Books of the Week

Science Fiction/Utopia-Dystopia/Gender Issues
Turning on the Girls
Cheryl Benard
FSG 0374281785

In a near future utopia where some un-named change has taken place, women rule the world. Lisa, a bright young thing, works for the Ministry of Thought, Department of Values and Fantasies, Subdepartment of Dreams. Her job is to find out what it will take to make politically correct sexual fantasies. Interestingly enough she reads Johanna Lindsey's infamous spanking scene in Keeper of the Heart part of her Ly-San-Ter science fiction romance series that I was also reading at the time. Lisa has a bright young male secretary named Justin who has nearly completed the re-indoctrination program that will allow him to move out of the male retraining center. A neighbors gloms onto the idea that Justin may actually be a macho male and invites him to a meeting of a radical underground group. Recruited to infiltrate another subversive group, Lisa and Justin team up pretending to be a couple. She has to don make-up and a party dress which is really subversive behavior. The world Benard creates will inevitably be compared to Orwell's Animal Farm and Huxley's Brave New World with good reason. An excerpt is available.

YA/Contemporary/Sports/Problem/Racism
Whale Talk
Chris Crutcher
Greenwillow 0688180191

The Tao (TJ) Jones, a Black-Japanese-White high school senior, was adopted by his parents after his bio-mom gave him up when he was 2 years old. His mom is a lawyer and his dad is a biker who acts as guardian ad litem for kids in the system. When Chris, a kid who suffered brain damage as an infant is tormented by a jock at school because he is wearing his dead brother's letter jacket, TJ steps in. TJ, who has an abundance of athletic talent, agrees to help his English teacher who is being forced into coaching a team to form a swim team at a school that has never had one. He assembles a great team consisting of a DD kid, a fat kid, a kid who never talks, an extra intelligent but pompous kid, and one who is a one legged sociopath. TJ also becomes involved with a little girl, the multi-racial stepdaughter of guy who shot a fawn out from under his protection. His dad also had a horrible story that happened in his past that has shaped him into the kind child advocate that he is.

Chris Crutcher, winner of the Margaret A. Edwards Award, for his long record of great YA fiction is one of the best youth advocates we have. Every one of his books is a favorite. He combines hard hitting, gritty realism with humor to make the lives of his teen characters step vividly off the page. Read what Chris had to say following the Santana school shooting.

Teens comments on Whale Talk.

Science Fiction/Adventure/Young Adult Protagonists
Shadow of the Hegemon
Orson Scott Card
Tor 0312876513

It is difficult to define where everything fits in Card's excellent Ender saga. While Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind are sequels to the original Ender's Game they do not hold the same type of appeal, growing and becoming something more as Ender does and providing thought provoking reading. Ender's Shadow, the companion volume to Ender's Game that follows the same story but through the eyes of Bean appeals to those who loved the adventure in Ender's Game. Shadow of the Hegemon will appeal to readers who enjoy the adventure aspects of Ender's saga. Ender is not a character in it, being on his way to the events in Speaker for the Dead. What happens on Earth to Bean, Petra, and other kids from battle school is the focus with a villain foreshadowed in the earlier (setting-wise) books. The battle school kids are still struggling to fit in with families that they left behind years ago when they are all abducted except for Bean and his brother who are the target of assassins. Bean knows that as long as he is in protective custody he is at risk. Petra,who is being held captive, knows that if she is clever enough she can get necessary information out to Bean and to Ender's brother Peter Wiggin. Enjoyable and entertaining as it is, it is not the place to start the series. Readers are advised to read either Ender's Game or Ender's Shadow before partaking Shadow of the Hegemon.

Romance/Suspense/Contemporary/Louisiana
Still of the Night
Meagan McKinney
Kensington 1575666154

"This wonderfully atmospheric romantic suspense should appeal to fans of Tami Hoag and Karen Robards." Check the Booklist review for a full annotation.

