Me on My Lady Jane

Title: My Lady Jane
Authors: Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton & Jodi Meadows
Release Date: June 7, 2016
Publisher: HarperTeen (HarperCollins imprint)

Lady Jane Grey, sixteen, is about to be married to a total stranger—and caught up in an insidious plot to rob her cousin, King Edward, of his throne. But that's the least of Jane's problems. She's about to become Queen of England. Like that could go wrong.

My Lady Jane is inventive, complicated, and hilarious. A tense and deadly period of time in England's history has been turned on its head, filled with shapeshifters, treacherous plots, and a surprising equine-related marriage.

It's rather difficult for me to describe this book, to put my thoughts and feelings about it in order. Yes, these people did exist. Yes, Edward died and Jane was made Queen of England for nine days before minds were changed and Jane was locked away while Mary, and later on Elizabeth, served as queen. That's really as far as historical accuracy goes. What follows, what makes up the bulk of this book, are wild and impossible imaginings told by modern-day narrators (considering the occasional usage of we, you, and Jimi Hendrix).

Because of the twisting and the altering of history, the reader sees different version of these characters. Here we see Jane, bookish and stubborn, smart and compassionate. Looking for someone who actually cares about her and not themselves or their social status. We see G, moping and annoyed at his current situation. Unsure what he wants out of life beyond not turning into his father. And we see Edward, wanting to live his life before wasting away. Wanting the chance to live, to experience the world, before its ripped from his hands by duty or death. Or both.  It's like we're given better versions of them, versions that wouldn't have existed back in the 16th century. Like they're historical version of modern teens.

I found this book funny, intriguing, and I kept reading in order to see how things played out after historical accuracy was mostly cast aside. Knowing the authors were drawing from actual events that would change the course of England's future, I wanted to know how they would change things. How they would bring in fantasy elements. How they would work in the looming religious war that was about to take hold of England for decades. If Lady Jane would still lose her head as she does in the history books. A little slow in some spots, brought on by a fair amount of internal pondering by the main characters, but still fun to read. I'd recommend this to readers who don't mind a little poking fun and rearranging of history coupled with stubborn characters and complicated magic.

(I downloaded an e-galley of this title to review from HarperCollins through Edelweiss.)

Blog Tour: A Gathering of Shadows

Blog tour time! All of my thanks go to Raincoast Books for the ARC and the chance to take part in the blog tour and to Victoria for answering my question about everyone's favourite reckless and inquisitive pirate, Delilah Bard. ;)

Victoria! I was tempted to just ask how you book, but that would be cheating (but seriously, how do you book? Kell! Lila! Rhy! MAGIC! SAD THINGS! DANGEROUS THINGS! *shaking my fists at the sky with book angst*). But my question is about Lila. Delilah Bard is a thief, a pirate, a traveler. She's headstrong and stubborn, quick with a blade and quicker with her tongue. She wants, and wants, and wants. There's her line to Kell in A Darker Shade of Magic, that she wasn't going to die until she'd seen everything. There's her line to Alucard near the beginning of A Gathering of Shadows, that she wants to know everything (which I took to mean both magic-everything and everything-everything). Where did this desperation of hers come from, this craving? Was it always there when she first appeared? Is it infuriating to have someone like Lila in your head?

Ah, Lila. My mad child. Her desperation comes from the fact that she sees surviving and living as very different, and up until the moment she meets Kell, she's been trapped doing the former. For her, it's as vicious a cycle as stealing, in that few people steal enough to be able to stop stealing. They just steal enough to keep themselves stealing. Poverty cast her into a position where no matter what she does, she can't get out. When Kell and Lila's paths collide, she is desperate to escape this cycle, and to take control of her own life. That often manifests as recklessness, but for Lila, recklessness is one of the only ways for her to truly exert that control, to say, it is my life. And she's been like that since the moment I started writing her. I often call Lila an aspirational character for me, which perplexes some people, but as an overthinker (a Kell), I envy her willingness to take great risks for the chance at freedom. I have all of her stubbornness, and only half her brawn.

