Jaime Reyes was an ordinary kid, until a piece of advanced alien tech shaped like a scarab attached itself to his spine, giving him superpowers, and the Justice League dragged him into space to fight an evil satellite. Now he’s back in El Paso, trying to put his life back together after being missing for a year – and trying to learn how to control the scarab in his back, which wants to turn him into a killing machine. Oh, and the scarab’s creators, the Reach, have arrived on Earth, and Jaime’s the only one who knows they’re here to take over. Can the new Blue Beetle stop an alien invasion, protect his family and his city, and survive a legacy that’s already killed both his predecessors?

In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit my bias here: Ted Kord, the Blue Beetle before Jaime and who Jaime spends much of the series fanboying, is not just one of my all-time favorite superheroes, but one of my all-time favorite fictional characters, full-stop. So is his best friend, Booster Gold, who makes a heroic appearance towards the end, and Guy Gardner, the Green Lantern who makes regular appearances in the book, is way up there. And Ted, Booster, and Guy all met in the pages of Justice League International, one of my very favorite comics of all time, and one which this series makes deliberate allusions to. And Supergirl, my absolute favorite superhero, makes a cameo, and I’m awfully fond of Dan Garrett, the first Blue Beetle, and…look, this comic has a lot of things I adore in it before you even get into the actual subject matter. I’m predisposed to love it.

That said, even if you’re not me, it’s pretty darn good.

(A side note: Ongoing superhero comics, particularly those by DC and Marvel, tend to presuppose a certain familiarity with up to 70-plus years of backstory. Blue Beetle is better than most in that regard, but there are certainly moments that are caught up in the history of the Blue Beetle legacy, or characters the previous Blue Beetle was friends with, or what was going on in the rest of the DC Universe at the time. If you pick up these books based on this review and are confused, feel free to email me; I can talk for hours on end about Blue Beetle. Just ask my long-suffering co-blogger, who after years of friendship with me can tell you where Ted Kord grew up (Chicago), his favorite book (The Brothers Karamazov), and what kind of underwear he wears (boxers).)

Blue Beetle is both hilarious and exciting, but the real strength of the book is the characters. This, of course, starts with Jaime, who is endlessly lovable. He’s certainly a teenage boy, awkward and impatient and goofy, but he’s such a good boy; he’s brave and smart and responsible and he doesn’t want to hurt anyone and he loves his parents and his friends and his little sister and he makes people better just by being around them. His dream is to become a dentist so that he can pay off his parents’ mortgage. And yet he never comes off like a too-perfect Gary Stu; he’s a believable, funny, kind of dorky, unbelievably sweet kid, in over his head but trying his best.

It’s very clear that this is in large part because of how he was raised. Jaime’s parents are fully realized characters in their own right, and wonderful. They expect obedience and respect from their son, but they also trust him – there’s a great scene where they lay down the ground rules for crimefighting at night (he doesn’t have to ask permission if there’s a natural disaster, but he does have to call). (Incidentally, the fact that Jaime’s family and friends all know his secret identity is extremely rare in comics, and very refreshing – rather than constantly lying to his loved ones, Jaime just trusts them, right away.) They believe in peace and the sacredness of human life, and talk to Jaime about forgiveness and turning the other cheek, but Bianca can back down a Green Lantern (one of the most powerful superheroes in the cosmos) like a naughty child, and Alberto will fearlessly face off against a mob boss who dares bring guns onto his property. The strength of Jaime’s upbringing is encapsulated in one wonderful panel: when a defeated supervillain asks why Jaime doesn’t just kill him, Jaime simply says “That’s not how my mother raised me.” Darn straight.

Milagro, Jaime’s much younger sister, is great, too – whiny and plucky and believable. One particularly sweet moment between her and Jaime led to me bursting into tears on the subway (which happened three times – between that and all the giggling, I must have looked like a lunatic). And Jaime’s best friends, Brenda and Paco, are pretty much everything I love wrapped up in a bow – Brenda is a smart, overachieving, determined and independent redhead who can flip a guy twice her size to the ground, and Paco is a big, lovably smug goofball who acts like an idiotic BMOC but is actually extremely smart and loyal. She fights aliens! He saves babies! Maybe they’re in love maybe? Shh, don’t tell them.

