Blog Tour: Furyborn

Hi all! Welcome to one of today's stops on the Furyborn blog tour, set up by the wonderful Raincoast Books.

I hope you're excited to read this when it comes out next week. It's familiar in the way epic fantasy can be, magic and kings and queens and secrets, but it feels wholly different because of the characters and the events that take place. The different points of view and the circumstances that connect them. To celebrate the book, here's a review of the book and a quick little Q&A with Claire Legrand.

Me on Girl Power Graphic Novels

Hi there! Welcome to one of today's stops in First Second's blog tour all about girl power graphic novels. These are all books that feature different kinds of girls, strong girls and scared girls and powerful girls and intelligent girls and clueless girls, as the main character. Seeing different kinds of heroes, heroines, and other main characters is so important for readers of kids books, no matter their gender. There's no one way to be, everyone is different, and everyone is amazing.

And so, here's a look at some very different young girls that can be found leading the way and falling into trouble in some recent graphic novels. :)

First is Claudette in Giants Beware!, Dragons Beware!, and Monsters Beware! by Jorge Aguirre & Rafael Rosado. Claudette is brash, rough and tumble. She's uncouth, head-strong, and bold. All she thinks about, dreams about, is fighting giants and monsters. All she thinks about is defeating evil and being a hero. Saving those in peril. And, as everyone around her constantly points out, she has no sense of propriety or delicacy. She speaks her mind and rushes too far and too fast into situations. She doesn't listen to sense. She's reckless. Claudette's more of an act first and ask questions later kind of girl, which can be very dangerous. But Claudette is staunchly loyal, to her blacksmith father and her aspiring chef brother Gaston, to her princess in training friend Marie, and to her dog Valiant. When the chips are down, Claudette will rush in with her sword, ready to bash any and all monsters. The entire series is a wonderful mixture of silliness, curious magic, complicated characters, and hard decisions.

Next is Isabel in The City on the Other Side by Mairghred Scott & Robin Robinson. Isabel is a quiet, lonely girl looking for a place of her own. Her life is far from exciting or even interesting, kept safe from dirt smudges and any hint of fun from her posh society mother and her distant artist father. She wonders if they truly love her, care about her, because they seem far more interested in their own lives than spend time with their daughter. But then, on a trip to Carmel to visit her father, Isabel ends up falling through to the fairy world and right into the middle of a war. A war that could impact her world as well. Drawn to a magical necklace, sure that no one back home will miss her, Isabel sets out on an epic quest. She comes into her own on this journey. She takes risks, falls into danger multiple times, and refuses to stop until everyone is saved. This is a girl who's finally found something she can do, finally found something that could be hers, if only for a little while. A girl who's, hopefully, found somewhere to be.

Then there's Avani in Star Scouts and The League of Lasers by Mike Lawrence. Avani is new to town, lonely because she doesn't have any friends and annoyed because her father signed her up for Flower Scouts where all the other girls do is talk about boys and makeup. She's bored, waiting for something she's interested in. And then she's mistakenly abducted by an alien. And so Avani joins Mabel and her Star Scout troop, made up of other aliens, and begins to lead a secret life of robotics and teleportation and weird space camp. Avani's like any kid who moves to a new town, she's looking for something familiar in a new place, and she sort of finds it with Mabel. She's met other kids who like doing interesting (to her) activities. But there's something that comes across in the first book, and that's that Avani can be rather bossy. After she finds the Star Scouts, when they compete against other groups at camp, she needs help from the others. But she's pushy in that she only wants the help that will make sure she wins. Both books are good looks at how friendship isn't easy, how everyone is different and that's okay, how strong personalities will butt heads over and over again. How it's okay to be wrong, about something or someone. How it's a lot more fun when you try to get along instead of argue all the time. Avani isn't perfect, but she's learning how to be a good friend.

If you're a middle grade reader, if you're a kid looking for new comics to read, maybe check out these, as well as Gigi D.G.'s Cucumber Quest and Scarlett Hart: Monster Hunter by Marcus Sedgwick & Thomas Taylor. There's no one way for a young girl to be a young girl. You can want to fight monsters, you can want to be a princess, you can be quiet and studious, you can be loud and active. You can be smart, athletic, quiet, lonely, short, tall, thin, fat. You can have caring parents, you can be an orphan, you can have a single parent trying their best. You can be anything you want. Just be you.

Thanks so much to Gina at First Second Books for sending me physical copies and e-galleys of all of the above mentioned books (especially when we thought they were lost in the mail, they weren't!). You can definitely check out First Second on Twitter or Tumblr, or at your local library or bookstore. Happy reading!

Blog tour: Chainbreaker

Hi there! Welcome to a very special Monday post. Today is the start of the blog tour for Tara Sim's Chainbreaker, the continuing story of a clock mechanic and the clock spirit he's fallen for.

The first book, Timekeeper, is all parts mystery and fantasy and mythology and romance, and Chainbreaker continues along those same lines, only this time the mystery and the danger reach far beyond the small town of Enfield.

Blog Tour: The Hazel Wood

Hi there! Welcome to one of today's stops for the blog tour of Melissa Albert's The Hazel Wood!

This is like no other fairy tale retelling you've read before. It's haunting and creepy. In no way did I expect that it would go the places it went, reveal the characters it did. As part of the blog tour, here's my review of The Hazel Wood, followed by a question answers by the author!

Blog Tour: Renegades

Hi there! Welcome to one of today's stops on the blog tour for Marissa Meyer's newest book, Renegades!

It's all about superheroes, about good and evil and the spaces in between. About what pushes us to help or to hinder. About what makes a hero, what makes a villain. To celebrate Renegades, enjoy this post that has both my review and a question answered by the wonderful Marissa Meyer herself. :)

Blog Tour: Timekeeper

Hello there! Welcome to today's tour stop for the paperback release of Tara Sim's wonderful Timekeeper!

