Terciel and Elinor by Garth Nix

 

Terciel has grown up in the Old Kingdom, a land where magic exists, and the dead do not always stay dead. At an early age he was adopted by the Abhorsen, and his future mapped out for him as her successor, trained in her skills of necromancy to protect the living and keep the Dead where they belong. 

Meanwhile on the other side of the Wall, in Ancelstierre where magic doesn't belong, lives Elinor. Her life has been isolated, but quiet. All that is about to change when her mother's illness takes a turn for the worse, and brings magic, danger, and Terciel to her door. Although the life she's known so far is threatened, Elinor finds a previously-unknown sense of belonging among her new 'Charter' acquaintances from north of the Wall. 

I've loved Garth Nix's Old Kingdom stories since I borrowed my daughter's copy of Sabriel, and to return there is always a delight, even if, at times, a nail-biting one. 

This latest book is a prequel to Sabriel, and so some readers (me among them) will be aware of how the story must end. It doesn't detract from it at all though, but is as full of Charter Magic, re-awakened Dead, perils on almost every side, and a smattering of romance as anyone could want. 

Superpowerless by Chris Priestley

review by Maryom

To an outsider, sixteen year old David looks and behaves much like any other guy his age - prefers his own company and hanging out in his bedroom to almost anything else. Maybe he's a little less social than others, but he's been through a rough time since his dad died in a car accident, so for a while friends and family have been prepared to cut him some slack. Now though, when they feel he ought to be getting his act together and putting the past behind him, David seems to be getting increasingly unsocial, obsessed with his dad's old super-hero comics and getting decidedly secretive. What his friends don't know is that David has superpowers himself. His super-hearing allows him to eavesdrop on conversations, being invisible means no one notices him (particularly girls) and his ability to fly lets him swoop over the town to help prevent accidents - or so he would like to think. He has another secret too, one that he's equally anxious to hide - that he's using a bird-watching scope to spy on his slightly older, attractive, bikini-clad neighbour, Holly. In doing so he stumbles on a very personal secret she'd like to keep hidden too. When he confronts her, the two form an unlikely bond, with Holly offering practical advice on the mysterious subject of girls and sex, while David tries his best to help her, but puts almost every foot wrong.


This is a story of being that awkward age between child and adult, of learning to accept that we can't always change things to be how we would like, and of first experiments with the opposite sex.
To be honest, especially perhaps from an adult's point of view, David isn't instantly likeable. He's too self-absorbed, too quick to lie to his mum and drag his best friend into the deception too, zooming in on his sunbathing female neighbour isn't polite, and as for imagining he has super-powers? isn't that a bit childish? But give him chance and he begins to grow on you. even when his behaviour is definitely cringe-worthy. It's easy of course to read a story and tell the hero he's making a mess of things, pulling all the wrong moves and making himself look foolish, arrogant and seriously un-cool, but that's how life is, particularly teenage life - full of mistakes we wish we'd avoided, and chances we've missed out on. The author could have created a teen hero who was, well, just that, a hero, the perfect guy in every respect, but David with all his flaws is far nearer to a real teenager, someone that readers can empathise with, and maybe it will give female readers an insight into that most mysterious of places, a teenage boy's mind.

It's odd that only last week I saw someone talking about the lack of books looking at teenage relationships from a boy's perspective, and then this week I've come across two excellent ones - first Anthony McGowan's Rook aimed at younger teens, then this with an older target readership. They're very different but I've loved them both.



Maryom's Review - 5 stars 
Publisher - Hot Key Books 
Genre - YA, relationships, 

Paperweight by Meg Haston

review by Maryom
Stevie is counting down the days to the anniversary of her brother's death. She has special plans for how to mark the day but her father's concern for her health might have stopped them. He's arranged for her to receive treatment at an eating-disorders clinic in the New Mexico desert, where, isolated by geography, cut off from communications with friends or family, her life and eating patterns will be strictly supervised, day and night. Stevie has plans though to outwit them, to escape and 'celebrate' the way she'd always intended.

Paperweight is an emotional, thought-provoking book - the story of a teenager so overwhelmed by guilt, grief and feelings of worthlessness that she doesn't know how to continue.  Stevie's life has been spiralling downwards for some time. First her mother abandoned their family with seemingly no explanation, then Stevie got dragged into a destructive relationship with Eden, a girl she met at a writing seminar, and now Stevie is carrying additional guilt about her brother Josh's death.