And the story! The series is brilliantly-plotted and paced; the second half of End Game had me on the edge of my seat. (It should be noted that the series continued after this for about ten more issues, but I haven’t read those yet.) The gradual development of the scarab is beautifully done, and the climatic battle, with all of Jaime’s allies coming together, is one of those moments that makes the reader want to stand up and cheer (the one crazy thing I actually did manage to avoid doing on the subway).

I also loved the art, which goes through quite a few artists but always has a modern, kinetic, urban feel that fits both Jaime’s character and his powers very well. It’s also refreshing that none of women are drawn in nonsensically skimpy outfits, or contorting their bodies into uncomfortable, “sexy” poses; though the teenage girls have a tendency to wear belly shirts, it comes off as oddly dated fashion more than creepy objectification.

Oh, and did I mention that the cast is almost entirely Hispanic and the setting within a Latino community is handled with taste, careful thought, and understanding? The characters never come off as stereotypes, the bilingual factor is handled well (one issue is almost entirely in Spanish, and it’s wonderful (don’t worry, there’s a translation in the back)), and – there’s that word again – it’s just refreshing to see a non-white hero leading a non-white cast in a story that’s about the character and not his race, since mainstream comics don’t often handle that well. (Jaime’s interracial relationship with his Asian – and incredibly competent and funny magical detective – girlfriend Traci is also well done and very cute.)

The only bad thing I can say about this series is that it was sadly canceled after 36 issues (the four books reviewed here cover the first 26 of those). (Don’t worry, Jaime’s still appearing in the sadly-dreadful Teen Titans and will be featured in the upcoming Generation Lost, and is a major player on the animated Batman: The Brave and the Bold, so the character, at least, isn’t going anywhere for a while.) Since I can’t fault the series for heartbreaking decisions made by the company, Blue Beetle gets the coveted five cupcakes, and a double thumbs-up from longtime Blue Beetle pal Booster Gold:

It doesn’t get much better than that, I tell you what.

Incarceron is a prisoner unlike any other: it is alive, and holds thousands of prisoners inside it, in a bleak, ever-changing, deadly landscape. Finn awoke inside with no memories, but is sure he came from somewhere else — even though most other prisoners don’t believe the Outside even exists, or that Escape is possible.

Claudia is the daughter of Incarceron’s warden, soon to be married to a prince. Caught up in a web of intrigue and not sure who to trust, she searches for her father’s key — and through it finds Finn. Desperate, she’s sure Finn is the only one who can help her, and she’s certainly the only one who can help him.

But they have only hours to get him out, before her wedding takes place, and all hope to free not just the prisoners, but the entire trapped world is gone…

Oh man, you guys. During the four days I was reading this book, I kept running into articles about how it’s going to be the Next Big Thing in YA, and had to flee spoilers. But I hope it is the Next Big Thing, because it’s pretty much awesome.

I’m crazy for worldbuilding, and Incarceron‘s world is awesome. The world itself is one of the most interesting dystopias I’ve run across: several hundred years in the future, after some sort of horrific war (the “Years of Rage” — the book does have a minor tendency towards Significant Caps, but thankfully doesn’t take it too far), technology has been banned, but the wealthy still have it in semi-secret. The world itself is subject to Protocol (like I said about those caps…), which forces everyone into a sort of pre-industrial revolution existence, complete with corsets and capes and carriages (…alliteration is all mine, though). But the Protocol is oppressive, and the only people who find it entertaining or romantic are the people wealthy enough to use contraband technology — everyone else, for example, is illiterate, and likely to die from lack of vaccines. The combination of the Protocol and the sci-fi tech gave the whole thing a steampunky feel, which I really liked. (Hence it gets both the dystopian and steampunk labels up top.)

And then there’s the inside of Incarceron. Creepy, creepy, creepy. And again, a strange blend of sci-fi and steampunk — people born with mechanical limbs, metal forests, and the technology of Icarceron itself, contrasted with people living in semi-nomadic tribes, fighting with swords for survival, believing in magic and superstition. (Or is it only superstition …?)

The characters were great: Finn calls on a lot of standard fantasy/scifi tropes, but does so very well. I love that he isn’t just instantly a nice guy in a bad situation — he does bad things, and spends a lot of the book coming to terms with them and growing a conscience. I had a harder time getting a bead on Claudia, since she’s less archetypal, but she’s an active heroine (yay!), interesting and complex in her own right. And the supporting cast is equally complex: for example, the morally ambiguous guy is actually ambiguous. In many novels, that’s the guy you can tell either going to defect to the badguys, or get an obvious redemption in the end. Instead, I actually wasn’t able to tell which side he’d end up on in the end.