Title: Timekeeper
Author: Tara Sim
Release Date: October 31, 2017 (paperback copy)
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Canadian distributor: Thomas Allen & Son

Two o'clock was missing.

In an alternate Victorian world controlled by clock towers, a damaged clock can fracture time—and a destroyed one can stop it completely.

It's a truth that seventeen-year-old clock mechanic Danny Hart knows all too well; his father has been trapped in a Stopped town east of London for three years. Though Danny is a prodigy who can repair not only clockwork, but the very fabric of time, his fixation with staging a rescue is quickly becoming a concern to his superiors.

And so they assign him to Enfield, a town where the tower seems to be forever plagued with problems. Danny's new apprentice both annoys and intrigues him, and though the boy is eager to work, he maintains a secretive distance. Danny soon discovers why: he is the tower's clock spirit, a mythical being that oversees Enfield's time. Though the boys are drawn together by their loneliness, Danny knows falling in love with a clock spirit is forbidden, and means risking everything he's fought to achieve.

But when a series of bombings at nearby towers threaten to Stop more cities, Danny must race to prevent Enfield from becoming the next target or he'll not only lose his father, but the boy he loves, forever.

The stunning first novel in a new trilogy by debut author Tara Sim, Timekeeper is perfect for fans of Cassandra Clare and Victoria Schwab.

Get Your Copy Today! Indigo - Amazon.ca - Amazon.com

As this is a tour for Timekeeper's paperback release, it's a good chance to remember some of the nice things I said last year when the hardcover came out. For those interested, the full review can be found here.

Timekeeper is intriguing, enthralling, mysterious, and more than a little somber. It's a story about lonely souls and missing hours, of hope and love and selfishness... I was intrigued by the world-building here, by the need for advancement in clock mechanisms because of the changes to time. Because of time being something slightly tangible, something that can be reined in and controlled... I also liked how the author altered other parts of history, like this world's views of homosexuality. Danny isn't ridiculed or hated, but it's the default of most he comes across that, when they ask if he's seeing anyone, they assume he'd date a girl... As I read this I was struck by a sweet, melancholy tone that carried me along, rising and falling as Danny worked on the clock tower in Enfield and uncovered more and more behind the bombings and the Stopped towns. At times I chuckled and at times I wanted to cry. There were some interesting pokes and prods at a deeper mystery going on, one Danny brushes up against near the end, so I'm curious as to where the second book will go and what will be revealed.

To celebrate Timekeeper's paperback release, here's an excerpt from the eagerly anticipated (and not just by me!) sequel, Chainbreaker!

Daphne remained silent. She was painfully aware of standing between these two men—two sides of a war, two sides of her birth. There was a strangeness to her skin just then, as if it weren’t actually hers. She wanted to scratch at it, see if it would flake off and reveal something truer. Something in-between, something like a mark, that would determine what to say, what to think, what she was.

Also to celebrate, Thomas Allen & Son is holding a giveaway, the prize being a paperback copy of Timekeeper! Quick note that this giveaway is Canada only and ends on October 31. The full rules can be found in the widget.

Click here to enter!

Tara Sim can typically be found wandering the wilds of the Bay Area in California. When she’s not
chasing cats or lurking in bookstores, she writes books about magic, clocks, and explosives. Timekeeper is her debut novel. Follow her on Twitter at @EachStarAWorld, and check out her website for fun Timekeeper extras!

Tara's website - Twitter - Facebook - Instagram - Goodreads

Thanks so so much to Thomas Allen & Son for arranging the blog tour and the giveaway. And thank you so much to Tara Sim for the sweetness that is Danny and Colton and Timekeeper. :)

Blog Tour: The Winnowing

Hi all! It's time for a blog tour post! Vikki VanSickle is a Toronto resident, a children's and middle grade book author, a publicist with Penguin Random House Canada, and a lover of children's lit. To celebrate the recent release of hew new book The Winnowing, a curious coming of age mixed with intrigue and strange dreams, Vikki's here to talk about combining genres and how hard it can be to summarize a book like hers. :)

THE TROUBLE WITH GENRE

Despite having a number of books under my belt and spent years working in the children's book industry, when it comes to my own books I always struggle with the elevator pitch. The stakes seem impossibly high—you have one minute (or 144 characters) to hook someone on this book you've spent all this time and energy on—GO!

Blog Tour: The Inexplicable Logic of My Life

It's a blog tour! Today is all about Benjamin Alire Sáenz's new book The Inexplicable Logic of My Life, which comes out tomorrow. As part of the tour, here's an excerpt!

Words only existed in theory. And then one ordinary day you ran into a word that only existed in theory and met it face to face. And then that word became someone you knew.
Funeral.
I met that word when I was thirteen.
That was the day my Popo died. I was a pallbearer. Up until then, I hadn’t even known what a pallbearer was. You see, there’s a lot of other words you meet when you run into the word funeral.
You meet all Funeral’s friends: Pallbearer, Casket, Undertaker, Cemetery, Headstone.
It felt so strange to carry my grandfather’s casket to his grave.
I was unfamiliar with the rituals and prayers for the dead.
I was unfamiliar with how final death was.
Popo would not be coming back. I would never hear his voice again. I would never see his face again.
The cemetery where he was buried still had an old-world approach to funerals. After the priest had commended my grandfather to paradise, the funeral director stuck a shovel in the mound of dirt and held it out. Everybody knew exactly what to do. A silent and somber line formed, each person waiting for their turn to grab a fistful of dirt and pour it over the casket.
Maybe it was a Mexican thing. I didn’t really know.
I remember my Uncle Mickey gently taking the shovel out of the funeral director’s hands.
“He was my father. ”
And I remember one other thing about my Popo’s funeral. A man standing outside smoking a cigarette was talking to another man, and he said: The world doesn’t give a damn about people like us. We work all our lives and then we die. We don’t matter. He was really angry. Juan was a good man. Juan, that was my Popo. I can still hear his anger. I didn’t understand what he was trying to say.
I asked my father, “Who are people like us? And why did he say, We don’t matter?”
My dad said, “Everybody matters.”
“He said Popo was a good man.”
“Popo was a very good man. A very good and flawed man.”
“And, people like us? Did he mean Mexicans, Dad?”
“I think he meant poor people, Salvie.”
I wanted to believe him. But even though I didn’t understand anything at thirteen, I already knew that there were people in the world who hated Mexicans—even Mexicans who weren’t poor. I didn’t need my father to tell me that. And I also knew by then that there were people in the world who hated my father. Hated him because he was gay. And to those people, well, my father didn’t matter.
He didn’t matter at all.
But he mattered to me.