It's an odd sort of book to use the word 'enjoyed' about, but I did. It presented Stevie and her problems in a way that made me sympathise with her, understand WHY she wanted to carry out her 'remembrance' plan, while still hoping she could be stopped. Stevie isn't always a comfortable,'nice' person to be around - which I think made her seem more 'real' - and she contrasts with some of the other girls at the clinic who she herself despises for trying to be pleasant and cheerful.
Without doubt it's an 'issues' book - about eating disorders, how events can work as catalysts to bring them on, how they can hopefully be cured - but the way it's told, by leaking Stevie's back story bit by bit, makes it engaging and readable.

Maryom's Review - 4 stars
Publisher - Hot Key Books
Genre - teen/YA,

Heap House by Edward Carey

review by Maryom

The lives of the huge, rambling Iremonger family are inextricably mingled with the rubbish heaps which surround, and at times threaten to engulf, their home, Heap House. Not only have they made their fortune, and their house, from the rubbish, but, out of all the things found in there, a special item is chosen for each Iremonger, given to them at birth and kept close throughout their life. Although the Iremongers are attached to these 'birth objects', they still appear to be just things - but Clod can hear them call out a name; his own sink plug, for example, is named James Henry Hayward. Now his aunt Rosamud has lost her door handle, named Alice Higgs, and the world of the Iremongers is in turmoil. While Clod is enlisted to search Heap House for the door handle, a new servant has arrived from London; her name is Lucy Pennant, and when she and Clod meet they realise there are more things to be uncovered than a mere missing door handle.

This first book of the Iremonger series is a quirky, original read. Carey has built a fantastic steampunk world full of weird but relate-able characters, where plugs, skillets and even a marble mantelpiece have secret names and hide a distressing secret; although so weird it's a world you can fall into and believe in completely. There are illustrations (by the author) to bring the characters to life, and a cut-away diagram displaying the hotch-potch construction of Heap House, with a room salvaged from the Heaps and added on here, and a staircase pushed in there. I know I often say this - perhaps too often - but it's difficult to describe the plot without giving the underlying secret away, but there's a lot of tense adventure, some life-threatening moments, very weird goings-on and, at the bottom of it all, that secret upon which the Iremongers' fortunes have been made.

For anyone who loves the weird and wonderful this is a must read - forget about the target age (10 and over, I'd guess) just read and enjoy! The concept is wondrous, the writing engaging, the tale enthralling - the only downside (slight spoiler), a cliff-hanger ending, isn't too troublesome as the next instalment is already published, and I for one can't wait to read it and find out what happens next!






Maryom's Review - 5 stars
Publisher - Hot Key Books
Genre - steampunk, fantasy, 10+ to adults

Anything That Isn't This by Chris Priestley

review by Maryom

Frank Palp has sat the last of his exams, is about to leave school and enter the world of 'work'. It should be a time of opening horizons and fresh opportunities, but that's not how Frank sees it. To him it's possibly the least appealing prospect in the world - not that he liked school, but with every passing year life looks more depressing. In the city where he lives, nearly everyone is employed by the Ministry in one capacity or another. Their lives seem dull and joy-less, their days spent at boring, meaningless jobs, their evenings passed in front of mind-numbing TV programmes, all of course approved by the Ministry. Surely there has to be something better than this? Once, Frank had had plans, dreams of being a writer, a hope of avoiding the tedium he sees in his parents' lives ..... but now he's beginning to realise there's no escape. He heads to the graveyard and talks things over with his (deceased) grandfather, but the enigmatic tales the dead have to tell don't seem to help much. Frank still, though, believes in chance; finding a message in a bottle convinces him that he's found his soul-mate, and an accidental meeting with mysterious man-from-the-Ministry Mr Vertex leads to a quick advancement in Frank's career. Both have to be good things, don't they?

 You've possibly heard of Chris Priestley as the author of horror stories aimed at a youngish audience (though his The Dead of Winter is one of my favourite ghostly reads regardless) but this is a departure - a dystopian love story, with a bit of thriller in there too, for older teens.

