Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey (2010)

She tilted a glance at me as she passed, and I saw her eyes, undimmed by dusk and fog. They were strong and dark — like greenstone under water — but there was something wrong with them. It took me a long moment to realize that her face gave reason to my fears.
The woman had no pupils (p 26).

Set in New Zealand, Guardian of the Dead is based in Maori mythology and cosmology (with a few creative alterations) and follows Ellie as she comes into her magical inheritance while at boarding school. Kevin, her mate, begins spending time with the bewitchingly beautiful new girl, Reka. Meanwhile, her crush, Mark, takes notice of Ellie but the memories of their conversations are blurry and half-formed. When Ellie realizes she is being charmed, she opens herself to dangerous fairy magic and a fairy plot to murder millions of humans.

Ellie was immediately recognizable to me. She isn’t gorgeous or popular, but a more realistic pleastly-plump girl who makes friends more easily with guys than gals because of her easy going and light-hearted nature. Yet she walks a fine line between inhibiting insecurity and nascent desire. She was my anchor in this otherwise  inconsistent novel.

I was unable to immerse myself in this book. While some of the dialog was clever/cute, it did not endear secondary characters to me so I found myself putting this down often.

I’ve also noticed a trait shared by several YA fantasy books I deem subpar and that is subplots involving characters performing Shakespeare. In this novel, Ellie is recruited to choreograph fight scenes for the local university’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The play and Ellie’s interest in the Classics are meant to help introduce readers to Maori mythology. It certainly helped Ellie make sense of her new weltanschauung but it just didn’t work for me.

Not a bad first novel, but I am surprised it was nominated for a William C. Morris YA Debut Author Award. Ultimately, the award went to The Freak Observer.

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl (2009)

There was a lot of excitement for this book from YAlit bloggers. I was thrilled to get my hands on a copy just prior to its release. But this is another book (like Shiver) I wanted to enjoy but found I simply couldn’t.

Ethan lives in a small town in North Carolina where everyone knows everyone and life is predictable. Then Lena arrives. Not only does she live with the town recluse, she doesn’t fit in with the popular girls at school. She is tormented and teased. But Ethan finds himself drawn to her (of course) and we learn there is much more her outcast demeaner than anyone can guess. She is a Caster (a twist on ‘witch’).

You would be hard pressed to find a passage in any of Jane Austen’s books where a woman is not present or overhearing. She once remarked in a letter to a niece attempting her first novel, “Let the Portmans go to Ireland, but as you know nothing of the Manners there, you had better not go with them.” Her scenes always included a woman because she didn’t know how men acted when alone.

This is a book written by two women with a male narrator, Ethan. It felt more like my own female mind than that of a teenage male. I often forgot I was reading from the boy’s perspective.

This is another YA book that suffers from a superfluity of words, repitition, and description. It could have done its job in half the time. None of the prose struck me as particularly eloquent.

There were interesting characters that didn’t live up to their potential: Sarafine and Mr. Macon being the biggest disappointments. I wanted more dimension to these characters and they came across rather shallow. Too much time spent on our two main characters and too little time on the Lena’s supporting cast. The ending needed serious revision and I’m hoping it happened before final publication.

I doubt I’ll read the sequel but for those girls who enjoyed the excessessive relationship language in Twilight, this is gold.

Hold Still by Nina LaCour (2009)

My coworker, Anna, has an adorable habit of scooping up my current read, flipping to a random page, and reading to me. Sometimes this gets her hooked and she decides to read the whole book (How We Decide). Sometimes she is indifferent (Malice) and sometimes a serious-subject book like Hold Still is lambasted for its immediately noticable poor writing and trite dialog.

Hold Still is a finalist for the 2010 William C. Morris YA Debut Award.

How that happened, I don’t know. I suppose if you raved all over Wintergirls, you would rave all over Hold Still. They are both pretentious YA novels attempting to tackle a melodramatic teen problem - suicide, in this case, anorexia in the former. In my opinion the writing damns them both.

Hold Still assumes by saying a whole lot of nothing, it’s really deep stuff. Like the narrators inability to speak signifies the depth of her loss. If she was going for In Our Time young adult style, I wasn’t feeling it.

The dialogue is pretty bad overall:

Someone leans against the lockers next to me. Dylan. Her hair is even messier up close. Strands stick out all around her face.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hi.”
She stares at me for so long that I start to wonder if I look weird, if there’s ink on my forehead of something. Then she gives me a smile that’s hard to pin down. It’s sort of amused, but not in a bad way. Before she leaves, she rummages in the bag she’s carrying and slams her lock onto the empty locker next to mine. She stomps away and I’m alone (p 25).

If you’ve read it and have a different or confirming opinion, I’d love to hear. My big beef is with the delivery. Not the message. Certainly, teen problems demand attention. I just don’t believe these two books should be representing the best in YA. What book would you choose?

Ash by Malinda Lo (2009)

Ash is a finalist for the 2010 William C. Morris YA Debut Award.

Malinda takes the skeleton story of Cinderella (a young girl loses her mother; father remarried before following his first wife to the grave; girl lives miserably with stepmother and two stepsisters) and builds a new story involving the seductive and deadly faeries of lore, the king’s huntress as friend and love interest, and storytelling.

The writing is solid. I’ve always loved fairy tales (not the sugar-coated Disney retellings but the gritty originals) and you will enjoy this book if you do as well. Some of my favorite passages were the fairy tale stories within the story; cautionary tales of humans caught in fairy rings or by the fairy hunt or those who seek out Fairy Queen aid.

I enjoyed this retelling far more than A Curse as Dark as Gold so I wouldn’t be surprised if won, but I have yet to read the other nominees.

Graceling by Kristin Cashore

In a land of seven kingdoms, some people are born with a Grace, an enhanced ability. This ability may manifest within days or years of birth, revealing itself suddenly and marked by differing eye colors. Some Graces are for swimming, cooking, archery, etc. And others are less obvious: mind reading, persuasion.

Katsa is just a child when she reveals her Grace by accidentally killing a man attempting to fondle her. After learning to control her Grace, she becomes the punishing hand of her King, King Randa of the Middlins. Unhappy but submissive in her brute role, Katsa performs her King’s commands.

When Katsa meets Po, a Graced fighter from the island kingdom of Lienid, the possiblity of a free life emerges. She breaks free of Randa’s grip, fighting for the weak. When She and Po embark on a mission to discover the truth behind a kidnapping, they learn horrors and face a danger that will test both their Graces.

Katsa is a herion as strong as Tamora Pierce’s Keladry (Protector of the Small series). Cashore weaves action with reflection and romance to acheive a well-balanced, exciting plot. She is a wonderful storyteller that reuses ideas (Xmen, Heroes, etc. echoed here) in a fresh exciting way. I couldn’t put this one down and look forward to more from the new author.