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Abel Dandy grew up in Faeryland, surrounded by the most unusual people, right down to is legless father and armless mother. To him, oddities were the norm, and it was he, with his own human unoriginality he saw as the lack. While he was a decent knife-thrower, he felt unspecial, surrounded by the inhabitants of the Faeryland show. When the departure of the Siamese twins, and the souring of his dealings with Phoebe the dogfaced girl, Abel grows restless and angry. At night, his dreams are filled with images of an Egyptian beauty, and he knows he’ll never find someone like that inside the life he leads.
After a couple of run-ins with local town boys, Abel steals away in the middle of the night, planning to find fortune, and return with money and his own name. Instead, he joins the Marvel Bros. Circus, only to be thrown out when they discover the escaped monkey to be his friend Apollo, Phoebe’s brother, who followed him from home. Thinking himself lost, and his friend doomed, he stumbles upon a farmhouse near the tracks, only to meet up with Apollo yet again.
After receiving a job within the house, Abel begins his plan of earning enough money to send Apollo back home, and to take off again on his own in search of a show. But then, much to his surprise, a show comes to him.
While at first excited about the possibility of getting a knife throwing act, it doesn’t take Abel long to realize that Dr. Mink is up to no good. Through luck, he learns that Mink planned to sneak away in the night, taking Apollo with him, and manages to weasel himself into the deal as a driver.
Upon meeting up with the rest of Mink’s crew, and finding the children locked in their wagon, Abel knows what he has to do. But how can he get away, and save them all too? And what of the mysterious woman still entering his dreams? What does it all mean?
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Matt hasn’t had the best life. His parents died when he was eight, on their way to a wedding. His mother’s half-sister showed up afterwards to claim him (for the money), and had little use for him (once she blew through the cash). He had no friends at school, and so sought out the company of a boy down the way, who was himself a troublemaker, and led Matt nowhere but down the wrong path. When their latest scheme goes awry, Matt is given two options. Imprisonment, or LEAF. Though he doesn’t like the look of the woman who’s agreed to look after him under the LEAF project, he figures it has to be better than prison, because hey, he can just run away, right?
Wrong.
It doesn’t take long for Matt to figure out there’s something very wrong with Lesser Malling. And when he’s had enough and tries to run away, every road out of the tiny town leads him back to where he began. He meets a man who says he can help, only to find him dead the next morning upon his arrival for their visit. When he returns with the police, the scene has been cleaned up, making it look like just one more troublemaker’s stunt.
Everywhere Matt turns, he finds help, followed swiftly by trouble. One by one, anyone who seeks to aid him ends up dead.
After finding a picture of himself at his parents’ funeral in his guardian’s closet, he knows something sinister is going on, and none of it accidental. Somehow, he manages to escape with a local reporter, only to end up once again back where he began. Wherever he goes, the darkness of Lesser Malling finds him. Because they need him.
The town of Lesser Malling and all its inhabitants live a life of old ways, worshipping dark powers long since run aground. With Matt’s “help,” they hope to set them free. Long ago, 5 children saved the world. The time has come for them to do so again. With Matt’s story, it begins.
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David and Elijah Silver are 10 years apart, and while they were thick as thieves when Elijah was young, and Danny would wake the house every night to make sure the baby was ok, once Danny hit his teens, Elijah was shut out. Being so young, he didn’t understand, but he did learn to deal. Danny shut himself into his world, Elijah got lost in another.
One morning each brother receives a call from their mother explaining about Italy. She and their father were going to go, but his leg is acting up. The trip is entirely pre-paid, non-refundable. She wants her sons to go. And while each smells a ruse, each agrees to go.
The trip gets off to a rocky start. Try as they might (or might not) the brothers don’t know how to relate. Danny thinks Elijah is lazy, and wonders how he’ll survive in the real world, Elijah thinks Danny is too caught up in work and seriousness, and worries that he’ll never really live. Danny has strict plans on what he wants to do and when and how, whereas Elijah is content to wander and wonder and let the trip happen to him.
It’s on one such outing that he meets Julia, who appears from nowhere, and promises she’ll see him soon. Though he doesn’t know how that could be, he believes her anyway, and anxiously spends the end of his time in Venice searching for her. And on a balcony, he does indeed find her, much to his delight. Even more delightful: she’s also going to Rome.
Elijah spends most of the trip between asleep. Danny’s driving strikes him as restless, and he figures if he can’t see, he can’t be scared. But when Danny wakes him while they’re driving through a field of sunflowers, he feels a moment of sincere appreciation, knowing he could have slept right through and missed a wondrous thing.
Once in Rome, Elijah is impatient to find Julia, and so Danny says they should go find her and ask her to dinner. I’m sure you can see the dilemma. But dinner goes well. When Elijah befriends a neihboring table, Julia and Danny entertain one another. When Elijah returns his attention, Julia returns hers, and jealousy is kept at bay. When dinner ends, Elijah and Julia head off on their own, and Danny is left feeling a perpetual third wheel. Wherever he goes, he seems to be intruding, or inivisible.