It's set in a fictional, vaguely east European country, where after a war and revolution the king remains as a popular figurehead but everything is run by the Ministry - the so-called 'civil servants' are actually police, 'students' are spies, and the old castle towers over the city spreading gloom. But Frank's feelings are universal; he's full of teenage angst about his current situation and his future. His dreams of being a writer aren't likely to be fulfilled, he has no real direction in life, and is being pushed into a job that isn't of his choosing but is what others expect of him. The only light in his life is his love for Olivia - and again he's a typical teen; obsessive, slightly stalkerish and cringingly realistic. What he would hope for is summed up by the wish he finds in a bottle "Anything that isn't this".

 The style, the setting and atmosphere and above all the young couple striving to find something worthwhile in a dull grey world reminded me of Ursula le Guin's Orsinian Tales. I've been reading a digital copy for review, so couldn't fully appreciate the illustrations (also by the author) that echo the sinister mood of the story, but they can be found on the author's facebookpage


A little bit dystopian, a little bit love story, Anything That Isn't This captures the confusion of teenage feelings the world over, is about challenging the norm and searching for hope in a dull grey world. 

Maryom's Review - 5 stars
Publisher - Hot Key Books
Genre - teen/YA

Monsters by Emerald Fennell

review by Maryom

Fowey is a quaint, picturesque seaside town, with not much to occupy a twelve year old having to spend the summer at her aunt and uncle's hotel - until, that is, a rotting corpse is found by fishermen. While everyone else is horrified (but morbidly fascinated) our heroine is delighted! There's nothing she likes more than 'true crime' books, the gorier the better, so having a real crime on the doorstep is like a dream come true. With a similarly inclined boy staying at the hotel, Miles Giffard, she starts to investigate the murders .... but the two of them also begin playing games which re-enact them, always with Miles as the murderer.

First off - a warning! Don't start reading this expecting a straight forward, Famous Five style mystery; this is something much darker and horrific - closer to Neil Mackay's All the Little Guns Went Bang, Bang Bang  but whereas Mackay is looking at the underlying psychological problems that lead to violence, Monsters is playing it for laughs.
From the opening pages as the narrator describes her parents' deaths, we know we're dealing with someone uncaring, disturbed and, as so many people describe her, 'peculiar'. That peculiar-ness just goes on growing, especially after she meets Miles, who soon turns out to have deeper, darker problems of his own.
A picture-postcard fishing village, seemingly innocent children, rotting corpses and a serial killer?  - it's like classic Hammer horror mashed up with Shaun of the Dead! I loved it - especially the unexpected twist in the tail! For the right reader, it's great, but the unwary and squeamish may wonder what they've let themselves in for.

Maryom's Review - 4 stars
Publisher - Hot Key Books
Genre - teen/YA/crossover comedy horror

The Door That Led To Where by Sally Gardner

review by Maryom

AJ has left school with just one GCSE and isn't expecting to find work anywhere, so he thinks he's struck lucky when he gets a job at the Gray's Inn law-firm that used to employ his mum. He doesn't realise the full extent of his luck though, for he's about to discover something that will change his life - a key that will take him back in time to London in 1830, and lead to a series of murders spanning both time-periods, and the unravelling of the mystery surrounding his father.
 Meanwhile in modern London, AJ's mates Leon and Slim have their own troubles, with police, drug dealers and gang leaders looking for them - maybe AJ's key could offer them a hiding place in a safer world, and maybe even a new start?

Now ok, this is meant to be a teen/YA read but I don't care, it had me absolutely hooked from page one! It's a slippery, twisty sort of plot with time travel, a murder mystery, the clearing up of a forgery case, and the tiniest bit of romance - added together they make a brilliant, compelling read.
Told in the third person, but from AJ's point of view, it captures the sort of language and words that you'd expect from a modern teenager (though maybe edited for swearing!) and lets the reader slip right into the action. The action is fast-paced but with time enough to let the atmosphere of early nineteenth century London seep through. Despite the lack of mod-cons - from mobile phones to proper toilets - all three young men appreciate the charm of London before high-rise developments and the promise that it holds for them; unlike the present day, which has them labelled and written-off as 'teens in hoodies'.
I particularly liked the friendship between AJ, Slim and Leon. It's often seen as cool to be tough and uncaring but these three share an unbreakable bond; none seem to have family to care for them so they look out for each other and are there to help when things get tough - it's good to have friends like that!

