Rook by Sharon Cameron (review by Andrew R. '17)

Rook by Sharon Cameron
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There are only so many post-apocalyptic dystopia concepts that exist in the world, and, thanks to the mad rush of YA science fiction sprang into being following the enormous success of The Hunger Games, it’s almost—almost—impossible at this point for an author to come up with a brand-new one. In Rook, however, Sharon Cameron may just have pulled it off. The world that protagonists Sophia Bellamy and René Hasard inhabit is full of not-so-subtle overtones of the French Revolution, with lower-class mobs overrunning the Upper City and a massive, blood-spattered blade decapitating enemies of the state. But this isn’t eighteenth-century Paris—this is Europe hundreds of years after the polar shift that wiped out most of humanity. The loss of all pre-apocalypse technology has forced society to backtrack several centuries to a bloodier and more brutal time. The characters are almost as interesting as the setting—Sophia may be a classic YA heroine fighting off the advances of two devilishly handsome suitors, but at least the love triangle has some political intrigue to spice things up. (Nearly all the characters are benevolent criminals of some sort.) Rook is lengthy, but readers will forgive its heft once they get caught up in the engaging narrative and well-conceived setting.

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All Clear by Connie Willis (review by Connie M. '17)

All Clear by Connie Willis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

All Clear is the second half of the time travel Blackout/All Clear duo by Connie Willis, set in World War II. While I found Blackout a bit frustratingly repetitive in places, All Clear was a whirlwind of plot twist after plot twist, with an emotional range of unfathomable despair to shock to tentative joy. Willis will leave you gasping aloud in both excitement and frustration as the three main characters attempt to return to 2060 from WWII. Willis leaps back and forth between different times, places and characters, thus weaving in an element of mystery (pay attention to the date printed at the beginning of each chapter). Blackout and All Clear are must-reads for any time travel or historical fiction fan, but as a message about the strength of the common person undergoing unimaginable hardship and sacrifice, these two novels would be enjoyed by anyone.

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An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir (review by Andrew R. '17)

An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

The Hunger Games. Eragon. Star Wars. Odds are you’re already perfectly familiar with these stories, in which case there is no reason for you to pick up Sabaa Tahir’s new novel. For me, An Ember in the Ashes reads like a half-hearted cut-and-paste of all the fantasy/sci-fi books that came before it, an unapologetic catalog of tired genre clichés—romantic tension! teenagers fighting to the death! orphaned protagonists! unimaginative fantasy names! faceless demonic warlords!—without a single page of original material. Faced with such an apparent lack of inspiration, the author repeats her ideas and plot points thirty times throughout the book. That’s standard practice with many YA authors, unfortunately, when it comes to romance (“Does he love me or doesn’t he?”), but it gets downright tiresome when we have to hear this sentence repeated ad nauseam: “As my grandmother always told me, ‘Where there’s life there’s hope.’” According to the American Library Association, there are approximately 5,000 YA books published per year, and I can safely list (without much exaggeration) about 4,999 new books that are more worth your time than this one. I was not a fan.

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The Game of Love and Death by Martha Brockenbrough (review by Andrew R. '17)

The Game of Love and Death by Martha Brockenbrough
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

In The Game of Love and Death, the deities Love and Death come together to play a high-stakes cosmic game of strategy. The board: Jazz-Age Seattle, still deeply rooted in racial prejudice. The pawns: Henry, an affluent white high-school student, and Flora, a black jazz singer (and, improbably, airplane pilot). The objective: for Love to manipulate Henry into winning Flora’s heart, and for Death to twist Flora into rejecting his advances. The stakes: the pawns’ lives. It’s the perfect premise for a historical-fiction-romance-supernatural genre mashup, but from the first chapter it’s clear that Brockenbrough can’t quite pull off the ingenious plot she’s cooked up. The characters are sadly underdeveloped: Henry’s sole obsession is Flora, Flora’s sole obsession is flight, Love is maddeningly altruistic, Death is irrationally destructive. Worse, we’re granted near-omniscience when it comes to the plot, making the entire novel read like a tiresome textbook example of dramatic irony. (Case in point: Henry is convinced that his infatuation is true love, whereas we know from page one that it’s a ridiculous idea planted in his head by a manipulative deity.) Thanks to the wild originality of this novel’s premise, the jacket blurb makes excellent reading; the book itself, though, is a disappointment.

