Me on The Tea Dragon Society

Title: The Tea Dragon Society
Author/artist: Katie O'Neill
Release Date: October 18, 2017
Publisher: Oni Press

After discovering a lost tea dragon in the marketplace, Greta learns about the dying art form of tea dragon care-taking from the kind tea shop owners, Hesekiel and Erik. As she befriends them and their shy ward, Minette, Greta sees how the craft enriches their lives—and eventually her own.

The Tea Dragon Society is all kinds of sweetness and whimsy. It's a kind, gentle story about a young girl discovering an almost lost art and the new friends it brings her while also wondering about her own future.

Greta is a sweet and friendly girl, following her mother's footsteps and training under her to become a blacksmith. But are those skills really useful anymore? Adventurers and magicians are becoming things of the past, and Greta's feeling unsure. While she is interested, while she wants to continue, she wonders if it's okay to keep blacksmithing if so few have any use of what she could create. But then one day she discovers a bullied and scared tea dragon in town.

The artwork is wonderful, a little similar to O'Neill's previous graphic novel Princess Princess but different enough that it holds its own. The mixture of bright and pastel colours, the near-constant appearance of vines and flowers in the backgrounds. The big smile of Greta's, along with that charming little fang. The waterfall-like flow of Minette's hair, as dreamy as her own expression when she struggles to remember. The different body types of the tea dragons, from long and slim Jasmine to plump and drowsy Chamomile. And the different body types of the characters, from Greta's mom being so tall and sort of muscular to Erik, battered and scarred from years of adventuring, moving around in a wheelchair.

An overall message or theme here is that, with Greta's blacksmithing apprenticeship and the art of making tea from tea dragons, history and knowledge is something to be cherished, to be continued as the world becomes more modern. There is still something to learn by heating metal in fire, by striking it with a hammer. Something to learn in taking it slow, in memories good and bad. There's still magic in old things, in slowly creating and nurturing. And there's so much diversity in this book, different races and body types and sexuality. This feels very much like the beginning of something, and I so hope that there will be more from O'Neill set in this enchanting fantasy world of tea dragons. It's definitely something I would recommend to all ages, especially kids looking for something kind and magical.

(I downloaded an e-galley of this title from Oni Press through NetGalley.)

Me on Waiting on Wednesday (254)

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

Title: On the Edge of Gone
Author: Corinne Duyvis
Release Date: March 6, 2015
Publisher: Amulet Books (Abrams imprint)

From Goodreads:

January 29, 2035. That’s the day the comet is scheduled to hit—the big one.

Denise and her mother and sister, Iris, have been assigned to a temporary shelter outside their hometown of Amsterdam to wait out the blast, but Iris is nowhere to be found, and at the rate Denise’s drug-addicted mother is going, they’ll never reach the shelter in time.

A last-minute meeting leads them to something better than a temporary shelter: a generation ship, scheduled to leave Earth behind to colonize new worlds after the comet hits. But everyone on the ship has been chosen because of their usefulness. Denise is autistic and fears that she’ll never be allowed to stay. Can she obtain a spot before the ship takes flight? What about her mother and sister?

When the future of the human race is at stake, whose lives matter most?

So excited for this book! Yay to more Corinne books, which means yay to more diversity in YA and yay to more genre fiction. I'm really looking forward to this futuristic survival in a European city with an autistic, biracial heroine. :)

Me on Otherbound

Title: Otherbound
Author: Corinne Duyvis
Release Date: June 17, 2014
Publisher: Amulet Books (Abrams imprint)

Amara is never alone. Not when she's protecting the cursed princess she unwillingly serves. Not when they're fleeing across dunes and islands and seas to stay alive. Not when she's punished, ordered around, or neglected. She can't be alone, because a boy from another world experiences all that alongside her, looking through her eyes. Nolan longs for a life uninterrupted. Every time he blinks, he's yanked from his Arizona town into Amara's mind, a world away, which makes even simple things like hobbies and homework impossible. He's spent years as a powerless observer of Amara's life. Amara has no idea... until he learns to control her, and they communicate for the first time. Amara is terrified. Then, she's furious. All Amara and Nolan want is to be free of each other. But Nolan's breakthrough has dangerous consequences. Now, they'll have to work together to survive-and discover the truth about their connection.

Otherbound is unique, imaginative, and mysterious. It's a compelling and wonderfully written story of two teens from different worlds somehow bound together and forced to work together, or both of their worlds will be ruined. Complex, realistic characters and intriguing worlds are what make this book, they're what anchors the reader in the story, taking them along for an action-filled adventure.

Nolan would give anything for a normal life, for not seeing Amara's world every time he blinks, sleeps, closes his eyes to sneeze. He doesn't sound defeated, but she does sound weary, tired. It takes up his entire life and barely leaves room for anything else. Maybe family, maybe school, certainly not friends. It's all he knows. He's never had the chance to be a normal American teenage boy. Amara also knows one life. Being a mute servant, protecting Cilla, keeping her head down and obeying the rules of her meager station, it's all she knows. It's never been about what she wants. As a servant, she has little control, and when Nolan appears with the ability to control her body? She turns to fear and anger. Her body has always been hers, if not her life, and to suddenly discover someone else can control it, can see through her eyes, is extremely frightening. The two are different, very different. They cause each other pain in different ways. But, as painful as it is, they only way to discover the cause of their connection is to work together.

It's no secret that I love well-crafted world-building. Two worlds were created for this story, one very familiar and one not so much, but both separate in their customs and culture. Both with varying levels of magic and fear. Both Nolan and Amara have to work to navigate their worlds, Nolan even more considering he's in both. Of course, his experience in the Dunelands is complicated as he's there not in his body with his abilities and disabilities but in hers with her different abilities and disabilities. That adds another layer of complexity to this story, navigating a different world than your own in a different form.

I don't think I've read a book where both the main characters were people with disabilities, with one being unable to speak and the other having lost a foot/part of their leg. Both react so honestly and realistically to the world around them, Nolan and his stumbling around on one leg while he's feeling sick, Amara's way of speaking through signing with her hands. They were never glossed over, but also never focused on to the point of overwhelming. They're part of who they are as characters but they don't define them. They're still people, still human, and they're not written as less than human (there are times, I think, where Amara is treated as less than human, but that's because of her servant status and not her inability to talk).

There are so many different layers to this story. Nolan's view into Amara's world, Nolan's at-home life, Amara's servant role, Amara and Cilla's relationship, Amara's purpose, Cilla's purpose, Nolan's ability in Amara. And so many emotions are expressed. Moments of happiness, fear, anger, confusion, sadness, compassion, love, rage. Along with all the magic in this book are characters with real problems, real emotions. Lives are at stake, and the pressure that comes with that knowledge is overwhelming.

There's much much diversity in this book. Race, gender, body shape, ability/disability, sexuality, culture. It fills the pages. It leaves me wondering when I last read a book with so many different characters, events, places, problems, emotions. I want more books like this, more perfectly imperfect characters and their human emotions running wild as they jump from one world to another trying to survive.

(I received an advance copy of this title to review from Canadian Manda Group.)