And then there were the twists at the end. I thought I called the book’s big twist — turned out it wasn’t the biggest, or even close. The last section is just reveal after reveal, and wow. I haven’t wanted a sequel this badly since I finished Catching Fire.

The one real quibble I had is minor at best. The first section has a lot of people expositioning awkwardly at one another — “Well, Claudia, let me explain this thing to you that you and I are both already aware of, but it bears repeating for no real reason except it’s a good way to explain to the reader.” It’s less than graceful, needless to say. But since I couldn’t put the book down, and every time I started to write this conclusion I realized I had another glowing thing to say, this book is a solid five cupcakes.

When Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut, receives a telepathic cry for help from a dear friend at the secret monastery of Vbngoom, he and his best friends Katie and Lily journey to the mountains of Delaware to offer their assistance. But Delaware is a strange and dangerous place, and they must make their way past dinosaurs, tourists, spies, mountain squid, riddles, and a creepy staring-contest team to reach Vbngoom – and there’s something even worse waiting for them at their destination.

A few years ago I read the first (and apparently only) two books in the M. T. Anderson’s Thrilling Tales series: Whales on Stilts and The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen. The first was just kind of a brisk, silly story; the second one, while equally silly, broke my heart in all the right places. The protagonist of both books is Lily Gefelty, a smart and somewhat shy but basically average tween. However, her two best friends are each the stars of their own (fictional) book series. Katie Mulligan is the lead in the Horrow Hollow series, a sort of combination of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Goosebumps and is constantly fighting werewolves and witches and demonic mold and such. Jasper Dash is the star of Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut, a pulp science fiction series from the 1930s and 40s, and is constantly inventing (often unhelpful) gadgets and saying things like “Dash it all, chums.” Lily longs to be adventurous and exciting like her friends, but the Thrilling Tales series showcases her own heroic traits while brilliantly exploring what it means to be a beloved fictional character.

While I loved Jasper in the Thrilling Tales books, I was worried that Anderson was moving away from spotlighting Lily, but I needn’t have worried – the book is split fairly evenly between Lily’s worries about being inferior to her friends, Katie’s full throttle sass, and Jasper’s struggles to live in a modern world while upholding justice and fair play. It’s hilarious and exciting and, yes, I got a bit misty at the end. Curse you, Anderson!

Now, these books aren’t for everyone. I can tell you right off the bat that my co-blogger Becky probably wouldn’t enjoy the aggressively whimsical tone of the prose; my roommate read the first two and didn’t enjoy the silliness (although she loved Anderson’s completely different Feed and Octavian Nothing); my friend Mackenzie probably wouldn’t like all the metatextual navel-gazing. But I love silliness and meta, and I’m a big fan of the whimsical tone when it’s done well. If you enjoy the flippancy of A Series of Unfortunate Events, you’ll probably enjoy Jasper Dash.

There’s honestly not much to say about this book beyond praise. Lily and Katie are both wonderfully strong in their own ways, and Katie’s romantic tribulations were handled very touchingly and age-appropriately. Jasper is hilarious and endearing, and the friendship between the main three is rock-solid, moving, and blessedly free of any whiff of romance. The plot, despite the silliness, was engaging, and the excitement exciting, and the subtle digs at racist tourists were well done.

Obviously, Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware gets five cupcakes. More, please, Mr. Anderson?

The Hunger Games are over, and all Katniss wants is to go back to her normal life. But the government isn’t happy with her – not least because she’s unwittingly become the face of the rebellion. As unrest grows in Panem, Katniss begins to realize that surviving the Hunger Games was only the beginning.

Becky and I both loved The Hunger Games, and were on the edge of our seats waiting for Catching Fire to come out. It did not disappoint. I can’t say much without spoiling it, but I can tell you that Collins’s prose and plotting are as brilliant and gripping as always. The Hunger Games was full of fascinating, morally-murky characters who remain just as fascinating this time around, though the characters introduced in this book are eager to give them a run for their money. Katniss remains brilliant and badass and utterly socially inept. Panem gets even creepier and more intriguing. I could not put this book down.