Thanks so much to Raincoast Books for the ARC and the chance to take part in the tour. For my part of the tour, here's my review! :)

Title: The Inexplicable Logic of My Life
Author: Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Release Date: March 7, 2017
Publisher: Clarion Books

The first day of senior year: Everything is about to change. Until this moment, Sal has always been certain of his place with his adoptive gay father and their loving Mexican-American family. But now his history unexpectedly haunts him, and life-altering events fore him and his best friend Samantha to confront issues of faith, loss, and grief. Sal discovers that he no longer knows who he really is-but if Sal's not who he thought he was, who is he?

The Inexplicable Logic of My Life is deep and heartfelt, emotional, and honest. How do we define ourselves? Is it the people around us, the company we keep, or the choices we make? And when we feel that identity crumble around us, how do we piece it back together?

Sal is thoughtful and introspective. He knows who he is, surrounded by his loving family and his best friend. But life isn't stagnant. Things change. And when a number of losses hit Sal and those close to him, one after another, he feels like something's now missing. Like it's been broken away and he has to fill it with something else. And then he's got this letter from his mom, written before she died, and now he's even less sure of who he is.

So much of this book is about the ways we define ourselves, the things we use and take in order to create our identities. The things we like or don't like. The people we keep close, call friends or family, the places we're from, be that where we live or where we were born, or where our family was born. The choices we make. For Sal, he's always defined who he is by his family, his adopted father and his extended Mexican-American family. But this letter from his deceased mother? These spurts of anger that appear just as he punches someone in the face? Is this him, too? What makes us who we are, nature or nurture? Or is it more of a combination of the two?

The writing style is perfect for this story, for Sal's story. Sparse but meaningful. Moments of talking and moments of thought, glimpses of people, of happiness and sorrow. Life isn't easy, and it rams into Sal and Sam hard, but they're not alone in their sadness and their confusion. They don't have to have all the answers all the time. I would definitely recommend this book, to those looking for something sweet and bittersweet, something simple and complex.

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

Blog tour: Vassa in the Night

Hello! Welcome to the blog tour for Sarah Porter's Vassa in the Night! Many thanks to Raincoast Books for setting up the tour and sending an advance copy. This is definitely not your average story, not your average fairy tale retelling. Today on the tour, you'll find an excerpt of Vassa in the Night. Enjoy!

Blog tour: Labyrinth Lost

Welcome! This week is the Labyrinth Lost blog tour, and one of the stops today is me! I really enjoyed this book, it has a great mix of character and magic and danger and mythology. There isn't really another book like it, so you really want to read it. And because it's a blog tour, I got the opportunity to ask author Zoraida Córdova a question. :)

"As an older sister with a younger sister, the relationships Alex has with Lula and Rose hit home for me. That combination of affection and support mixed with jealousy and frustration. Of being angry when they're in the way but ready and willing to stand with them if they need help. Was it a struggle to write the dynamic between Alex and her sisters, or did it come easy?"

"Writing the sibling dynamic was a lot of fun. I only have a little brother, but we have a lot of cousins that are close. They are as much my siblings as my brother. It was important for me that Alex have strong family ties. It's what grounds her. It's what her magic is linked to, even if she doesn't want to realize that right away. Without her family, who is she? I think that's a question we all ask ourselves. How far do you go for your family even if they make a mistake? That's a huge theme in this book. Everything that's happened in Labyrinth Lost has an effect in the two installments that will follow. Though Alex's story ends with Labyrinth Lost, the world continues. Lula's story has to be told. Alex's choices have impacted her whole family. I'm having a great time writing book 2."

Thanks so much to Zoraida for answering my question, and thanks to Raincoast Books for the chance to take part in the blog tour. If you haven't read Labyrinth Lost yet, check it out!

Title: Labyrinth Lost
Author: Zoraida Córdova
Release Date: September 6, 2016
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Alex is a bruja, the most powerful witch in a generation...and she hates magic. At her Deathday celebration, Alex performs a spell to rid herself of her power. But it backfires. Her whole family vanishes into thin air, leaving her alone with Nova, a brujo boy she can't trust. A boy whose intentions are as dark as the strange marks on his skin. The only way to get her family back is to travel with Nova to Los Lagos, a land in-between, as dark as Limbo and as strange as Wonderland...

Labyrinth Lost is a story of magic and myth, of family, and of courage. Of being afraid of what's inside you and trusting in that power, in discovering your own strength and protecting those you care about.

Alex is smart, strong, and full of denial and fear. As prevalent as magic is in her life, as important as it is to her family, for her mother and her sisters, Alex hates it. Fears it. Wishes it wasn't it in her, that it would leave her alone. She connects it to the disappearance of her father, to the time when her family went from happy to sad and lost, from whole to broken. In her mind, her powers ruined everything. She ruined everything. If she could do without magic? Great. Perfect. Where can she sign up? But it's hard to escape fate, hard to control it. Especially when it's looking like you're the strongest bruja in years. Now comes time for Alex to face her fears, to embrace her power and use it to save her family. At least she's not alone, she's got Nova at her side, along with a close friend or potential ally or two, but Nova leaves more things unsaid than spoken aloud.