Through the twists and turns of life containing Julia, both brothers come to certain relizations. Given plenty of time to himself, Danny starts to reevaluate, and reaches out to old friends. Elijah tries to balance his life back home with life as it is in Italy, unsure how to make them mesh. In the end, the separate ordeals give them a new kind of understanding of one another. And while the trip didn’t go down as smoothly as the parents might have ideally hoped, it did in the end have the desired effect. Danny and Elijah will likely never again be thick as theives, but they’re no longer worlds apart either. Or if they are, the world is certainly manageable, where it was once a distance impossible to breach.
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Kelsey is less than pleased when her mother informs her they’ll be moving to California prior to her eighth grade year. On top of this, she’ll be enrolled in Susan B. Anthony—a high profile, exclusive private school for girls. Which, as Kelsey will soon inform you, is not at all what it’s cracked up to be. Despite it’s pleasant PR promises, Kelsey’s only friend that first year comes from outside the school. And if not for shared family events, she and Amy might never have hit it off either.
When her parents start pushing for a Private High School as well, Kelsey knows she has to take action. Making a compelling argument, she gets them to agree to consider EBH, the Public High School, as long as she will at least tour Scholastic—the most prestigious of the private schools. In the end, with the promise to enroll in extracurricular activities, Kelsey wins the argument, and life seems to be looking up. Until she’s informed she’ll be spending her summer babysitting her little brother at the Skate Park.
The idea enthralls neither of the siblings, who strike a deal. Josh will skate, Kelsey will sit off in the park reading, and they will only communicate when necessary. Things run along smoothly until the day Kelsey decides to take a go at the skating bowl herself. Not having skated in some time, she quickly proceeds to take a face plant. Not only that, when the famous C.J. Logan comes to lend her a hand, she elbows him in the jaw. But none of it seems to matter. He becomes her brother’s personal mentor, and she becomes his girl.
And so goes Freshman year. Watching skate practice in the afternoons, going to competitions on the weekends. Her family loves C.J., and his family, but wants to know what’s happened to the activities she was excited about. Realizing she may lose her right to public school, Kelsey signs up for yearbook, where almost nothing is expected of her.
When the end of the school year hits, after betraying Amy when she was in need, losing half of her special day with C.J. to skating yet again, and realizing she’s not much more to him than a Fan with benefits, Kelsey calls it quits. C.J. took it hard. Worried about him, Kelsey logged on to his blog on summer day to see if he was alright, only to discover herself being bashed. When she attempts to defend herself, she only makes it worse, as he responds with even more lies.
Sophomore year looms, and Kelsey feels only dread. Amy assures her that it will have blown over by then. That other people have their own drama, and won’t be obsessing over hers. Still, now forced with dealing with the big questions of who she is and where she’s going with her life, Kelsey approaches the year with mild trepidation.
This is actually a really enjoyable book to read, for all that it centers around so many unhappy topics. The narration is so blunt and straightforward, it’s hard not to laugh. Because looking back, even Kelsey knows she should have known better. And at some time, haven’t we all?
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Pacific Ocean, 1993. A Norwegian vessel heading out to sea comes upon a seemingly abandoned Japanese Cargo ship. Before searching for the crew, they send a party aboard to check for anyone remaining on board, thinking to lay claim to the cargo. Slightly further along, a British vessel floats, the launch-point for an underwater exploration.
Aboard the Japanese ship, the Norwegians find one man on the bridge, who looks as if he was boiled. In the engine room, doors have been propped open in order to sink the ship. In the cargo hold, all the automobiles are intact, one with its hood open. All seems ordinary. Until they begin to feel sick. The head of the group heads to the hold to check on a teammate who contacted him there, and find him dead next to the car with the open hood. Knowing he’s soon for death too, he takes out his gun and shoots the vehicle, vaporizing the ship, the Norwegian vessel, and the British one too.
Beneath the surface, the crew in the underwater explorer hear the bang and feel some shockwaves but cannot raise their surface contact to find out what’s gone wrong. Eventually their systems begin to fail, and it seems that death is imminent. At the last moment, help arrives in the face of Dirk Pitt, who with his partner Al Giordino, drove along the bottom of the ocean in their secreat DSMV to see what the disturbance was about.
After a harried escape from the ocean, the survivors of the explosion are left only with questions and disbelief.
The Government quickly forms a MAIT team, including members from many intelligence angencies, and the NUMA trio of Sandecker, Pitt and Giordino. The threat: Japanese underworld powers have devised a systematic plan to render most of the Western world helpless. How? Bomb cars. Why? They believe in the superiority of their race, and their economic tactics, and do not agree with the way melting pot countries are run. And yet the Japanese government and people at large have no knowledge of this scheme.
At nearly every turn it seems hopeless. The odds are pretty much insurmountable. And yet Dirk Pitt doesn’t seem to believe in impossibility. Even though he and his partner are over their heads and out of their realm of expertise, the duo still manages to save the day at every turn, including managing to rescue two kidnapped senators and the mastermind behind the entire Japanese plot.
Another interesting and somewhat frightening look at what the world would be like if extremism ruled the day. Definitely recommended for anyone who loves action.