Oh, Lila. How wonderfully dangerous you are. But you're going to give Kell an ulcer one day. It'll join the one Rhy's given him. ;)

Title: A Gathering of Shadows
Author: V.E. Schwab
Release Date: February 23, 2016
Publisher: Tor

Four months have passed since the shadow stone fell into Kell's possession. Four months since his path crossed with Delilah Bard. Four months since Rhy was wounded and the Dane twins fell, and the stone was cast with Holland's dying body through the rift, and into Black London. In many ways, things have almost returned to normal, though Rhy is more sober, and Kell is now plagued by his guilt. Restless, and having given up smuggling, Kell is visited by dreams of ominous magical events, waking only to think of Lila, who disappeared from the docks like she always meant to do. As Red London finalizes preparations for the Element Games—an extravagant international competition of magic, meant to entertain and keep healthy the ties between neighboring countries—a certain pirate ship draws closer, carrying old friends back into port. But while Red London is caught up in the pageantry and thrills of the Games, another London is coming back to life, and those who were thought to be forever gone have returned. After all, a shadow that was gone in the night reappears in the morning, and so it seems Black London has risen again—meaning that another London must fall.

A Gathering of Shadows is rich with magic, with mystery and danger, with compelling characters and impossible plots. The shadows haven't yet disappeared, not all of them. Something is coming, and it's coming to Red London.

Kell. Lila. Rhy. As before, each character is different, intriguing, hugely flawed, and looking to find something that's missing in their lives. Kell is filled with guilt, with self-hatred. Everything feels different, ever since he brought Rhy back from the dead, ever since he met Lila. Ever since Black London. In some ways he's desperate to run, desperate to leave the shackles of the court. To escape the nightmares that haunt him. He drifts through life, not sure what to do, where to go. How to go back to the Kell he was before. But he can't. Lila returns after months away at sea, months as a thief to a captain, as a student to a teacher. As a reckless, possibly amoral young woman who sees what she wants and will kill to get it. She's been poor, been nobody. Now she's somebody. She's one of a kind. And she can run as much as she can. But the past always returns, either running towards you or you running towards it. Rhy puts on the act of exciting, fun-loving prince even more so now, even while somehow spending less time out gallivanting. Things are different. He died. Now he and Kell share a life, feel what the other feels. But that's not living.

As always, the story spins and turns, races through streets and across the ocean. I'm in awe of how this alternate London feels so realistic, feels full of real people with their own plots, tricks, and motives. How their emotions, their excitement and their fear, feels so real. Everyone is seen in snippits and pieces. Back and forth, back and forth. It adds immediacy to the story, adds a desperation to my reading. Just enough is given to entertain,  to intrigue, to entice, and then the scene moves away, returns to another, and I was left grasping at threads, wondering both what would happen next and what I might be missing.

This feels like a book of consequence, of guilt and fear and sorrow, as opposed to the first book when it was about discovery, revelations, and in the end, survival and escape. Here, the end results of past events are circling, coming back around, returning to show how inescapable they are. My eyes were glued to the page as I read this, unable to put it down for long because I just had to know what would happen. For me, as the story progressed, the tension built and built until the end when it burst and I was left reeling, wondering how it could end like that. Wondering how long I would have to wait to find out what happens next. A definite must-read for fantasy and magic fans, for those looking for extremely complicated and flawed characters.

(I received an advance copy of this title to review from Raincoast Books.)

Me on Waiting on Wednesday (201)

Waiting on Wednesday is a bunch of weekly fun hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. :)

Title: Magonia
Author: Maria Dahvana Headley
Release Date: April 28, 2015
Publisher: HarperCollins

From Goodreads:

Neil Gaiman's Stardust meets John Green's The Fault in Our Stars in this groundbreaking fantasy about a girl caught between two worlds…two races…and two destinies.

Aza Ray is drowning in thin air. 