Suspense/Missing Child
The Courage Tree
Diane Chamberlain
1551667991

"Well drawn characters and a riveting plot make this a memorable thriller in the tradition of Joy Fielding and Mary Higgins Clark." Check the Booklist review for a full annotation.

Science Fiction/Nanotechnology
Ventus
Schroeder, Karl
Tor 031287197X

Fourteen year old Jordan Mason has just achieved his majority on the planet Ventus where children learn that there are three life forms, flora, fauna, and mecha when he begins to experience disconcerting visions. Ventus is a world of medieval level technology, ruled by the Winds that strike down any who create or use more advanced technology. Morphs, mecha creatures, roam the wilderness changing animals into other forms. When Jordan’s sister runs into the woods because a guest of the lord of the manor wants her, he follows only to be kidnapped by Calandria May, a woman from off planet who has the ability to remain invisible to the Winds. Vagabond moons, Heaven hooks, and desal stations share a sentience. The nanotechnology and AI that had been sent to terraform the world to make it habitable by humans took on a life of its own seeing humans as invading vermin rather than as the masters of the universe. Jordan has visions that take him into Armiger who may be a Resurrection Seed from a god, an AI who had achieved total domination over an inhabited planet before Calandria May slew him. Well developed world building, complex evolving characters, politics, war, romance, hard science, and a coming of age blend and work together to form a truly exceptional work worthy of SF’s top awards.

Science Fiction/Exploration/Near Future
The Ice Limit
Preston, Douglas and Lincoln Child
Warner 0446525871

Dr. Sam McFarlane is a meteorite hunter. A rough and tumble kind of guy he wasn’t a good fit in academia and with a partner he slipped in and out of dangerous locales to snag meteorites. He doesn’t jump at the chance to sign on when Palmer Lloyd one of the richest men in the world offers him a job on a team going to a remote island off Tierra del Fuego but as it may mean the retrieval of the largest asteroid ever found he finally goes along on a brand new super tanker outfitted to look like a near derelict captained by a disgraced woman. The meteorite proves to be unique, with properties that make it almost impossible to move. It seems to draw lightning to those who touch it and if that weren’t enough a psychotic Chilean commander is out for blood.

Lincoln Child will be speaking at the YALSA SF in SF preconference on June 15, 2001 in San Francisco.

YA/Contemporary/Coming of Age
Rain Is Not My Indian Name
Cynthia Leitich Smith
HarperCollins 0688173977

On New Year's Eve, the eve of her fourteenth birthday, Rain Berghoff kisses her best friend Galen and discovers that she likes him as a boyfriend as well as loving him as a friend. When her birthday dawns she discovers that the friend who helped her through the death of her mom, the friend who put Worf cutouts in many of the downtown store windows with signs on them telling people to wish Rain Berghoff a happy birthday, the friend who had always been there for her --is dead. Unable to face his funeral, she is also unable to face her life, moving in a dark cloud through the months until summer. Her Aunt Georgia, a retired science teacher has organized an Indian camp that her brother wants her to attend. Galen's mother, a politician, is dead set against the town paying any of the expenses and tries to use Rain's cancellation of camp participation against Aunt Georgina. Her brother's fiancée, who runs the local paper gives Rain the perfect "out" when she asks her to photograph the camp for the newspaper making it a conflict of interest for Rain to be one of the "campers." Teamed up with reporter "Flash," she comes to recognize who she is in this powerful and moving first novel. Smith is also the author of the children's picture book Jingle Dancer.

