Active Voice

By Tamora Pierce [Pierce at LibraryThing -- Pierce at Amazon]

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.

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By Libba Bray [Bray at LibraryThing - Bray at Amazon]

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.

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By Robin Wasserman [LibraryThing - Amazon]

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?

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By Frances Hardinge [LibraryThing - Amazon]

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.

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By Jonathan Stroud [LibraryThing - Amazon]

When Nathaniel, a young magician-in-training, summons the djinni Bartimaeus to get revenge for a minor humiliation, he has no idea that he’s embroiling the two of them in a massive conspiracy. As the years pass and Nathaniel rises in influence in the government, various coups fall, each one merely an offshoot of the one that threatens not just England, but the world. In the end, it’s up to Nathaniel, Bartimaeus, and Resistance fighter Kitty Jones to save the day – if they can stop squabbling long enough to do it.

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By Justine Larbalestier [ Librarything - Amazon]

Hi. So. Jess and I aren’t dead, we’ve just been exceptionally busy. But we have been reading! So here’s a review to prove it!

Reason Cansino has never been normal: she’s spent her entire life on the run with her mother, hiding from her grandmother. Reason’s grandmother believes magic is real—and that belief has turned her into an unstable criminal. But now Reason’s mum is in the hospital, and it’s up to her to escape from her grandmother, rescue her mum, and figure out what the real secret of the Cansino family is.

At least, that’s her goal… Until a fateful trip leads her to the revelation that not only is magic real, and her grandmother can indeed control it, but that she can, too. Now Reason has to figure out who’s been telling her the truth and who’s been lying—and she has to figure out how magic works, or else she’ll never be able to save her mother or herself.

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By Adrienne Kress [Librarything - Amazon]

Life is good for Alexandra Morningside – she loves living with her uncle in the flat above his doorknob shop, and she loves her sixth-grade teacher, Mr. Underwood, a stickler for grammar and an expert on fencing. But Mr. Underwood is the descendent of one of history’s most feared pirates and the inheritor of the Wigpowder treasure, and the dreaded pirate Captain Steele will stop at nothing to claim the treasure before Mr. Underwood can. It’s up to Alex to rescue her kidnapped teacher and find the treasure – if she can survive the increasingly more bizarre hurdles along the way.

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By Suzanne Collins [Collins at LibraryThing - Collins a Amazon]

Gregor is more or less an average kid growing up in New York City, though he does miss his father, who disappeared over two years ago…But everything changes one day when he and his toddler sister, Boots, fall down an airshaft from their building’s laundry room and land in a strange realm called the Underland, where giant creatures—cockroaches, rats, and bats, among others—can talk.

There are humans in the Underland, too, a colony that was led there by Bartholomew of Sandwich four hundred years ago. But it’s a hard life: resources are scarce, and the humans and rats are constantly at war. Gregor, of course, wants nothing to do with war or the strange civilization, but he discovers that his falling was foretold in a prophecy Sandwich wrote…and the prophecy also tells of a quest he must undertake to find his father, who has now been a prisoner of the rats for over two years.

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By Derek Landy [Librarything - Amazon]

When Stephanie’s Uncle Gordon dies and leaves his house and fortune to her, she finds that she’s also inherited her fair share of dangerous secrets – not to mention the friendship of the walking, talking, magic-wielding skeleton Skulduggery Pleasant. A detective by trade, Skulduggery is investigating the mysterious circumstances surrounding Gordon’s death, which he believes are tied in with a plot to bring back a race of evil, destructive gods and destroy civilization as we know it. Together with Ghastly the magical boxing tailor and Tanith the goofy-but-ruthless swordswoman, and armed with a little bit of magic and a whole lot of snappy patter, Stephanie and Skulduggery must navigate a network of conspiracies and double-crosses in order to unlock Uncle Gordon’s secrets and save the world.

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Whither Rebecca leads, thither I follow. Here are some older reviews of mine of Kids/YA Genre Fiction:

The Circle of Magic #1: Sandry’s Book (The Magic in the Weaving), #2: Tris’s Book (The Power of the Storm), and #3: Daja’s Book (The Fire in the Forging), by Tamora Pierce. Three cupcakes for Sandry’s Book, four cupcakes for the other two. (Genre: High Fantasy)

Secrets of Dripping Fang #1: The Onts, by Dan Greenburg. Three and a half cupcakes. (Genre: Contemporary/Urban Fantasy)

Dealing With Dragons, by Patricia C. Wrede. Four and a half cupcakes. (Genre: High Fantasy, Fairy Tale/Mythic)

Sorcery and Cecilia, or the Enchanted Chocolate Pot, by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer. Four and a half cupcakes. (Genre: Historical Fantasy/Steampunk)

The Keys to the Kingdom #5: Lady Friday, by Garth Nix. Three cupcakes, although the series as a whole gets a tentative five (which may be reevaluated when the last two come out). (Genre: Portal Fantasy)

Not a review, but what’s with the torn edges on the pages of books lately?