Since she was a baby, Aza has suffered from a mysterious lung disease that makes it ever harder for her to breathe, to speak—to live. 

So when Aza catches a glimpse of a ship in the sky, her family chalks it up to a cruel side effect of her medication. But Aza doesn't think this is a hallucination. She can hear someone on the ship calling her name.

Only her best friend, Jason, listens. Jason, who's always been there. Jason, for whom she might have more-than-friendly feelings. But before Aza can consider that thrilling idea, something goes terribly wrong. Aza is lost to our world—and found, by another. Magonia. 

Above the clouds, in a land of trading ships, Aza is not the weak and dying thing she was. In Magonia, she can breathe for the first time. Better, she has immense power—and as she navigates her new life, she discovers that war is coming. Magonia and Earth are on the cusp of a reckoning. And in Aza's hands lies the fate of the whole of humanity—including the boy who loves her. Where do her loyalties lie? 

Maria Dahvana Headley's soaring YA debut is a fiercely intelligent, multilayered fantasy rich with symbolism and steeped in allegory. Her John Green–meets–Neil Gaiman approach to character development and world building will draw readers of all genres, who will come for the high-concept journey through the sky and stay for the authentic, confused, questioning teen voices. Jason and Aza's fight to find each other somewhere between sky and earth is the perfect anchor for Headley's gorgeous, wildly vivid descriptions of life in Magonia.

This sounds really interesting, sort of like The Girl with Borrowed Wings, so I'm really looking forward to reading this next year. :)

Me on The Spiritglass Charade

Title: The Spiritglass Charade
Author: Colleen Gleason
Release Date: October 7, 2014
Publisher: Chronicle Books

After the Affair of the Clockwork Scarab, Evaline Stoker and Mina Holmes are eager to help Princess Alix with a new case. Seventeen-year-old Willa Aston is obsessed with spiritual mediums, convinced she is speaking with her mother from beyond the grave. What seems like a case of spiritualist fraud quickly devolves into something far more menacing: someone is trying to make Willa "appear lunatic," using an innocent-looking spiritglass to control her. The list of clues piles up: an unexpected murder, a gang of pickpockets, and the return of vampires to London. But are these events connected? As Uncle Sherlock would say, "there are no coincidences." It will take all of Mina's wit and Evaline's muscle to keep London's sinister underground at bay.

The Spiritglass Charade is a return to an intriguing late 19th century London, a city technologically advanced in some ways and stunted in others. It's a return to a city filled with secrets, with dark corners and even darker figures. It's a return to the most intelligent Mina Holmes and the most intrepid Evaline Stoker, a return to their ongoing adventures and discoveries.

What's refreshing is that Mina and Evaline haven't changed a single bit. They're still the same young women from the previous book. One is all-knowing, all-presuming, all-problem solving, and the other is strong and fierce, ready to take up arms and fight back against evil. A mismatched couple, to be sure, but they're slowly coming to understand each other. Both their strengths and their weaknesses are highlighted throughout this mystery involving ghosts, spiritualists, and vampires.

I am wholly intrigued by the setting and the world-building. The mixture of the late Victorian era time period, the inclusion of steam and clockwork-based technology, the lack of electricity, the hints of time travel, the vampires. But the combination of Holmes, a fictional character, and Stoker, a real life writer/author make it hard to suspend my disbelief. There's a tiny scrap of it remaining, and it's because of this. This story is interesting, the characters are complicated, but this one small part still bothers me, and it probably will throughout the series.

But I'm still curious, still interested, still entranced by the mysteries that weave themselves around Mina and Evaline. More questions are asked this time around with only a few answered, and I'm still left wondering about the origins and motives of almost every other character. Mainly Pix. Who is he? If you enjoyed the previous book, if you're interested in steampunk mysteries with clever and flawed leading ladies, you'l probably enjoy this.

(I received an advance copy of this title to review from Raincoast Books.)