All that said, I do have two very brief quibbles. One is that the love triangle between Katniss, Peeta, and Gale is played up a lot in this book, and I can’t stand love triangles. That’s a personal preference (or un-preference), though. The other is that Collins glosses over major scenes a few times, summarizing them in a paragraph or two instead of showing us the dialogue, action, and emotions that are going on. It would be one thing if these were minor, unimportant slice-of-life scenes, but they’re pivotal moments. It’s bizarre, since Collins is usually such a flawless writer, and goodness knows Scholastic has given writers a few extra pages to fit everything in in the past (*coughHarryPottercough*).

Still, these are the faintest of objections to an otherwise incredible book. Collins maintains her perfect average here at Active Voice, as Catching Fire gets five cupcakes. (Psst! Suzanne! We’ll give you six next time if you get the third book out fast!)

Title: Graceling
Author: Kristin Cashore
Genre: High Fantasy
Pages: 471

Summary: Everyone fears Gracelings — and they fear Katsa most of all, for she’s Graced with the ability to kill. Her uncle, the King, uses her as a strong arm to bully his nobles, but Katsa hates being treated like a mad dog, and is determined to get out from under his thumb. Doing that, however, thrusts her into some international intrigue she never could have imagined…

Thoughts: Holy crap, did I love this book. It isn’t perfect, but it’s delightful and exciting and I love Katsa (and Po, and Bitterblue, and Raffin, and etc…). Really, it had me completely at this exchange:

Sighing, Helda carried the dress from the bathing room. “It would look stunning, My Lady,” she called, “with your dark hair and eyes.”

Katsa yanked at one of the more stubborn knots in her hair. She spoke to the bubbles gathered on the surface of the water. “If there’s anyone I wish to stun at dinner, I’ll hit him in the face.”

This book is totally worth a full review someday, and I will absolutely a) reread it, and b) pick up Cashore’s next book when it comes out. Five cupcakes.

By Suzanne Collins [LibraryThing - Amazon]

Katniss Everdeen is a poacher in the poorest district of Panem, the country that exists where the United States used to be. She’s been single-handedly supporting her family for five years, and would do anything for her little sister — even take her sister’s place in Panem’s brutal Hunger Games, in which tributes (more accurately described as sacrifices) from each district are forced to fight each other to the death. On national television. At first, no one takes Kat seriously, but even as she proves herself a formidable opponent she rages against the system, knowing that if she survives and wins the Hunger Games, she may lose her humanity altogether.

Jess and I both read this book, in fact, devoured it, within days of its initial release last year. We’ve been trying to review it for months now, but it keeps getting put off, because there’s not actually much to say. You see, this book is., in a word, phenomenal. We have no real criticisms, and we don’t want to spoil anything for anyone. All we could really think to do is list some of the ways in which it’s awesome.

So here you go!

1. Kat is a fantastic character. She’s a first-person narrator; she’s jaded and cynical, and very angry at the world — and understandably, given everything she’s been through even before the Games get started. She’s incredibly kick-ass and active in all the ways we love our protagonists to be, and her internal dilemma is as compelling as the external danger she’s in: if Kat manages to win the games, it’ll be by becoming a cold-blooded murderer, and losing her humanity. She’s terrified of letting that happen. But her only other alternative is to die. So what’s a girl to do?

2. The world building. It’s definitely a dystopian story, and Panem is a scary place. The difference between the haves and have-nots is striking and stark. The way Panem deals with enemies is also terrifying: the book takes place 80 years after a failed uprising — the event that gave rise to the original Hunger Games — in which one district was completely obliterated and is now basically salted earth; and Katniss runs across several horrific mutant animals that were used as weapons in that war. But on a smaller scale, she also sees what happens to individuals who dissent — and since she’s the hero, and Panem’s capital is villainous, of course we want her to dissent as readers. But we definitely know what the stakes are for that, and they aren’t pretty.

3. The plotting. The book is incredibly tightly plotted, full both moral dilemmas and serious danger (and you never get the feeling that Kat will be okay, just because she’s narrating). It isn’t a shock that the book is so well-drawn, given how utterly phenomenal Collins’ Underland Chronicles were, especially towards the end when all the small bits and pieces came into play. I can only imagine the scale on which that will happen in the Hunger Games trilogy, because with a first book as well written as this, and knowing that Collins is an amazing writer who can truly follow through on everything she has set up, I can only imagine the series getting better. And that is saying something, because the first book is really, really, really good.