The in-between world of Los Lagos, a dangerous, fantastical realm filled with magical creatures and lost souls, is richly described by the author and richly experienced by Alex and Nova. It's a place to be wary of, to be cautious of, a place where the river is filled with lamenting souls. Where creatures are chained and forced to obey, where winged beasts take to the skies. Where evil lurks, waits, and craves power. All of the Latin American traditions and mythology were new to me, were rich in history and belief and power.

This book hooked me from the premise, from the first few chapters. Brujas and brujos. Deep, dark, powerful magic. The unwavering support and affection that comes from a large, close-knit family. Sisters at war with each other over clothes and chores. A girl afraid of the power inside her, a girl who's trained to run in order to run as far as she can from that power but to no avail. A girl tossed head-first into a dangerous land with only her wits, a map, and a deceptive boy with starry eyes to help her. A bisexual girl whose attraction to guys and girls felt real, felt honest, and not forced. The characters were bold and flawed in different ways, the world was lush with magic and death, and the connection to family and history was strong. A must-read for urban fantasy, mythology, and magic fans. The next book cannot come soon enough.

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

Blog tour: Gena/Finn

Hi all! Welcome to one of today's stops on the final day of the Gena/Finn blog tour! I'm so happy to be part of the blog tour, I love books by Hannah (they always punch you smack in the heart), and I was excited for this one with her friend Kat and reading about fandom and life and problems and how everything can intersect. Thanks so much to Raincoast Books and to Hannah and Kat for answering my question. :)

Gena/Finn certainly highlights how some internet friendships start, two people who have a shared interest in something coming together and talking about it before moving onto other things. Like Gena heading off to college and her meds and her hallucinations. Like Finn struggling to find work and figuring out her relationship with Charlie. In the beginning they barely know each other, but they still share some personal details. Do you think this is what internet friendships give us, a space to share some of the things we can't with those close to us? Is it the weird filter the Internet provides, the ability to have the sounding board qualities of a person but not be an actual person? The separation from not talking face-to-face?

KAT: Something Finn comes to realize early on in the book is that the people you meet online actually are real people. I think Charlie feels that his online friends, the members of his guild, are just faceless names, but Gena and Finn are waking up to the fact that the person in the computer is incredibly human and important. And, in fact, they find it really hard to maintain a separation. So I would say the internet can provide that filter for some people in some cases, but I don't think that's definitive of online friendships.

HANNAH: I don't think Gena ever had to wake up to that, actually. She has some of the same experiences I do--she's been in fandom for a long time, she went to a small school and thus is very good at deep conversations and very bad at small talk--so for her opening up has always been really natural.

Title: Gena/Finn
Authors: Hannah Moskowitz & Kat Helgeson
Release Date: May 17, 2016
Publisher: Chronicle Books

Gena (short for Genevieve) and Finn (short for Stephanie) have little in common. Book-smart Gena is preparing to leave her posh boarding school for college; down-to-earth Finn is a twenty-something struggling to make ends meet in the big city. Gena's romantic life is a series of reluctant one-night-stands; Finn is making a go of it with long-term boyfriend Charlie. But they share a passion for Up Below, a buddy cop TV show with a cult fan following. Gena is a darling of the fangirl scene, keeping a popular blog and writing fan fiction. Finn's online life is a secret, even from Charlie. The pair spark an unlikely online friendship that deepens quickly (so quickly it scares them both), and as their individual "real" lives begin to fall apart, they increasingly seek shelter online, and with each other.

Gena/Finn is honest and heart-wrenching, so telling about the relationships we have with others and the different things we share with different people. This reads almost like an homage to fandom, to the friendships we make with people we only know across the vast distance that is the Internet, because sometimes those friendships end up defining us. For better or for worse, or somewhere in between.

Gena is bright and excited, pushing hard to make it out of her boarding school and off to college in the fall. She's looking forward to the new start while spending her downtime writing fanfics about her current interest, the cop show Up Below. It's great expanding on scenes and imagining what might've happened or (according to some fans) what should've happened. Finn is fresh out of college and floundering a bit. Now that's off in California with her boyfriend Charlie, she's struggling to find a decent job and sound happy in the e-mails to her parents. The only thing she has that cheers her up is Up Below and the little corner she's carved out for herself in its fandom. It's like they needed each other when they first met online. They needed someone to talk to, to talk out ideas, to share personal things that they wouldn't dare tell those close to them.

So much of this book is about fandom, about being a fan and sharing thoughts and ideas with other fans. About meeting people who feel the same way and slowly sharing other things with them. It shows the ups and downs of fandom, the fanfic writers and artists, the ones who are obsessed with certain characters, the ones who go to conventions to meet the actors and cosplay. The ones who hide themselves in fandom to avoid their 'real lives.' Some people need this escape, this time away from work or school or family in order to express themselves.

There's also a lot to be said about friendship and relationships in this book. The differences between the-person and online ones, the things we hide from those we're close to and the things we freely share with near-strangers on the Internet. How do we define these relationships? Can we? Clearly we need them, clearly Finn and Gena need them. Different people do different things for us, support us in different ways. They let us share or create, yell or cry or party. As multi-faceted as we can be, so are the relationships we have.

This book definitely doesn't hide that behind fandom, behind cheery letters to family and friends behind stories and art, there are people looking for a way to escape real life. That sometimes things get too hard, get too serious, and we're so afraid to ask for help, to admit defeat, that we retreat into something that makes us happy. That sometimes it's the connections we make with people we barely know that make us the strongest or the safest we've ever been. A definite must-read for those looking for books about friendships, relationships, fandom, and how they shape our lives.

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

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.)

Blog Tour: The Winner's Kiss

Hello! Welcome to the blog tour for the final book in the Winner's Trilogy, The Winner's Kiss by Marie Rutkoski. :)

What book is your favourite literary kiss in? Night of Cake and Puppets by Laini Taylor (which might be cheating as it's a novella, but who cares?)

Who is kissing? Everyone's favourite diminutive sidekick and rabid fairy Zuzana, and Violin Boy, who's also known as Mik.

