Books of the Week

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YA/ Fantasy/ Faerie
de Lint, Charles
Seven Wild Sisters
Subterranean 1931081336

This magical short tale of seven sisters who run afoul the world of faerie in the woods outside de Lint's imaginary North American city, Newford, will delight not only his fans but readers new to the fantastical world he creates. Sarah Jane, the middle sister of seven, befriends Aunt Lilllian who lives in a remote patch of the woods. The teenager learns much about the natural world from the old woman but also hears stories of sangmen and bee fairies. Just knowing about them doesn't protect her or her sisters when she finds a wounded sangman and interferes in the affairs of a different world. Vess's charming pen and ink illustrations work well with the text. A great fantasy choice for all readers not just Harry Potter fans who are ready for a new challenge.

Other de Lint books reviewed at Genrefluent: Onion Girl, Someplace to be Flying, and Trader.

YA/ Contemporary/ Coming of Age YA/ Multicultural/ Asian
Desai Hidier,Tanuja
Born Confused
Scholastic 0439357624

For her seventeenth birthday Dimple Lala's best friend the beautiful blond Gwen gives her a fake ID and a double date with Julian, a college student. When she returns home drunk, her Indian parents seem to swiftly start trying to arrange a marriage for her. They have met an old friend and discovered that she has a son who is single and a student at NYU. As Dimple, a talented photographer, stumbles through the New Jersey summer she discovers friendship with her cousin who has left India to attend NYU, her own Indian identity, a new closeness to her parents, an estrangement from Gwen, and a serious attraction to Karsh, the boy the marriage mafia has picked out for her. Desai Hidier's luminous prose shines a bright light on what it means to be seventeen. Heartfelt and also laugh out loud funny in places, this novel is not to be missed.

Science Fiction/ Adventure
Barnes, John
The Sky So Big and Black
Tor 0765303035

Teri-Mel and her father are prospectors on Mars, working to find big scores that help move the terraforming along. It is a tough life where people marry young and shoulder a lot of responsibility. Teri wants to quit school so she can marry her sweetheart at the next Gather but her dad wants her to finish her education and test for full adult status. Teri's tale is told through transcriptions of her relating her experiences prior to a planet wide catastrophe to a shrink. The reader will keep turning pages as the suspense builds. While this is related to Barnes other recent titles that build a world after much of humanity is infected with memes in the form of an intelligent infection called Resuna that allowed the artificial intelligence called One True to take control of Earth. Barnes colonial Martian society is fascinating as are the bio-mining details. Top-notch adventure sf with Barnes back in top form.

Horror/Suspense Horror/ Medical
Braver, Gary
Gray Matter
Forge 0312876130

When the Whitman's move with their six-year-old son Dylan to an upscale suburb filled with genius children, Rachel begins to search for ways to improve the somewhat slow Dylan's intelligence. Introduced to a former Soviet neurologist she becomes wary, especially after a detective, working on the case of missing children who turn up dead with medical drill marks in their sculls comes onto the scene. Even though this has a rather lame ending, it is a terrific beach read (I just returned from Playa del Carmen and will attest to that fact). Fans of Michael Palmer and Tess Gerritson should find it an entertaining diversion.

Science Fiction/ Adventure Science Fiction/ More than Human/ Bioengineering
Goonan, Kathleen Ann
Light Music
Eos 0380977125

Goonan's surrealistic nanotech novel features Angelina, an Argentinean who flees after her son runs away to Paris and her workers revolt. She finds a sentient doll named Chester and makes her way across the world. In Crescent City an engineer named Peabody sets out with Dania to find the information he needs to convert Crescent City into a space ship so it can take off. Strangely enough he experiences a regular transition into the Radio Cowboy, losing his focus but achieving the ability to shoot people with his six guns which makes them sing show tunes. Goonan's fourth surrealistic nanotech novel will not appeal to all but sf readers who like decidedly off-center characters and world she has created will rejoice.

YA/ Issues/ Homelessness and Foster Living Arrangements
Giff, Patricia Reilly
Pictures of Hollis Woods
Wendy Lamb 0385326556

This gracefully drawn story alternates between Hollis Wood’s life as a twelve-year-old as a foster child living with a former art teacher who seems to be in the early stages of Alzheimer’s and the previous summer when she lived with a family that appeared to be the perfect family for her. A family that she had always wanted. A family that let her be herself and didn’t label her as a trouble maker. The reader eagerly turns the pages to find out what went wrong; why she has left the foster father she calls Old Man, the foster brother who is exactly perfect for a brother, and the foster mother who shares hard candy and understanding with her. What could she have done to have stripped herself away from her perfect family? A wonderful book. One of the best of the year. It is lovely to see Hollis taking care of her elderly foster mom and find love and family at last. This YA novel will appeal to adults who like YA literature, and to teens of all ages.