Do I even need to say it? Five cupcakes and all the sprinkles in the world.

For years, Beka has dreamed of becoming one of the Provost’s Dogs, the guards who keep law and order in the kingdom of Tortall. Now she has joined their ranks, but her talent for sniffing out conspiracies and going after the powerful criminals behind them may get her killed before she has a chance to enjoy it. But Beka’s got one weapon no Rat can escape: she can hear the voices of the dead.

The summer I was eleven, one of my bunkmates at camp lent me Tamora Pierce’s In the Hands of the Goddess, the second of four books about Alanna, a girl who disguises herself as a boy in order to become a knight. It was the book I’d wanted desperately all my life and hadn’t known I wanted, made-to-order for an eleven-year-old girl who wanted nothing more than to be a knight-sorceress herself. When the summer was over, I immediately tracked down the rest of the series and devoured it – and every Tortall book thereafter. I’m not totally a wild-eyed Tamora Pierce zealot – I didn’t really like the Protector of the Small series, and I’ve only read a couple of her non-Tortall books, though I do intend to read them all – but I figure it’s only fair to let you know before you read this review that, say, I listed Alanna as my hero on my college applications.

With my bias out in the open, I can go ahead and say that the Beka Cooper books are phenomenal. The trilogy takes place 200 years before Alanna’s time, before women were forbidden to be warriors. Beka herself is the ancestor of George Cooper, a major character in the Alanna books and one of my favorites. That on its own would endear her to me, but it’s really Pierce’s skill at crafting heroines that makes her such a strong, engaging character. Like Alanna, Daine, Kel, and Aly before her (or after her, depending on how you look at it), she’s smart, determined, and a scrapper, but she’s very much her own person, too.

In large part this comes from having a perspective completely different than the previous Tortallan heroines. Where Daine is a rural commoner and the other three are nobility, Beka comes from urban poor. Pierce paints a rich and complete picture of life in the meanest, dirtiest streets in the Lower City, with all the moral complexities therein: the complicated and mostly unspoken agreements between the Dogs and the Rats; the laws that don’t sit well with Bea, like the legality of slavery; the occasional corrupt or drunk or stupid Dog and the repercussions they have on the rest of the Dogs and the rest of the city. The elaborate use of Lower City slang in both the dialogue and the narrative (the books are told in first person, almost entirely as part of Beka’s journal, which makes her voice especially strong) enhances this, making the world believable and interesting while still being completely clear and understandable. It opens up a part of Tortall we haven’t seen before, and contributes to the feeling that Beka’s story is older than the others’.

I also really like the way the books are structured. I tend to like plot-driven books, and Pierce, as a more character-driven writer, tends to meander a bit, but the Beka books are basically police procedurals. Each book deals with a particular conspiracy, so while the series is able to be episodic and focus on Beka’s growth, the books themselves are held to a very tight plot structure as Beka and her allies work to uncover the criminals’ plots. It’s a compromise that works very well – Pierce doesn’t have to sacrifice the natural growth of the character, but she avoids the disjointed feel of some of her other books.

And finally, hey, how about a few things you don’t normally see in young adult fantasy, or any media at all: a gay character; a transgender character; a heroine who enjoys having safe, consensual sex with a partner who respects her and isn’t punished or judged for it. All of those were in the Beka books, and all of those made me happy as a reader to see – let alone the benefit of tolerant, safe-sex-positive books for Pierce’s target audience of tween girls.

As you can probably tell from this review so far, the Beka Cooper books are running on five cupcakes so far. My only complaint is that now I have to wait at least a year for the next one. Ah, well, I can always reread the Alanna books again.

Gemma Doyle has lived her whole life in India, but when her mother is killed, her family returns to England, where Gemma is sent off to Spence Academy for Young Ladies. But Gemma can’t escape her grief, or the prophetic visions she’s suddenly privy to. With her friends Pippa, Felicity, and Ann, she discovers the realms, a magical world where they can be all the things their rigid Victorian society won’t allow them to be. But everyone wants power over the magic Gemma holds – the creatures of the realms, secret societies in the ordinary world, and her mother’s killer – and no one can be trusted.