Why is it your favourite? It's a favourite because of who they are, because of the story they're a part of. While Karou is off searching, while Akiva and his siblings are hunting down doors, we have this brief interlude with Zuzana and Mik. These two completely normal human beings who are utterly enchanted by the other. These two, full to the brim with shyness and hope, with doubt and fanciful dreams of each other. These two, who just spent an evening wandering around a small part of Prague in the dark and the cold. An evening of treasure maps and riddles and Latin, of magically moving puppets and haunting violin serenades, of sinfully delicious chocolate cake. These two, who are finally talking to each other, actually exchanging words with each other after moths of watching, waiting, hoping. And after this night of magic, after peacock footprints in the snow, they kiss. And it was perfect.

Bonus question! What kind of kiss do you hope will happen in The Winner's Kiss? Hopefully one that doesn't turn me into an emotional wreck, but odds are they all will. Maybe a good concluding kiss, whether they end up together or have to separate because their roles demand more of them before they can try to actually be together. It's the ending I'm more worried about.

Thanks for stopping by today! And many thanks to Raincoast Books and Macmillan for letting me be part of the tour for The Winner's Kiss. :)

Me on The Truth Commission

Hi there! As part of the informal blog tour for The Truth Commission, Penguin Canada asked me to include two truths and a lie about me at the beginning of my review. See if you can figure out which one is the lie. The answer is at the end. ;)

1. Four days after flying while sick, my ears unpopped in a Burger King near the airport in Belfast, Ireland.
2. When I was five I broke a Pyrex pie plate against my head, resulting in a large goose egg, when my mother swung the bag it was in too close to my head.
3. I once slipped when walking down the stairs and broke my ankle, which resulted in two surgeries and a lot of metal screwed into my bones, and yet I've never set off any metal detectors.

Title: The Truth Commission
Author: Susan Juby
Release Date: April 15, 2015
Publisher: Razorbill Canada (Penguin Canada imprint)

Open secrets are the heart of gossip—the things that no one is brave or clueless enough to ask. That is, except for Normandy Pale and her friends Dusk and Neil. They are juniors at Green Pastures Academy of Art and Applied Design, and they have no fear. They are the Truth Commission. But Normandy's passion for uncovering the truth is not entirely heartfelt. The truth can be dangerous, especially when it involves her brilliant older sister, Keira, the creator of a bestselling graphic novel series, who has left college and come home under mysterious circumstances, and in complete silence. Even for a Truth Commissioner, there are some lines that cannot be crossed...

The Truth Commission is clever and revealing, baring the truth for all those to see. Whether or not that's good or bad, whether or not it works, that's the question.

Normandy is a bright and clever voice. She's not as open to the idea of revealing the truths of those around her as her friends are, not when a truth about her sister could be dangerous if revealed. She's caught between not wanting to be intrusive and tired of living in a house where so many things are left unsaid. Her family is in a carefully constructed cocoon, but the shell of it is so fragile that the slightest bump might crack it open. Unfortunately, the truth needs to come out.

The narrative non-fiction storytelling aspect of the book is intriguing and interesting. It's all anchored by Normandy's clear voice, her emotions and observations, her fears and her anger and her assumptions about the people around her. It also, in the beginning, made the story feel rather dense. It felt like there was so much to read and to remember, so much going on.

The truth is one of those hard to navigate things. One of those sometimes effortless, sometimes sticky sludgy hard-to-move-through tar pit things. Truths that don't hurt anyone and truths that impact everyone. But there's wanting to know the truth, wanting to expose the flimsy useless lies we use every single day, and there's prying in people's private business. This book did brush up against that line a time or two.

This book explores the truth in an honest way, sometimes a brutally honest way. Sometimes it sets us free, but other times it sucks. Other times we know the truth but prefer instead to ignore it, to avoid it, because it makes life easier. An interesting story, to be sure. On a personal note, there were parts I liked, like Normandy, like her humour and personality, and there were parts I didn't, like some of the side characters. But that happens to everyone, yes? I would definitely recommend this to those looking for a well-written and realistic narrator and a mystery of sorts to fall into.

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

(As to the two truths and a lie from the start of the post? The second one is the lie.)

Blog Tour - Courtney Summers

Hi there! Welcome to the blog tour for All the Rage by Courtney Summers. :) You need to read this book. I know, it's harsh, it's hard, it's sad, it reeks of disbelief and hopelessness and adults dismissing the anger and sorrow of a teen girl, but it's a book that needs to be out there for everyone to read.

There was something I couldn't escape, couldn't ignore, as I read All the Rage, and that was Romy and her nail polish. The following is a question that I posed to Courtney.

What intrigued me right from page one of All the Rage was the nail polish, was Romy's in-depth application process of it and the lipstick. In her own words, it's a form of armour. It builds her up, it makes her feel stronger. She relies on it to get through each day. But it's also rather flimsy. It takes nothing to wipe off lipstick, to pick at nail polish. Why the nail polish and lipstick? As armour, like mentioned before? As a coping mechanism? As a clear message to others that she wasn't going to take their crap, their dismissive attitude, their slurs, anymore?

Romy primarily thinks of her lipstick and nail polish as armour, but it's more than that. It's also a way she reclaims herself, little by little. She's unable to process her rape, and putting on her lipstick and nail polish helps her to compartmentalize the girl the rape happened to, until she's ready, emotionally, to come to terms with it. This is why she panics when her make-up is compromised; she's afraid it makes her trauma more visible to others. It's also a visual representation of her anger over what happened to her, as red is often a colour we associate with rage.

And finally, it's an element of control she has over her peers. By wearing bright red nail polish and lipstick, Romy is directing focus in a way she control--she is essentially telling people who they are looking at, so she can survive the way they're looking at her. It's fragile, but it's the only thing she feels she has. The lipstick and nail polish are all about emotional survival.

Romy's nail polish, her lipstick, the vivid colour. I couldn't escape it as I read All the Rage. It was always there, just Romy was, just like her rape was, just like the town's indifference and disdain was. For those who've read it, what did you think of Romy's routine, her attempt at armour? For those who haven't, what are you expecting to discover when you finally read it?