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X: A Novel by Ilyasah Shabazz (review by Andrew R. '17)

X: A Novel by Ilyasah Shabazz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The premise of Ilyasah Shabazz’s most recent novel, X, is so unusual as to seem off-putting at first: in a narrative geared specifically toward young adults, a fictionalized Malcolm X plays out the early part of his life, starting with his exodus from Michigan to Boston and ending just before he begins the outspoken racial and religious activism for which we remember him today. The story is doubly odd because the author, the daughter of Malcolm X himself, has taken the liberty to novelize her famous father’s turbulent life—and in the first person. I’m not sure how, but Shabazz has taken this dubious stew of almost overambitious narrative points and crafted a surprisingly engaging story, which, although it contains hallmarks of the young adult genre like forbidden love and coming-of-age internal conflict, also features pacing and setting that are remarkably sophisticated for a YA novel. (Most of the first six chapters takes place on a largely uneventful train ride, and it takes a measure of patience to get to the meat of the book.) The protagonist Malcolm, even if he bears suspiciously little resemblance to the more weathered and polarizing Malcolm X most of us are familiar with, is a memorable and magnetic character, and this narrative of his life is strange in concept but impressive in execution.

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Blackout by Connie Willis (review by Connie M. '17)

Blackout by Connie Willis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was the first time I read a work by Connie Willis. Blackout is, at its core, historical fiction, though laced with elements of sci-fi in the form of time travel. The premise of all of Willis's time travel novels is that in the near future (2060) Oxford University historians will conduct their research by traveling back in time to their periods of study. In Blackout, several historians travel to England during World War II, disguising themselves in various locations including London during the Blitz, Dunkirk during the evacuation, and a countryside manor house. However, something has gone wrong with the historians' return mechanism (called the drop), and our heroes are trapped. At first, I found Blackout to be immensely interesting, as the story exuded all the emotions and attitudes of WWII life and at times even made me feel slightly panicked. However, 500 pages of nearly the same phrase ("Where is the retrieval team? Why is my drop not working?") began to get frustrating. I will be reading the sequel, which essentially is a direct continuation from the 1st book with hardly a transition at all, but only because I'm curious to find out how/if the characters return to 2060. In the end, I would recommend this book, as the story is extremely immersive, but don't attempt it unless you're ready to read 1000 pages of WWII historical fiction.

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The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (review by Tiffany Z. '17)

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Something has to give in the life of young Theodore Decker, who, at the novel's opening, has but one reliable companion: his mother, artistic and compassionate, reverent toward the Renaissance masters yet never condescending to her apartment's two doormen. In one trick of Fate, this bulwark is ripped away, and Theodore finds a new anchor thrown into his arms: Carol Fabritius' masterpiece painting, The Goldfinch. Throughout his turbulent life, from his troubled stay with sometime friend Andy Barbour, to thrilling (if alcohol-filled) teenage years alongside the passionate intellectual Boris Pavlikovsky, to evenings sealing sketchy deals on antique furniture in order to clear his associate's debts, the painting remains the undercurrent of Theodore's life. When the disparate storylines eventually converge, it is Fabritius' Goldfinch that unifies them. Tartt's artistic language enlivens the novel, from the smallest details of Sheraton furniture to the greatest messages about the art of life. She exposes the elusive art of living to one's fullest and the beautifully bizarre twists that life reveals to those who explore it. While some critics might argue that this intricate work is nothing but a series of crude brushstrokes upon close inspection, The Goldfinch will no doubt strike a chord with anyone who appreciates the beauty and mystery of art.

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Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard (review by Kaitlyn N. '18)

Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Aveyard skillfully combines a dystopian society with the world of fantasy in Red Queen, which addresses segregation and the conflict between different social classes. In the genetically modified future, humans are divided into two castes: those with silver blood (Silvers), and those with red (Reds). Those with silver blood enjoy a wealthier lifestyle and magical abilities, while people with red blood work as peasants and slaves. Even so, Mare, a Red, discovers that she straddles the border between the Reds and Silvers, and she is forced to become a princess under the watchful eye of the despotic king and her newly betrothed, the prince. Her plans for a rebellion go unnoticed, but Mare also faces internal struggles within her lovestruck heart and in her decision to sacrifice hundreds of innocent people for the sake of her cause. Aveyard’s unique plot and her taut writing from Mare's perspective build suspense until the end. However, the lack of description and detail may easily confuse the reader. Fans of fantasy, adventure and strong female leads would certainly enjoy Red Queen.

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