I love boarding school stories, and I love Victoriana, and I love feisty redheaded heroines, so it was a fair bet I’d love this series. And sure enough, I did! Let’s take those items in reverse:

1. Fiesty redheaded heroines: Gemma is a very strong protagonist. She’s definitely an Everygirl; while Pippa, Ann, and Felicity dwell in extremes, Gemma tends to be fairly middle-of-the-road, to the point that she has trouble naming her own hopes and fears. But rather than come off as bland, this comes off as very genuine; she’s a very believable teenage girl who is still trying to decide who she is and what she wants. Her emotions, too, are all very real: her grief over her mother’s death, her awakening sexuality, her complicated emotions towards her friends, her mentors, and her enemies. She works brilliantly as the centerpiece of the story, and it doesn’t hurt that once she does decide what she wants to do, she kicks ass doing it.

2. Victoriana: I loved the references tossed in there: Oscar Wilde being arrested for indecency, A Study in Scarlet, Girl’s Own stories. And I loved the sense of Victorianism that pervaded the whole thing, from Gemma’s growing up in India to her fear of being presented to the queen. But more than that, I loved that Bray didn’t just stick the Victorian Era in there as a backdrop that would allow fancy dresses and olde tyme-y talking. She uses the era, uses it to shape her characters’ hopes and fears. Everything Gemma and her friends feel and experience is set against Victorian mores; at every step they’re struggling against racism, classism, homophobia, and especially sexism, and Gemma’s forced to fight against those things while gradually coming to realize her own privilege. A major theme of the book – possibly the major theme – is the way the girls of Spence are trapped in this stultifying society, whether to be a tutor to bratty children like Ann, or married off like Pippa and Felicity, or simply powerless like Gemma. The girls’ struggles to escape their gilded cages are by turns heartbreaking and inspiring.

3. Boarding school stories: Spence Academy itself is simply drenched in history, in secrets and tragedy. All the little descriptive bits that make it look so foreboding when Gemma arrives twist themselves into intricate little plot points, and while I wasn’t really very interested in the mythology of the realms, the story behind everything that happened in the past at Spence fascinated me. But beyond that, the setting allowed Bray to show a real variety of female characters and relationships. It’s a shame that books with mostly-female casts are rare enough to make me this excited over the Bray books, but they are, and I am. There are many, many female characters in the series, and even the minor ones aren’t clichés or easily categorized.

The heart of the series is Gemma’s friendship with Felicity, Ann, and Pippa, and this is done marvelously. They are not easy friendships. They are friendships full of resentment, of jealousy, of fear. They have all the insecurities of teenage friendship: am I the favorite, am I the least favorite, do they only like me because of what I have, can I tell my secrets, will I be understood? But beneath the petty (and unpetty) fights lies real loyalty and love, and that’s what makes the relationships compelling.

Speaking of compelling relationships, Gemma’s relationship with Kartik, her main interest, was also very well done. Kartik is totally dreamy and their romance was more of a page-turner to me than any YA romance I’ve read in a long time, but I also loved that she didn’t take any of his nonsense when he tried to dish it out early in the series, and I especially loved that, when faced with a possible betrayal by him, Gemma went right up to him and talked to him about it, rather than play elaborate wounded mind games. Healthy communication between teen lovers? Shocking but true!

My sole quibble about the series was that I think at least a hundred pages could’ve been comfortably cut from the last book. They were well-written pages, but Gemma’s isolation, confusion, and fear was endlessly rehashed to the point where suspense was lost and I got downright bored.

However, that quibble is not enough to put a damper on my enthusiasm. The Gemma Doyle Trilogy gets five cupcakes, and a nice Victorian cup of tea besides.

Lia Kahn was beautiful, popular, and rich. Her life was perfect — until she died, only to wake with her brain patterns transferred into a mechanical body. But society isn’t kind to Skinners, as downloaded people are called. She loses her status at school when her friends and her boyfriend abandon her. There’s a whole cult devoted to ridding the world of Skinners. Even her own family is uncomfortable with her. And for her part, Lia’s left wondering… Is she really Lia Kahn, or just a robot programmed to believe she’s a person?

A few weeks ago, Jess and I dropped by a signing at Books of Wonder, since it featured AV favorites Justine Larbalestier and Suzanne Collins as part of the panel of writers. We weren’t familiar with the other eight, but Robin Wasserman got as far as, “My book is a dark dystopia with a teen girl protagonist — ” before Jess leaned over to me and whispered, “So you’re buying it, right?” Right! Because possibly my favorite sub-sub-genre is dystopian science fiction about teenage girls! So I got the book, and got it signed (Wasserman was super nice, too). And last weekend I finally sat down to read, and positively devoured it.