All in all this is a riveting read that fits such a lot of genres that it must almost suit everyone. The only puzzle I was left with was - which time would I have chosen to remain in? Today with all its conveniences or 1830 with a more leisurely paced life but decidedly dodgy hygiene?


Maryom's Review - 5 stars
Publisher - Hot Key Books
Genre - teen/YA fantasy murder mystery time-travel

Almost Grace by Rosie Rowell

review by Maryom

In the gap between school and university, Cape Town teenagers head off for a taste of freedom - a week's holiday on their own. Grace and her friends, Brett and Louisa, are no exception but instead of heading for the wild parties of Plettenberg Bay they've picked a quiet seaside village on the west coast with miles of beach and great surfing.
Brett and Louisa are confident about what the future holds for them, have their plans all laid out for travelling or university. Grace, though, is less sure of herself - adulthood seems a daunting proposition and she feels out of control of her life. 
When she meets Spook, a drifter, seemingly living life just to surf, Grace is instantly attracted to him, despite him being much older than her. In comparison to the lives of others, his seems relaxed and carefree, but is he really as charming as he appears to be on the surface?
The area of Baboon Point isn't as sleepy and quiet as they'd expected either, but a centre for the illegal trade in abalone shells. Could Spook really be associated with the poachers who make a living this way? It seems so out of keeping with his laid-back hippy vibe ....but how well does Grace really know him?


Almost Grace is a mix of coming of age story and thriller set on the rocky west coast of South Africa. It's unusual because of its setting and occasional use of Afrikaans words, but the everyday problems faced by Grace and her friends are the same as those faced by teenagers anywhere. They soon realise though they've got mixed up in something really dangerous as their carefree holiday rapidly turns into a nightmare filled with guns and poachers.
Grace is a heroine that you quickly come to care about. She's made some bad decisions in the past; with things changing around her so quickly, she's desperately latched on to the one thing she alone can control - what she eats. I found myself desperately willing her to take just another few bites of cake or fruit or to stop caring about the potential calories in everything.




 Maryom's Review - 3.5 stars
Publisher - Hot Key Books
Genre - teen, coming of age, thriller,

Clariel by Garth Nix

review by Maryom

Clariel is not happy at having to move to Belisaere, the capital city of the Old Kingdom, but her mother has been offered a place in the prestigious Goldsmith's Guild there and so the family must go. While her mother insists Belisaere is a place filled with opportunities - for entering a guild or making an advantageous marriage - Clariel finds both the tightly packed streets and her future prospects stifling. She'd far sooner have stayed in Estwael, living and working in the Forest, maybe in time joining the Borderers who care for it.
The city itself is not as it once was - the king is a recluse, and his granddaughter (and heir) has disappeared, leaving a power vacuum into which Governor Kilp hopes to step, with a little help from Free Magic and from Clariel. Soon she finds herself caught up in events beyond her control, desperately looking for a way out and willing to jump at any chance that appears.

 I first discovered the Old Kingdom series by borrowing my daughter's books, and quickly became a fan, so when I was offered a review copy of Clariel I leapt at it! Set 600 years before the events of  Sabriel, and effectively 'back story' for the series, Clariel is both a great read for fans of Garth Nix's Old Kingdom series and for new-comers. For fans there's the delight of finding out what happened in earlier times, how certain peoples lives were shaped, and the appearance of many places and characters (I especially liked the early version of Mogget); for new readers, there's an insight into the balance between Charter and Free magic, the role of the Abhorsen, charter mages and the Clayr; for both, a compelling story, mixing problems to which we can all relate with a world of magic and fabulous creatures.
Clariel herself is an intriguing heroine, one who, despite her furious rages and momentously bad decision, I found myself curiously sympathetic towards - she prefers to be solitary, left alone in the forest; life in the city holds no attraction for her. Her parents have made no effort to understand her, and just seem intent on forcing her into what they want her to do, so it's not surprising that Clariel leaps at first one, then another, dubious method of getting her own way - and each time she lands her herself further in trouble.
At times I felt the story moved rather slowly - particularly the time spent at the Academy or putting up with Clariel's maid fussing over clothes - but overall it's a fast paced compelling read, especially in the last few chapters,and one which I loved.


Maryom's Review - 4.5 stars
Publisher - Hot Key Books
Genre - teen/YA fantasy