Thanks so much to Courtney for the guest post, and to Raincoast Books for the blog tour. Make sure you check out All the Rage when it comes out on April 14th! And check out the other stops on the tour! :)

Blog Tour - Angela Misri

Hi there! Welcome to today's stop for the blog tour for Angela Misri's Thrice Burned, the second in the Portia Adams Adventures trilogy. If you like mysteries and historical fiction, and clever heroines who are keen on problem-solving, then look this series up. Thanks so much to Fierce Ink Press for the blog tour and thanks so much to Angela for answering my rambling question. :)

One of the things you notice, or that I notice, when reading a mystery is how the author weaves in all the clues. They're left like breadcrumbs for the reader to snatch up and piece back together to form an entire loaf for bread. But you still have to keep an eye out for red herrings. The author can't make it too easy or else the reader is left unsatisfied. They also can't make it too hard and leave the reader frustrated. How difficult is it to write a mystery that reveals just enough as the detective investigates? Do you go in knowing how it will all end? Or can you piece it together along the way? Apologies if I'm asking you to reveal any mystery writer trade secrets. ;)

A good question! I don't know how other mystery writers construct their stories, but I start with the crime and work outwards from there. So if I decide my crime is a series of arsons (like in Thrice Burned) then I pull out from there to who would benefit from lighting fires and who would suffer. That helps me identify my victims and perpetrators. From there I come up with the evidence left behind at this particular crime - so in the case of arson, the burned remnants of the victim, perhaps hints of an accelerant, that kind of thing. Then the key part - I decide which of these pieces of evidence are obvious (these are found by the police and revealed to the reader), and which are only discovered by my detective. Only then do I wrap my story around the mystery.

I made a video about my process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm93_Cjmylc

But this isn't a foolproof process. That's why you need beta readers and editors to read through your story before it goes out to the public. Often the clues seem obvious to me as the writer, but someone else reading it is able to actually tell me if I've given them enough. In my writing I find that I seem to err on the side of not making it easy enough, so I usually have to bring more clues onto the page. I don't think I've ever written a mystery where a reader comes back complaining that I’d made it too easy. Trust me, if I make it easy, I mean it to be and that wasn't the real mystery in my story. A good example is Mrs. Jones in Jewel of the Thames. That she was actually Irene Adler from the original canon was not a mystery I was trying to keep from my readers, I wanted them to figure that out as soon as they could. It was a mystery for Portia because she isn't a Sherlock Holmes aficionado - she's just an orphaned girl who has been handed the keys to 221 Baker Street. The real mysteries in Jewel were who was stealing the jewels, and why Elaine Ridley had become a recluse, and where the missing girl on the train went. Irene Adler/Jones and her big reveal is a story-arc that reverses the norm: where my reader actually knows more than my detective.

Thanks again to Angela. Go check out Jewel of the Thames and Thrice Burned! :)

Blog Tour - Megan Crewe

And welcome to the blog tour for Megan Crewe's Earth & Sky! *looks at the date* Pffft. So we're a bit early. Who cares when it comes to books? ;)

Here's the (long, apologies to Megan) question I posed to Megan: "As I read Earth & Sky, I was intrigued by the visitors/aliens. Their watching over us, their manipulation of the planet. Their control over us. It's frightening, knowing we're not in control, but it's also nothing new when you look back at Earth's history in terms of colonialism and invasions. Here, it's certainly a lot more subtle because people don't know it's happening (unlike Skylar, in certain ways). Where did this aspect of the book come from, the idea to have the visitors/aliens not be the 'we come in peace' kind? Is there a specific reason? Was it inspired by something specific, like from history?"

I find that the developing of a book is something like a chain reaction for me: Two or three elements connect in my head in a way that sparks a series of questions, one leading into the next until I have an entire story. With EARTH & SKY, the elements that created that spark were 1) a character who can sense that the world has been altered in some disturbing way but doesn't understand how or why (or whether it's really happening or just in her head), and 2) wanting to write something more intensely science fiction-y than the Fallen World trilogy.

When I started playing around with that first element, trying to figure out what would be causing the alterations my character would be noticing, I was considering going for a more magical angle. But nothing I came up with felt quite right. It occurred to me that time travel could explain them, but I didn't want to introduce some Earth-based secret time travel society, which I'd seen done a lot already and didn't really excite me. I also wasn't sure I believed that people on Earth would continue doing something that was starting to harm their own planet, since that would affect them just as much as everyone else. So who could be doing the time traveling (and manipulating)? Well, I saw someone mention the idea of humans in an alien zoo in an online discussion, and that triggered the thought that aliens could be observing and experimenting with people right here on Earth, which handily coincided with a desire I'd had for a while (see #2) to explore science fiction on a broader scope, with space ships and interplanetary travel and all that. Aliens who had no stake in our planet wouldn't care if their time traveling started having negative consequences for us. Voila--solution found!

Having the aliens not care what happened to the Earthlings whose lives they changed, just interested in the results of their experiments from a scientific perspective, also made them a much more frightening enemy and made solving the problem both more difficult and more urgent for Skylar and the alien rebels. And as I worked out their motivations (that chain reaction of questions continuing: Why would they be experimenting on Earth? What were they hoping to gain? Why haven't they stopped yet? and so on), it became clear that they would only have continued to manipulate events on Earth if they saw Earthlings as significantly lesser beings than themselves, the way we view lab animals--or, as you suggest, in past times and still sometimes today one group of people has viewed another group of people as not being not fully human. Win even points that out to Skylar: "Earthlings do it all the time, to each other. How many of your wars have been fought because one group of you decided you had the right to conquer another group, to enslave them or slaughter them?" The way my aliens think about and treat Earthlings, both in this book and as Skylar gets more extensive experience with them in the rest of the trilogy, was very much informed by the all too common invasions, genocides, and slave industries throughout our history.