Me on Plus One

Title: Plus One
Author: Elizabeth Fama
Release Date: April 8, 2014
Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux (Macmillan imprint)

Sol Le Coeur is a Smudge—a night dweller in an America rigidly divided between people who wake, live, and work during the hours of darkness and those known as Rays who live and work during daylight. Impulsive, passionate, and brave, Sol deliberately injures herself in order to gain admission to a hospital, where she plans to kidnap her newborn niece—a Ray—in order to bring the baby to visit her dying grandfather. By violating the day-night curfew, Sol is committing a serious crime, and when the kidnap attempt goes awry it starts a chain of events that will put Sol in mortal danger, uncover a government conspiracy to manipulate the Smudge population, and throw her together with D'Arcy Benoît, the Ray medical apprentice who first treats her, then helps her outrun the authorities—and with whom she is fated to fall impossibly and irrevocably in love.

Plus One is enchanting, dangerous, and thrilling. It's a high-stakes journey through days and nights, and shocking secrets about her world are revealed, leading Sol places she never thought she'd go.

I love Sol. She's rough and gritty, mouthy and rude. She's a fighter. She's smart but she's an idiot. She's angry with the world for good reasons, for actual reasons beyond 'just because she's a teenager and teenagers hate everything.' Her parents are dead, her brother doesn't contact her, and her grandfather is wasting away before her eyes. She can't do anything. Well, anything legal. Anything that won't get her in trouble. So she decides to do something reckless: kidnap her newborn niece so her grandfather can meet her before he dies. Everything Sol does in this book takes guts, takes courage, and takes the cake. She's an impossible to handle outrageous hero.

As always, I was intrigued by the world-building, by the twist on a moment in history that transformed the real world to Sol's world. It sounds like an interesting experiment, having one part of society work only in the daytime and the other part work only at night. What Sol's world is is certainly speculation on the author's part of what the world could've turned into had it been mandated all over the world. It would've changed so much, but change often has consequences. Sol's world isn't perfect, there are those who hate the divide and choose to rebel against the government. Also the science aspect, I imagine there was some research done by the author on Vitamin D, melatonin, and how the human body could survive without the sun.

This is one of those books that I was surprised to devour in a matter of hours. I needed to know what happened next more than anything. I think what kept me reading was Sol. She was crude and rude and just wanted to do this one thing for her grandfather. She's rough but she has such a big heart. She was the best hero this book could've asked for. If you're looking for something exciting, thrilling, and complicated with a bold main character, this is it.

(I received an advance copy of this title to review from Raincoast Books.)

Me on 3:59

Title: 3:59
Author: Gretchen McNeil
Release Date: September 17, 2013
Publisher: Balzer & Bray (HarperCollins imprint)

Josie Byrne's life is spiraling out of control. Her parents are divorcing, her boyfriend Nick has grown distant, and her physics teacher has it in for her. When she's betrayed by the two people she trusts most, Josie thinks things can't get worse. Until she starts having dreams about a girl named Jo. Every night at the same time: 3:59 a.m. Jo's life is everything Josie wants: she's popular, her parents are happily married, and Nick adores her. It all seems real, but they're just dreams, right? Josie thinks so, until she wakes one night to a shadowy image of herself in the bedroom mirror. Josie and Jo realize that they are doppelgängers living in parallel universes that overlap every twelve hours at exactly 3:59. Fascinated by Jo's perfect world, Josie jumps at the chance to jump through the portal and switch places for a day. But Jo’s world is far from perfect. Not only is Nick not Jo's boyfriend, he hates her. Jo's mom is missing, possibly insane. And at night, shadowy creatures feed on human flesh. By the end of the day, Josie is desperate to return to her own life. But there’s a problem: Jo has sealed the portal, trapping Josie in this dangerous world. Can she figure out a way home before it’s too late?

3:59 is dark and dangerous, a complicated and at times intense exploration of the possibility of alternate realities and the different versions of ourselves that could be on the other side. Josie is lured to this other world at the prospect of living a life that both is and isn't her own, but just because it's different doesn't it make it better, and she'll soon discover that the grass isn't necessarily greener, or safer, on the other side.

