane treats.

So, when her parents have to leave to help a neighboring town with a flu epidemic and Rose and Ty are left in charge, Rose obviously and unavoidable falls into the trap of trying to prove how good she is by sneaking some recipes from the family's secret magical cookbook. Things get more dangerous when her long lost Aunt Lily arrives for a visit. Lily has long been the black sheep of the family, and it's apparent to the reader, though not the children, that her only reason for being in town is to grab the cookbook full of magical recipes to satisfy her own ambitions.

All sorts of misadventures befall the children while their parents are away, and it's all good innocent G-rated fun. A confection baked of Harry Potter Lite with a pinch of Lemony Snickett and a dash of Disney's Sorcerer's Apprentice.

Fate of Thorik by Anthony G. Wedgeworth

I'm sorry, but I was unable to finish this book. I've been trying for over a month to get into it, and I only managed about 90 pages before sheer disinterest forced my hand. The book is targeted more for a juvenile/YA audience, and if something is in that genre, it's got to be truly spectacular to keep my interest.

I did chuckle a bit about the local wise man reciting "spiritual limericks". Might have to see if I can write some spiritual limericks on a Sunday morn.

I may try to hand this book and its sequels off to someone younger, to give it a fair read. Could be a guest post in it for some lucky teen.

Raising Dragons by Bryan Davis

I don't really read much YA or juvenile stuff these days, for obvious reasons, but someone had recommended Davis' series, and I thought I'd check it out. Sorry, folks, but after about ten pages, I put it down and gave up. It was just way too...juvenile. It began with a boy dreaming that he was a dragon, in a fight with a knight, and just didn't catch my attention.
I wouldn't give it a downcheck for those who like to read stuff written for very young readers, and if one of you has a good slant on it, let me know, and perhaps I can post a rebuttal guest post.

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

So, what in the world can I say about Twilight that hasn't been said before. With its immense popularity, this may be one of the most reviewed books on the planet at present. I'm not in the habit of reading young adult fiction very often any more, unless it's to re-read the Narnia chronicles, L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time or Alexander's Prydain books - all huge classics. The whole adolescent angst thing just isn't all that relevant to me any more.

I picked up a copy of Twilight while I was in Portugal, figuring it would make for some light reading, and got about a third of the way through it in a couple of days, so I picked up a copy at the library the other night, just to get closure. I could definitely relate to Bella's klutziness and lack of sporting coordination. I was extremely bad at athletics as a young person. One bit just cracked me up,

"Gym was brutal. We'd moved on to basketball. My team never passed me the ball, so that was good, but I fell down a lot. Sometimes I took people with me."

I personally remember nailing someone on the other side of the net with a tennis ball direct to the breadbasket one day in gym, and there was that incident with Bryan Bateman breaking my nose with the locker room door. Water under the bridge, eh?

I think that Ms. Meyer did a really good job of writing a vampire novel for young adults that is free from the usual blatant sexuality you'll find in most adult vampire novels these days. I'm not sure I'm thrilled with the liberties she's taken with vampire lore...Sparkle??? It also seemed like the confrontation with the vampire tracker from the other coven was a little contrived, and he went down too easily, but I'm accustomed to a perhaps more graphic blow by blow approach to battling bloodsuckers.

A very readable novel. I might even pick up New Moon,  on a slow day.