Skinned is awesome.

The first thing is Lia’s character. Lia is great, largely because she’s not the sort of protagonist you get used to in this kind of genre. She’s not plucky; she’s not spunky. She’s not even nice — in fact, she’s very much a classic mean girl. But she’s still sympathetic. As a reader, I was cheering as much for her to regain her shallow, horrible status as I was for her to learn she didn’t need it, which is a very fine line indeed. Basically, I wanted Lia to win.

Next is the world. Wasserman mentioned at the signing that she hadn’t originally set out to write a dystopia, and instead was planning near-future science fiction with our current world taken to the next level. That it turned into a dystopia is a little scary, but the world is great. Post nuclear war, the rich live in luxury, genetically screened to not just get rid of any potential diseases, but enhanced to be beautiful or brilliant (or, if you have enough credit, both). They are plugged in all the time, constantly on a virtual network that makes up much of their real world. Most of them work, but life is easy. On the other hand, everyone else is stuck living in crumbling cities which are not only not connected, but have no power much of the time (let alone proper healthcare, which is a problem, given that most of these cities are still toxic from the nuclear fallout). The only alternative to cities is to basically sell yourself into slavery and work for a company. But the gap between rich and poor is huge, and the way the characters deal with it is pretty fantastic.

Lia has no concept of how people in cities actually live, and firmly believes the party line that anyone can move from city to corporation to wealthy by working hard enough. Meanwhile, the class nerd — Auden — is a total freak because he worries about conditions in the cities and thinks city people need help, but he’s never been to a city; and when he suggests the energy crisis is just a way the government keeps people under control, everyone laughs at him as a conspiracy freak.

And speaking of Auden, he’s also a great character. And I absolutely must sing Wasserman’s praises here, because the tangible awkwardness between Lia and Auden as they become friends and it’s obvious he has feelings for her that doesn’t return is so very real. It’s almost painful. And double points because, while Auden represents one possible future Lia could take, and a male Skinner named Jude represents another, Lia attempt to make sense of things never comes across as Lia choosing between two boys.

Finally, the book’s treatment of race completely floored me. I won’t spoil that for you — the sudden bluntness of it actually made me gasp when I realized — but we’ll just say that it isn’t a coincidence Lia’s mechanical body is white, blond, and blue-eyed.

Basically, the book is amazing. The tone is great; it’s dark without being overwhelming, even in the moments when the book makes some really unpleasant points. And the ending was fantastic, because it sets up to go one way, which would totally make sense and be fantastic — and takes a sharp left turn that is unexpected, but also fantastic. (Definitely did not see it coming.) Skinned is the first in a trilogy, the rest of which is not out yet. Since I will be buying them in hardcover the moment they are available, the book gets an obvious five cupcakes.

A paraphrased conversation from your bloggers:

Jess: You know what book was awesome? Fly By Night.

(Jess may have edited this paraphrased conversation a tad.)

When 12-year-old Mosca falls in with a low-rent poet and conman named Eponymous Clent in an effort to escape her miserable, provincial life, she has no idea that she’ll soon be at the center of a dangerous web of political intrigue and rebellion. But no sooner have Mosca, Clent, and Mosca’s homicidal goose Saracen arrived in the city of Mandelion than Mosca finds herself adrift in a world of radicals, conspirators, zealots, mad dukes, highwaymen, heretics, and murderers. Mosca will need all her cunning and grit just to survive. Luckily, she’s got plenty of both.

Jess: I love this book so much. I’ve read it three times already.

Becky: I have read it twice! It is definitely a book I’ll come back to every few years. Though, uh… hopefully eventually I will figure out who is on what side. If the book has one serious drawback, I’d say it’s that: it’s a plot about intrigue, and while, er… intriguing (very!), it’s also got so many people on so many different sides that it’s hard to keep track of who is plotting against who and why.

Jess: It’s funny, because the first time I read it it seemed totally clear to me, and the second time I read it I was lost, and the third time it started to clear up again. Very mysterious!

And hey, if we’re tackling the flaws now, the only other one I can name, without giving too much away, is that the book comes down pretty firmly on the side of atheism, while simultaneously insisting upon freedom of religion and the inability of mortal minds to know the true nature of the universe. That is, it says, essentially, “anyone could be right so we should all have the freedom to put forth our views…but if you think there is a god, or gods, than you are either a dangerous zealot or a blind child.” Which strikes me as a bit hypocritical.