Considering the way Josie's life is taking a nose dive towards embarrassing and utterly heartbreaking, it's no surprise that she jumps at a chance to try out a different life. A life that's already hers, in a certain way. Her mirror is a portal to a different world, an alternate reality where there's another version of herself that also relishes the chance to get away. A life where her boyfriend hasn't drifted away from her? A life where she's popular? Of course she's interested. But just because it's different doesn't mean it's better, and soon Josie's moving as quickly as she can to figure out which side of the mirror she wants to be on.

What rooted this book more on the scientific side of things as opposed to the fantastical side of things, like Emily Hainsworth's Through to You, is that McNeil includes scientific reasoning as to why the portal exists. In this fictional world, through bizarre circumstance and complicated quantum mechanics, it's possible to connect parallel realities. It makes it sound slightly more human, more strangely possible, and so much more dangerous. It's just as likely that the attempts to join the worlds would've resulted in massive explosions. But not here.

This book makes you think about the life your living and the life you think you could be living. Maybe things would be different if you'd said yes instead of no to someone, if you'd turned right instead of left when driving. Maybe, in that version of your life, things would be better, easier, more advantageous for you. But it's just as possible that, with all of its faults, the life your living is the best one out of a million possibilities. What will it take Josie to realize that? And once she does, what will it take her to find her way back home?

I found this to be an intriguing sort of thriller, mixing complex, potentially impossible science and teen angst and wants with danger, deception, and a little horror here and there. Fans of the author's previous books will surely enjoy this new one.

(I received an advance copy of this title to review from HarperCollins Canada.)

Me on Waiting on Wednesday (122)

Waiting on Wednesday is a bunch of weekly fun hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. :)

Title: Tandem
Author: Anna Jarzab
Release Date: October 8, 2013
Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers (Random House imprint)

From Goodreads:

Everything repeats.
You. Your best friend. Every person you know.
Many worlds. Many lives--infinite possibilities.
Welcome to the multiverse.

Sixteen-year-old Sasha Lawson has only ever known one small, ordinary life. When she was young, she loved her grandfather's stories of parallel worlds inhabited by girls who looked like her but led totally different lives. Sasha never believed such worlds were real--until now, when she finds herself thrust into one against her will.

To prevent imminent war, Sasha must slip into the life of an alternate version of herself, a princess who has vanished on the eve of her arranged marriage. If Sasha succeeds in fooling everyone, she will be returned home; if she fails, she'll be trapped in another girl's life forever. As time runs out, Sasha finds herself torn between two worlds, two lives, and two young men vying for her love--one who knows her secret, and one who thinks she's someone she's not.

The first book in the Many-Worlds Trilogy, Tandem is a riveting saga of love and betrayal set in parallel universes in which nothing--and no one--is what it seems.

Perhaps this is the new trend, parallel dimensions and alternate realities. The cover confuses me, I imagine the bird will make sense at some point. I'm also curious as to how the multiple dimensions idea will stretch across three books (since it says 'trilogy' right there on the cover).

Me on Waiting on Wednesday (118)

Waiting on Wednesday is a bunch of weekly fun hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. :)

Title: 3:59
Author: Gretchen McNeil
Release Date: September 17, 2013
Publisher: Balzer + Bray (HarperCollins imprint)

From Goodreads:

Josie Byrne's life is spiraling out of control. Her parents are divorcing, her boyfriend Nick has grown distant, and her physics teacher has it in for her. When she's betrayed by the two people she trusts most, Josie thinks things can't get worse.

Until she starts having dreams about a girl named Jo. Every night at the same time—3:59 a.m.

Jo's life is everything Josie wants: she's popular, her parents are happily married, and Nick adores her. It all seems real, but they're just dreams, right? Josie thinks so, until she wakes one night to a shadowy image of herself in the bedroom mirror – Jo.

