YA
ICYMI | Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
One of our favorite things at LTB is talking about books. On occasion, we do that face-to-face. If you missed it last week, you can still watch and participate with us while we talk about Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi. We’re talking character development, story development, grand themes of family and community, and of course TEA! Feel free to comment below with your thoughts on the book so you can join in on our discussions!
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Review | Updraft by Fran Wilde
You may be familiar with Fran Wilde. While Updraft is her debut novel, she’s been an SFF presence for years. She’s a prominent blogger and has a slurry of short stories to her name. Her blog, http://www.franwilde.net/ , features her own original fiction, interviews, reviews, editorials, the works.
So, knowing that Fran has been around a while, I was interested in picking up her book Updraft, but I was hesitant.
Updraft is the kind of story I know off the bat has the potential to be a huge hit with the YA crowd. It’s about a young girl, Kirit, who wants to be a trader. This isn’t an easy task in a city made up of huge, isolated towers. Kirit will not only need to fly, a fairly common task, but be able to outfly the migrations of skymouths, huge nearly invisible beasts that devour the population of entire towers and can hide in plain sight.
I would be lying if I said that this didn’t make me a bit nervous. It sounded AMAZING, but also like it was going to be prone to the YA pitfalls that so often turn me off. Holy crapola was I pleasantly surprised.
Updraft is the kind of story that is going to rock some SFF socks off. Better yet, it’s the kind of story 13 year old me would have loved and 23 year old me can still really enjoy.
The world Wilde creates in Updraft is very cool. The population lives in towers that rise above the clouds. The towers aren’t built, they’re grown out of bone. It features individual flying machines and has a great steampunk meets Dinotopia feel. The city is plagued by giant beasts with voracious appetite. Politically and socially, the world is fraught with problems. It’s run by the Singers, mysterious and extremely powerful people with control over the legal system. The Singers manage the city from a central hub known as the Spire. The towers live in fear of the Singers, but the Singers are the only thing standing between the towers and the Skymouths.
The main character is a young girl named Kirit. She’s lived in the top of her tower, which marks her as the daughter of a well-to-do family. Her mother is a powerful trader who rose to rank on her own. Kirit idolizes her mother, but she accidentally comes to face with a Skymouth and lives, which basically screws up Kirit’s plans to work with her mom.
Throughout the book, Kirit goes from a fairly impulsive and naive girl to a strategic thinker. Kirit is one of my favorite parts of the book. Her growth is fairly drastic. She grows away from idolizing her mother, to simply wanting to succeed at new challenges, to wanting to do what’s right. Better yet, Kirit has her priorities straight. She’s pretty wrapped up in the problems she’s facing and is one of the few YA heroines I’ve read about in recent years to not get wrapped up in a romantic subplot that undermines the main character’s autonomy and self-empowerment. I did think that some of Kirit’s growth is a bit unsatisfactory. I would have liked to see more time spent on her going from one stage to another, but there was plenty of growth.
Similarly, there are plenty of times where Kirit doesn’t really go for the impulsive decision off the bat. I liked that there were “dumb” things she had to be convinced to do. Even better, Kirit is hesitant to jump into any big conspiracies.
I did think that there were some oddities with pacing. The beginning third of the story alternated between slow and quick without always transitioning or changing pace where it seemed that it naturally would. The middle had a great feel, but the end again seemed to have a bit of a stop and go motion to it.
Overall, though, I was pleasantly surprised by this debut. Wilde really showed some fantastic worldbuilding. I liked the tone, setting, and characters. It’s rare for me to say, but the only thing that this book needed was a bit more length to flesh out some of the transitions and character growth. Another 50 pages and this book would have been perfect.
Note: I did receive a review copy of Updraft from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Review: Nihal of the Land of the Wind by Licia Troisi
Title: Nihal of the Land of the Wind*
Author: Licia Troisi
Publication date: 2004 in Italian, 2014 in English
Genre: YA/ Fantasy
This book is originally an Italian novel that has been translated to German and is being released next week in English.
Nihal is a young girl who wants to be a warrior. She’s raised by her father, an armorer who has always let her run wild. She’s a gifted swordsman and has some magic ability. When her town is raided by the Tyrant’s forces, Nihal leaves in defense of the Land of the Wind.
My problems with this book are many, so be warned.
First and foremost, Nihal is a highly capable fighter with great technique and anticipates her opponents well. She’s somehow managed to gain this ability not through rigorous training regiments and practice, but by running amok with village kids and occasionally (but not very frequently) sparring with her father. This was perhaps one of the most bothersome parts of the book. She’s an extraordinary fighter who bests seasoned cadets and mercenaries without any real battle training. This was ridiculously hard to buy.
Her relationship with magic is almost worse. Nihal leaves for her aunt’s home (An aunt she knows nothing about even though she’s less than a day’s walk away and her aunt and father speak frequently). There, Nihal must undergo a test before she can be trained in magic. She’s to go out into the woods alone and commune with nature. Nihal is terrified of the woods and, so, the challenge is supposed to be difficult. But at no point is Nihal ever alone. Her fellow student spends time comforting her and then wood sprites come and hang out. The wood sprites aren’t actually her communing with nature. They’re there to reassure Nihal that nothing is going to harm her in the woods. They then show her how to commune with nature. Yet another ability that Nihal does not need to work towards or fight for.
The only saving grace there is that Nihal is not a great magician. She only bothers to learn healing spells and some attack spells for battle.
Nihal’s relationship with her father was another point of contention. Nihal is thirteen and lives in a world where women are expected to stay home and care for domestic tasks. I can understand a father indulging the dreams of a young daughter and his only child. However, Nihal’s father doesn’t have any problem with her traipsing about in the woods with an older boy. He also doesn’t worry about her running around alone when there are enemy troops about who are known for terrorizing civilians and taking their women.
In a world where women are largely relegated to the home, it surprised me that Nihal’s father would have no concern for his daughter’s well-being or reputation. Let’s face the cold hard facts: Nihal would not be marriagable material and it’s mostly because he’s being permissive. On top of that, he’s risking her safety. He only expresses concern when he decides that he’s feeling lonely. This made absolutely no sense to me.
On the plus side, when Nihal does become a cadet in training to be a knight (after a series of battles to prove herself in which exhaustion and fatigue are not a factor for Nihal), she does get her pride smacked around by her individual trainer. He’s not going to settle for purposeless fighters and has some fairly decent lessons for Nihal to learn. Not that she really gives him the light of day.
Rating: 2.5
* This book was recieved as an eARC via Netgalley.com
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