Becky: On the one hand, I think the message of the book is, above all else, think for yourself and think critically of what people say. That’s a message I can get behind. But when tying it so strongly to religion… Well. What’s strange about me as a reader is that I’m fine with discussing almost any social questions in book — you want to write about sexism? classism? racism? environmentalism? bring it! — but I really do not like reading about religion in novels, regardless of what the religion is or what’s being said about it. I hate the Narnia books; I hate the His Dark Materials books. And while I love Fly By Night, that’s because there’s a lot more story and character to it than moralizing; but I could really do without the moralizing about God.

Jess: I take your point, but the good thing is that there isn’t really any moralizing about God until basically the last page. And I can totally deal with religion in books, as long as the story and the characters take precedence over the message (note to readers: Becky and I will never agree about Narnia). It was the hypocrisy of the final statement, combined with the fairly patronizing tone the book takes towards polytheism/Catholicism (the Beloved of Fly By Night are sort of a cross between pagan gods and saints), that bothered me.

Becky: But, with that said, I can think of literally nothing else negative to say. Fly By Night is simply one of the best books I’ve read in years. And Mosca is one heck of an awesome protagonist. She is smart and sassy — but she’s also naive, so while she makes smart choices with the information she has, the choices she makes aren’t always right. She can be led astray by people who come across as sincere because she hasn’t yet learned how to tell who’s lying. But not only does she make progress as the book continues, but she always, always decides for herself. When I talk about active female characters, that’s what I mean. Mosca isn’t always right, but she’s the one making things happen.

Jess: Absolutely. And while we’re on the subject of awesome female characters, I’d like to quote a conversation on another awesome character, Miss Kitely, who is the owner and captain of the floating coffeehouse on which the climax of the book takes place:

“So, do you want to marry Miss Kitely?”

“If she’d have me.” Blythe looked as if he would like to be angry at the question but had too much to think about…

“She’s got strange eyes.”

“She has very fine eyes.” The highwayman sounded affronted. “She’s…like no one I’ve met before. A real lady. And…” A dreamy look crossed his face. “…she can clean, load and present a pistol in twenty heartbeats.”

Mosca thought this a much better reason to be in love with someone.

At another point the idealistic scholar Mr. Pertellis declares that “There is something elevated in the female spirit that will always hold a woman back from the coldest and most vicious forms of villainy,” to which Miss Kitely’s response is, “No, there isn’t…Drink your chocolate, Mr. Pertellis.” Like Mosca, Miss Kitely is a no-nonsense female character who makes things happen, an eminently practical survivor. In fact, all of the female characters in this book are movers and shakers. They are wonderfully varied, but the thing they share, without question, is agency.

Becky: Another excellent thing about the book is the language. At its heart, this is a book about the power of language and of books; the characters live in a world where books are strictly controlled, very few people can read, and it’s generally believed that reading an illegal book will cause the letters to turn into spiders inside your brain, where they’ll drive you mad. Mosca knows how to read, because her father was a scholar who taught her even though it made her an outcast, and what she really wants is to find new, rich words to read. So not only is the book celebrating beautiful language, but it uses it beautifully, and often hilariously.

Jess: And the world! And the brilliant, brilliant back story! It’s all set in this 18th century-esque kingdom that has been in the midst of a civil war for something like two decades while they try to decide who the next monarch will be, and the way that history intertwines with that of the religion that came in and terrorized the realm for ten years is simply wonderful. Even if the story and the characters weren’t fantastic (which they are), Fly By Night would be praiseworthy just for its setting.

Becky: I love, for example, the Clamoring Hour — many of the Beloved have bell ringers to celebrate them, so to keep the city from total bell-induced chaos at all times, everyone rings bells for a single hour every day, which causes massive chaos for a very short time. It’s a small detail, but a very rich window into their world.

Jess: And the floating coffee houses! And the rivalry between the Stationers and the Locksmiths! And the Ragged School! And…look, just everything about it is awesome, okay?

Becky: Basically, while this is not a perfect book, it is overwhelming good. It’s the kind of book you will get lost in, and can come back to again and again, which we have. And since Jess already has Hardinge’s new book in hand to read, it meets every requirement to get five cupcakes.