Science Fiction/ Horror/ Short Stories
Van Pelt, James
Strangers and Beggars
Fairwood Press 0966818458

A giant spider that encapsulates a student and a teacher in its web, a kid who has always felt he was an alien and really is, and an endless trip in awful traffic that death can't even end are just a few of the stories in this outstanding collection. The stories run the gamut of horror, science fiction and fantasy. Many of the stories are unusually memorable making Van Pelt an author to watch. Strangers and Beggars was creating quite a buzz at ConJose, the World Science Fiction Convention, last month.

YA/ Contemporary/ Coming of Age
Lubar, David
Dunk
Clarion Books 061819455X

Fifteen year old Chad is frustrated that his mother, who is always either at work or school, will not allow him to have a job and that they have to rent the upstairs of their home out to a strange. He admires the witty Bozo working the Dunk tank on the boardwalk and wishes for the kind of job that would allow him to spew forth everything he thinks. The new tenant is going to be teaching drama at a community college and is also the Bozo but he gets off on the wrong foot with Chad when he refuses to help Chad who has been wrongly accused by a shop owner. Chad’s life becomes tough when his best friend, a healthy strong volley ball player, collapses with an auto-immune illness and the girl he has had a crush on for more than a year starts dating the local drug dealer.

YA/ Fantasy/ Magical Realism
Murphy, Rita
Harmony
Delacorte Press 0385729383

Fifteen years ago, during a meteor shower, Felix who was trying to hear the music of the Spheres witnessed a meteorite streak to the Earth and through the roof of Nettie Mae's chicken coop. At that point a baby girl was found in the coop and named Harmony by Felix and Nettie Mae, a healer who raised her in their remote Appalachian cabin. Harmony discovers she has some unexplainable talents including telekinesis and the unfortunate disability of causing electrical appliance to blow up in her presence. Keeping her new found abilities secret is impossible when her best friend Shawnie discovers it and promptly tells her cute cousin Caleb. Murphy packs a wallop into this beautifully intense brief novel. Coming of age, first love, and a peaceful ecological message make it a moving read.

YA/ Fantasy/ Faerie / Paranormal
Black, Holly
Tithe, A Modern Faerie Tale
Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing 0689849249

Kaye has spent her life taking care of her mom, a talented but unsuccessful rock musician who drinks too much and hooks up with unsuitable men. After the latest boyfriend attempts to murder her mother, the two return to New Jersey to stay with Kaye's crusty grandmother where as a child Kaye had faerie playmates. Hanging out with her old friend Janet, Kaye keeps hoping that her faerie friends were not just the product of an over active imagination. One night walking home after being attacked by Janet's boyfriend she hears a noise in the woods and meets Roiben, a silver haired elven knight who has been wounded. A trip to the Seelie court under a hill and Kaye finds herself designated as a sacrifice to keep the unaffiliated fey free for seven years. Gruesome take on the world of faerie along with a little romance and a generous helping of teen angst. A really cool book!

Crime/ Journalist / Woman Detective
Kent, Bill
Street Money
St. Martin’s Minotaur 031228585X

Andy Cosicki has finished up at Penn and now the six foot lay-up shooter who doesn't like to play organized sports desperately wants a reporting job. Her dad, the diminutive Benny "Lunch" a city hall and community "fixer" has found her a job at the Press working on the Mr. Action column and assisting N.S. Ladderback a veteran obit writer and agoraphobic. Her first day at work, with an editor who has it in for her, especially since she ground his toe to dust as she tried to politely stop him groping her, she contemplates whether or not she really wants that job and leaves to have lunch with her dad but he never shows up. Later at home in the suburbs, far from the Redmonton area that played large in not only the history of her parents but also in that of her best friend and banking heir, Logo the slacker, Ladderback calls not knowing she is Mr. Action and asks for a photo for her father's obituary. Seems he got himself dead back in the old neighborhood. Soon Andy is fending off home intruders and engaging in fights with gun toting hooligans.