Josie and Jo realize that they are doppelgängers living in parallel universes that overlap every twelve hours at exactly 3:59. Fascinated by Jo's perfect world, Josie jumps at the chance to jump through the portal and switch places for a day.

But Jo’s world is far from perfect. Not only is Nick not Jo's boyfriend, he hates her. Jo's mom is missing, possibly insane. And at night, shadowy creatures feed on human flesh.

By the end of the day, Josie is desperate to return to her own life. But there’s a problem: Jo has sealed the portal, trapping Josie in this dangerous world. Can she figure out a way home before it’s too late?

From master of suspense Gretchen McNeil comes a riveting and deliciously eerie story about the lives we wish we had – and how they just might kill you.

This sounds all kinds of creepy and dangerous and filled with possible mix-ups. The alternate reality trend is slowly creeping its way forward after Through to You, very slowly, and I'm interested in more books like it. I'm rather jealous of those going to BEA this summer, I heard Gretchen will be there signing ARCs. :)

Me on Through to You

Title: Through to You
Author: Emily Hainsworth
Release Date: October 1, 2012
Publisher: Balzer + Bray (HarperCollins imprint)

Cam has been grief-stricken since his girlfriend Viv died. She was the last good thing in his life, helping him after an injury, after his family broke apart, after the pain meds wore off. Now, he'd give anything for one more glimpse of her. But when he makes a visit to the site of her accident, he sees some kind of apparition. And it isn't Viv. Her name is Nina, and she's not a ghost. She's from a parallel world, one where Viv is still alive. All of Cam's focus is now on getting his girlfriend back, but things are different in this other world. Viv and Cam both made some different decisions, things between them have changed in different ways, and this Viv isn't like the one he lost. Nina is keeping some dangerous secrets, too, and the window between the worlds is getting smaller. As Cam comes to terms with who this Viv has become and the part Nina played, he'll have to make a choice, stay with Viv or let her go, before the window closes once and for all.

Through to You is mysterious, a darker sort of fantasy, a fantastical sort of science fiction, and a powerful book about grief and emotions. Cam is drowning in grief, so close to sinking away from everyone else in his life until there's a glimpse of hope in the distance, and the overwhelming desire to see Viv alive and breathing again takes control. But nothing is perfect, nothing is simple, and sometimes the grass isn't greener on the other side. We've all had moments where we did one thing, wished we did the other and regretted it, but if you were given the chance to live in a world where the other choice had been made, would you take it, knowing that other things would be different, too?

The lack of connection with the world, the desire to go back to how things were, the loss of control. Cam is depressed, so much so, after his girlfriend died in a car accident. It's so interesting, not to mention refreshing, to see grief from a male character's point of view. It's not just girls that break down, that want nothing more than to curl up into a ball and give up when someone close to them dies. Everyone experiences loss at some point in their lifetime, and it's both boys and girls that can be overwhelmed by that loss.

There's been a recent surge of science fiction elements in YA novels, not hard science fiction like space travel or extremely advanced technology, but more of the quantum physics side of science fiction like time travel and alternate realities. And it works with the book's dark and moody teenager mood. Cam's skirting the edge of giving up, then Nina appears from her reality and everything changes.

There are so many possibilities when writing about alternate dimensions where once choice changes everything. One world where Cam is alive. One world where Viv is alive. But it's the other differences that matter. One divergence in the past will change the future, and what Cam thinks is one difference in the other reality is really a lot of differences, ones that will force him to make a tough decision, to follow his broken and grieving heart or to let the past be the past and move on.

I figured that, going into the book, there would be one secret that, once revealed, would bring everything crashing down on Cam, and the author did a good job of building up the tension until that moments. It's a very visual book, and a very edge-of-your-seat kind of book, not in terms of action but tension and emotional strain. I kept guessing at what secrets Viv and Nina were hiding, what Cam would discover every time he explored the other world, and what he would decide to do every time he was forced to make a choice.

(I received an advance copy to review from HarperCollins Canada.)