Thanks so much to Megan for answering my long-winded question (why are they so long when I think them up?). Go check out Earth & Sky when it comes out on October 28th (and go check out my review)! :)

Me on Earth & Sky

Title: Earth & Sky
Author: Megan Crewe
Release Date: October 28, 2014
Publisher: Razorbill Canada (Penguin Canada imprint)

Seventeen-year-old Skylar has always been haunted by fleeting yet powerful feelings that something around her has gone wrong. Those impressions have never seemed to reflect anything real, and have only earned her stares and whispers behind her back. But after she meets a mysterious boy named Win, she learns an unsettling truth: we are not alone on Earth. In fact, visitors from beyond the stars are manipulating our planet and the essential fabric of our world; life as we know it is starting to unravel. And Skylar, and her heightened awareness, just may be the key to our salvation.

Earth & Sky is an exciting adventure with twists, turns, and a number of surprises. What if someone else, someone in outer space, was constantly watching us, had been watching us for decades? Centuries? What if they'd done more than just watch?

Skylar is a perceptive girl, but that perception has lead to a fair amount of anxiety and coping mechanisms. She relies heavily on math and numbers in order to stay calm. Numbers can't be changed. There's always a solution. And so, Skylar can trust numbers. But trust Win? Not so much, considering he just appears out of nowhere. Considering he makes what she thought she knew about the world completely wrong. But that doesn't stop her from helping him.

I liked the world-building when it came to the science fiction aspect, the aliens and their purpose. What the author's had to do is craft a whole other world. A new species with new technology. A species with a curious set of motives, all in the name of science. As well as figure out who they are, what motivates them also had to be figured out, their reasoning behind their actions. Sometimes that's hard enough to figure out with human characters, let alone aliens from outer space.

A fair amount of this book has to do with control. There's the control that Skylar exerts over her world, her faith in numbers to keep everything ordered. But there's another kind out there. What if we weren't alone? What if something, someone, was in control instead of us? What if they controlled our destiny, changing events as they saw fit? What if we didn't even know it was happening?

It's an intriguing proposal, the idea that we are not alone in the universe, the idea that we're not necessarily in control but we're trying to fix it. It raises a lot of questions, especially for Skylar. What if she could change certain events in her past? Would those be for the best? But then what would happen to Win and his mission? This is definitely an interesting book with a solid ending still left open for the rest of the trilogy.

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

Blog Tour - Catherine Egan (plus giveaway)

Hi all! Today's post is a bit different today in that it's a guest post for the blog tour for Bone, Fog, Ash & Star, the final book of Catherine Egan's The Last Days of Tian Di trilogy. :) Plus a giveaway! (Details are below.)

Catherine Egan grew up in Vancouver, Canada, and wrote her first novel at age 6. It was about a group of kids on a farm who ran races. Each chapter ended with "Cathy won the race again!" Since then, she has lived in Oxford, Tokyo, Kyoto, a volcanic Japanese island that erupted and sent her hurtling straight into the arms of her now-husband, Beijing, an oil rig in China's Bohai Bay, and now Connecticut, where she is still writing books (but Cathy doesn't win every race anymore). Her first novel, Shade & Sorceress, won a 2013 Moonbeam Children's Book Award (Gold) and was named an Ontario Library Association Best Bet for 2012 in the Young Adult Fiction category. This was followed by The Unmaking and Bone, Fog, Ash & Star. You can find more on her website, at her blog, on Facebook, and on Twitter (@bycatherineegan). :)

And so, without futher ado, here's Catherine!

This is the last in a series of blog posts on villains; you can check my blog for the full list of villain-posts. Let me know in the comments: who are your favorite fictional villains? Choose villains from books / movies / comic books / TV – just not real life! A winner will be selected by random number generator (I'll post a screenshot) and I will send you a book bundle – all three books in The Last Days of Tian Di series – chock-a-block with villains and their villainy.

An Exchange of Gifts

We don't always recognize the villain at first. He comes sauntering into the hero's world, and she isn't even a hero yet – not without a villain, not without a city to save. She's just a gifted girl who has lost everything but hangs on anyway, in determined stray-cat style. He comes whistling and peddling trinkets, "witch-white," as they call him: "His hair was white-gray like bleached wood, his eyes white-silver like tin, his skin was white as if he were a day dead." It's impossible to know, at first, if he's going to be her salvation or her undoing, as he strolls into the story with a tambourine, more vivid and stranger than anyone we've met thus far.

I've been posting all week about different types of villains. For a villain bent on doing evil, the question is often one of redemption – a glimmer of good is enough for us to allow it. Sometimes the villain feels (or pretends to feel) a deep kinship and connection with the hero and tries to win them over to his or her side, luring them towards darkness. Sometimes he wants to rule the world, become more powerful, or secure the power he has – that's common enough. He may believe his wrongdoing to be righteous, playing the hero in his own twisted version of the story. But this villain is different. This villain didn't start out evil and what he wants is not power or prestige. Evil is probably not the right word for him, even now – or maybe it is. Before, he was a loving brother and uncle, teaching his niece how to swim and do handsprings. Now, he leaves the countryside a ruin in his wake, dragging his monstrous vengeance towards the city that took his sister from him.

Vengeance is not exactly noble or heroic, but still, revenge stories are gripping and most of the time we can get behind the vengeful hero. Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride is hilarious but really quite moving as well, the comic and oft repeated line becoming oddly powerful when at last he says it to the man he’s been saving it for: "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." I remember devouring The Count of Monte Cristo as a teen, chilled and thrilled by the story of a wronged man returning years later and decimating his enemies one by one. We cheer him on, even if some part of us is appalled, even if he's not the sort of fictional hero we'd want to invite over for coffee. The vengeful hero tips into truly villainous territory only when his or her revenge grows so vast and uncontrolled that it swallows the innocent as well.