Crime/ Police Detective/ Woman Detective
Parker, T. Jefferson
Black Water
Hyperion 078686804X

Homicide detective Merci Rayborn is on the case of Archie Wildcraft, a young deputy sheriff who lies in the hospital with a bullet in his head; his beautiful wife murdered with his gun. Marci has a history that makes her want to believe in his innocence enough to put her career on the line again. The couple, still in their twenties, were living in a one and a half million dollar home they had purchased with a fortune they had made investing in shares in a start-up company that had a promising cure for cancer. The Russian Mafia and an oversized criminal play a role. Marci's personal life proves interesting, too with her fatherless little boy, a fellow cop she feels she betrayed, and her current partner.

Science Fiction/ Time Travel / Dinosaurs
Swanwick, Michael
Bones of the Earth
Eos 0380978369

Paleontologist Richard Leyster is exactly where he wants to be in life when a stranger comes through his door at the Smithsonian and deposits a cooler containing a recently killed stegosaurus's head on his desk and sweeping him up into a paleontological paradise of time travel and paradoxes upon paradoxes. Paleontologists and a few geologists go back and forth in time so often that they sometimes end up being in the same place at the same time several years apart. Leyster ends up as part of an expedition that is stranded in time by a bomb planted by a violent creationist lending a touch of Survivor to the tale. Fascinating and entertaining.

Fantasy/ Magic
Hambly, Barbara
Sisters of the Raven
Warner Aspect 0446677043

Seventeen year old Raeshaldis is the only female ever admitted to the college of the Sun Mages. Life in the Yellow City has been going from bad to worse. Magic, always the dominion of men, has started to disappear but a few women have started discovering that they now have magical powers. There has been no rain and wells are going dry. Gangsters and a new religious cult have cornered the market on water in the Slaughterhouse, the district that houses the poor just outside the city walls. The king is facing revolt over his plans to build an aqueduct and his soul mate, the Summer Concubine, one of the few women who has magic has created a loose coalition of women with magic. The Summer Concubine discovers that some of her sisterhood has been disappearing without a trace. Seventeen year old Raeshaldis is the only female ever admitted to the college of the Sun Mages is being stalked by some unknown evil. A geisha culture exists and Foxfire Girl is another teen character who lives in a Blossom House where she is learning the skills to marry well.

Crime/ Suspense/ Amateur Detective
Coben, Harlan
Gone for Good
Delacorte 038533558X

Ten years after Will Klein’s first love was murdered and his cherished older brother, accused of the crime became a fugitive, Will is in love again. Waiting for his mother’s health to improve before proposing to Sheila, a volunteer at Covenant House, the teen shelter where he works, he instead finds himself mourning Sheila’s murder just days after his mother’s death. When the FBI found her fingerprints in Albuquerque at the scene of a double homicide they came to Will but she had already disappeared. As he tries to find out what happened and why she had been so elusive about her past he finds a horrifying tale of a teen runaway, like the kids he works with, who was forced into prostitution and drug use. But things don’t seem to add up right. With the help of an unusual friend from the shelter and the teenage sister of his first murdered girlfriend, Will runs up against, the FBI and his brother’s childhood friends who have become murderous criminals themselves. Convoluted twists and turns in the plot along with a surprise ending make for an enjoyable fast paced read.

YA/ Science Fiction/
Farmer, Nancy
The House of the Scorpion
Atheneum 0689852223

Matteo leads a sheltered life hidden away in a tiny house out in the fields and left alone every day when Celia goes to work. With the doors bolted and the windows nailed shut he is supposed to hide if anyone comes around but one day two older kids see him and bring back Maria who is about his age. When they threaten to leave her alone outside he panic, fearful that the chupacabras and other dangers on the outside will get her. He breaks the window and jumps through not aware that his feet will be cut to shreds. The children take him back to the mansion of El Patron where it is discovered that he is a clone and not even human. He is El Patron’s clone and has inherited many of the gifts that allowed El Patron to carve a country between Azatlan (Mexico) and the US that uses mindless drones to grow, harvest, and process the fields of poppies that yield the drugs that make him wealthy. Matteo, beloved of El Patron finally comes to the realization that all he really is is a collection of spare parts and with the aid of Celia and Tam Lin, his body guard escapes to Azatlan where he is enslaved with other orphans. One of my top three favorites of the year so far because of the superb world building, thrilling plot, and well drawn characters.