Fantasy/Sword and Sorcery/Magic
Young Adult/Fantasy
Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr
Garth Nix
HarperCollins 0060278234

Instead of committing suicide on her fourteenth birthday when she doesn't receive the future Seeing ability shared by all adult Clayr, Lirael becomes a librarian in the vast warren of a library that not only houses books but also guards monstrous dangers and arcane magic. After accidentally freeing a hideously lethal creature in her explorations she conjures up the Disreputable Dog who helps her capture the creature. As her adolescence passes, she continues her explorations in the library, learning how to assume an animal shape and discovers a hidden remote room that has her name on it. The Clayr had never been able to See Lirael in the future but obviously someone in the past had and placed three objects that would be of use to her in the room. She discovers that she can see into the past has a vision that shows her an image of her father whose identity is unknown to any of the Clayr.

Sameth, the son of King Touchstone and Sabriel, is attending school in a mundane world but after a cricket match his bus is hijacked to near the border where the Dead attack him and his team mates. Going into Death to fight the necromancer who is directing the Dead has a profound impact on him making him reluctant to take up his studies as the next Abhorsen because he cannot face going into Death again.

Lirael is one of the best fantasy novels I have ever read, in fact it may just go onto my list of top ten favorite books of all genres. This beautifully written, intelligent fantasy is set in a fully realized world with consistent but complex magic. The characters are real and one truly does not want the book to end. While it is a sequel to Sabriel (not read yet), it stands alone just fine. Unfortunately, like many epic fantasy novels, it continues--leaving the reader impatient for the next installment. Look for Lirael to be nominated for and to win many awards. Nix is also the author of Shade's Children.

Nix has made sample chapters available on his web site at http://www.ozemail.com.au/~garthnix/DoC.html

Young Adult/Contemporary/Coming of Age/Sports
Finding Forrester: A Novel
James W. Ellison
Newmarket Press 1557044791

An exceptional novelization. Review to be posted soon.

Young Adult/Science Fiction/Immortality
Turnabout
Margaret Peterson Haddix
Simon & Schuster 0689821875

Two old ladies who were part of an experiment to reverse the effects of aging are teen agers again in the 2080s as they live backwards in time, the only survivors of an experiment that started with one hundred people. This is for all those who think adolescence would be a breeze if one had the wisdom of age. Unfortunately memories seem to have a finite storage area and for each new year lived, a year of memories are lost. Great short SF novel for adults who read YA.

Women's Fiction/Contemporary/Book Groups
Fantasy/Magic Realism
Historical/19th Century Cuba
Playing with Light
Beatriz Rivera
Arte Publico Press 1558853103

Rebecca Barrios, a well-off Miami Beach housewife, decides to start a book group similar to the traditional Cuban women's gathering called a tertulia, where the participants rock, and read, and discuss. Unable to settle on the "perfect" book, but having obtained the rocking chairs and selected the group of women to invite, she haunt Miami's bookstores where she stumbles across a curious book by a Cuban author. As the contemporary Cuban-American women are drawn into the story dealing with an eccentric, wealthy Havana family their own story becomes a futuristic tale read to workers in a dress factory by a hired reader with Rebecca's same last name. The past depicted in the book and the present in Miami continue to impact each other.

This would be a terrific book for a book group discussion but the ending may seem rather abrupt and undone for some.

Mainstream Fiction/Literary
Crime/Detection
Young Adult/Suspense
The River King
Alice Hoffman
Putnam 0399145990

First and foremost Hoffman is a true storyteller, which is one of the highest compliments I ever pay. She creates characters and situations that sweep the reader into the world she creates with beautifully turned phrases. In The River King, the stories of several individuals connected to the Haddan School, a private school in a small Massachusetts town, are brought to the fore after a strange and lonely boy is found dead in the river. His one friend was a stunningly beautiful girl who has gotten into the expensive school on a swimming scholarship leaving her trashy Florida life behind. The folks from the town and the school very rarely mix so it seems very bizarre for town policeman Abel Grey to be hanging around the school where once a local woman married the school's president and ended up a suicide.

Hoffman, after carefully and intricately twisting the life strands of the rich and the poor, the good and the evil, the generous and the self centered, the past and the present, and the living and the dead gifts the reader with a graceful and satisfying ending.

©2001 Diana Tixier Herald