That is Linay from Erin Bow's beautiful, wrenching, riveting novel Plain Kate. I could spout praise for this book to the end of time but I'm just talking about villains here, I'm just talking about Linay, mad with grief, working with blood and shadow to bring down a city and bring back his sister.

Anyone who has lost someone – indeed anyone who has loved someone – can empathize with Linay's designs, the depths he descends to, the horrors he is willing to unleash. If you had power to undo it, to bring them back, what would you balk at? What is the world worth to you, without your beloved in it? Why should others live and not the one you loved? Linay lures the terrible half-ghost of his sister down the river, pulling after them a deathly fog that leaves the countryside devastated. Kate is terrified of him – and he is frightening, mad and determined and powerful, with her shadow in a box and strange magic in his hands – but she feels for him too. She has to remind herself: "He does not love me. I do not trust him." But haven’t they both lost the one they loved best? Weren't they both turned out by their own people? Doesn't she understand it, more than she’d like to – his bottomless grief? Why save Lov? she has to ask herself. Why risk her life for the people who put a good woman to death, and the people who watched a woman die and did not care and did not stop it?

It doesn't feel quite right to call Linay a villain, when the true villain of the story, if there is one, is life as we know it: death, grief, cruelty, fear, ostracism, sickness, superstition. Still, anyone bringing death upon a city of thousands counts as a villain, and the beauty of Linay is that he is and does all the very worst a villain can be and do while remaining painfully human and sympathetic. When Kate tells him she is going to stop him, he replies, "I wish you could. I almost wish you could."

In Lov, Linay tells Kate to flee. The cat Taggle wants her to flee. When she sees the stake in the square where witches are burned, for a moment she almost wants to let Linay have his revenge. "That quick death was better than this city deserved." Kate is the hero because she grieves for her father but does not allow herself to be destroyed by that grief. She is the hero because in the grim city of Lov, she remembers how in other cruel places she has been saved by kind people. She is the hero because she can't bring herself to walk away and leave the city to its fate, because she is brave and loving even when there is so little hope for her and so little to love. She finds love anyway, and hope too. Kate embodies the best and withstands the worst, while Linay buckles under the worst and becomes a monster.

This is nothing to do with villains really, but I will say that this book made me cry, possibly more than any book has made me cry, and I am not a big crier over books. That makes it sound like a very sad book, but in spite of the grief and horror in the story, I don't think of it as a sad book. It is a beautiful book, and funny as well (OK, mostly Taggle). Linay in particular stands out for me as one of the most frightening and moving fictional villains I've read, and so any thoughts I have on villains end with him.

Thanks so much for the post, Catherine. Go check out The Last Days of Tian Di trilogy now! :)

Blog Tour - Alice Kuipers

Surprise post today! It's a blog tour post for Alice Kuipers' newest YA novel The Death of Us. When asking if I'd like to take part in the blog tour, Alice mentioned my Letter to the Author posts, saying she could so something similar. I said yes because I'm curious as to what other people would say in those sweet gushing letter to authors they love and because I should really start doing that again. ;)

Bestselling author Alice Kuipers was born in London. She moved to Canada in 2003. Her first novel, Life on the Refrigerator Door, was published in 28 countries and won several awards. Since then, she has published two further award winning YA novels internationally (The Worst Thing She Ever Did, 40 Things I Want to Tell You), with a fourth, The Death of Us, coming out on September 2, 2014. Alice has three small children and she began writing picture books for them. Her first picture book Violet and Victor Write The Best Ever Bookworm Book will be published in December of this year. Alice's website is full of tips and hints for those of you who want to become writers too. You can find out more about Alice and her books on her website or find her on Twitter (@AliceKuipers). :)

Dear Emily St. John Mandel,

I preordered Station Eleven on my Kindle and felt surprising irritation that I couldn’t read it immediately. The description from Goodreads had me hooked: An audacious, darkly glittering novel about art, fame, and ambition set in the eerie days of civilization's collapse... 

When Station Eleven beamed into my eReader on launch day, I stopped reading everything else and began. Your novel is beautifully written. From the first page, the prose had me lulled into the story. I haven’t finished reading it yet, but I know that this is a book that will stay with me for years. The characters are clearly drawn, vivid, and I cannot stop reading. I’m in the state that I love when I both don’t want to put the book down, but I also want to savour it. I can’t wait to get to the end, but I don’t want your novel to finish.

The book is an adult novel but I think teen readers will love it too. I write YA fiction and Station Eleven will fall into the hands of smart, savvy teen readers who will find it beautiful. And frightening.

The story is of a world in a state of collapse, written through changing timelines and through many perspectives. I had bad dreams of my family suffering from a terrible plague just as you describe. As the mother of three children, the idea that this world isn’t permanent physically hurts. But of course it’s not permanent. Nothing is. Your stunning descriptions of our world before and after the Georgia Flu give me moments of grace and beauty as I hold onto my tiny children. I know I have to send them out into this big, blue world. I have to let them go, whatever the future holds. Your book, despite the death, the destruction, the darkness, gives me light too.

Apparently you’re Canadian. I moved to Canada eleven years ago. Now you live in New York City. You are someone who has transplanted themselves and I feel that in your story. There is a sense of searching for home, something I’ve been doing for years. Once someone moves away, I think there’s always a sense of what’s been left behind. Station Eleven is all about what’s been left behind. What is lost. Yet your book gives me faith that home is exactly where you are in the current moment rather than something to seek. There are passages in the book that I re-read or highlight just because the writing is so fine, or because it takes me somewhere new. The novel is a triumph. You must be so proud of it. 

I can’t wait to read your other books. There are three more and I’ve already ordered one. But I can wait to finish this one. I’m going to take each page slowly as I only have a few pages left. Thank you for writing it – I’m sure it was hard work, but so worth it. It’s a testament to the value of art in a scary planet. I love it.

Alice Kuipers

Thanks to much to Alice for the wonderful letter to Emily St. John Mandel. Go check out The Death of Us (and maybe Station Eleven as well)! :)