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Faye has always felt different. Being asian and blonde already set her apart, but throughout her childhood she has friends no one can see and experiences no one can understand. But her friends aren’t imaginary–they’re faeries.
When Faye suddenly has to move back from Philadelphia to her hometown, she feels alone. Though she tries to contact her old childhood friends, she gets no response, and believes they’ve abandoned or forgotten her. So instead she tries to reconnect with old best friend, Janet. Sadly, her first night out proves to be disastrous.
In an old abandoner warehouse, they meet up with the crew. Kaye, feeling uncomfortable, takes off to explore. On an upper floor she finds an old carousel horse. Its legs are missing, but she loves it just the same. When she props it up to ride, Janet’s boyfriend Kenny spots her. He says he saw it stand up.
When he moves from questions to hitting on her, Faye takes off. Walking home through the rain, she hears a noise in some woods off the road. It sounds like someone in pain, so she heads off to investigate. What she finds is a man with a branch through his chest. In actuality, he’s a gentry faery, who’s been shot with an arrow. Though he is suspicious of her, she manages to help him pull the arrow out, then, following his instructions, calls a Kelpie to aid him on his journey back home. He becomes all she thinks about.
The next day she receives a message in an acorn from her old friends, telling her to stay away from the Dark Knight, and that they need to see her. That night, they come to her room, and take her to see the Thistlewitch. While they explain to her that they need her help, the truth of her strangeness is finally revealed. She isn’t an odd human at all—she’s a pixie.
Of course, being a curious teenager at heart, Faye does exactly what her friends recommend against, and removes the glamour that’s been passing her off for human her whole life. The new sights and sounds, smells and taste, the green skin, are all too much for her. She turns to Janet’s brother Corny, who helps her to remove the rest of her glamour, and then to try to research the new things she’s leard of. The Unseelie Court, pixies, the Tithe. None of it bodes well. And as they seek to learn more, things only become more entangled.
Again, Black’s blend of fantasy and reality remind me of Francesca Lia Block. A powerful style, a compelling story.
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When Luzy Szabo was six-years-old, she found a dying bat in her yeard. Not knowing what it was, other than a small critter, she picked it up and brought it to show her mother, who quickly beat it to death with a broom and threw it in the trash. When her father arrives home, he’s angry, and worried, as Lucy’s hands are covered with scratches. She knows they’re from berry bushes, but doesn’t want to get in trouble for being someplace she wasn’t stupposed to be, so she doesn’t say anything. And off to the hospital for rabies shots they go.
A few months later, Lucy is diagnosed with Diabetes. And no matter what anyone says, she’s convinced the events are related.
Life for Lucy changes after this. The shots, the worry, the constant equation of food + insulin + blood sugar. She grows into an angry teen, with a theory that early diabetics were the people the vampire legends stemmed from. She even writes an essay about it.
The essay doesn’t go ober well with her teacher, nor with her parents, who then search her computer and decide they don’t like some of the internet sites she’s been visiting. With no computer, and feeling friendless, Lucy becomes even more sullen. When a new guy shows up in town, she starts breaking rules to hang out with him. She also stops paying attention to her illness.
Forgetting to eat, overexertion, missed shots, and poor judgement lead to an episode of ketoacidosis, hospitalization, and eventually, change.
A new spin on vampirism, and an intriguing look into the life of a teen with chronic illness, Sweetblood is a quick read that gets the mind churning.
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Egg is a geek. Preferring the life of a loner to that of the typical teen, Victoria Jergen has named and styled herself after the heroin of her favorite sci-fi movie, Terminal Earth. With multiple peircings, painted eyebrows, a shaved head, and a wardrobe that always includes a white cloak, Egg is definitely not run-of-the-mill. Her AP schedule, excellent grades, actress mother, special effects designing father, and phenomenal photographic eye make up the rest of the equation. She always does her homework, she always has an answer, she never says hello, and she likes to eat alone. Until Max.
When Max Carter shows up in AP History suddenly, and smelly, has the answers, and proves to be more than her match, Egg’s world begins to slide. Suddenly she isn’t “the one” anymore, and suddenly she’s acquiring interest in something beyond her self-imposed reality.
At first she takes the same cool attitude towards Max as everyone else, with some minor deviations. When her wishes work too well, she finds herself suddenly questioning what she truly wants. As more and more aspects of her every day routine begin to crumble, Egg begins to re-evaluate who she is, and why. Slowly she takes steps to become who she knows she ought to be. Victoria. Human. Flawed. A dreamer, with a lot of talent. An observer and an activist. A friend.
Some painful truths are stumbled upon, some harsh lessons are learned, but through it all Egg/Victoria remains strong. She’s a lovable, unique girl—definitely geeky—and will probably find a place in the hearts of readers world-wide.
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A quick read, packed with laughs, Storky tells the story of a gaingly, couch-potato nerd who wants little more than to leave his nickname behind.
A freshman in High School, Mike Pomerantz can’t quite seem to get a handle on life. His sister seems to have split personalities, he’s not sure how to relate to girls, he can’t see past his love for his friend Gina, and he thinks his sour relationship with his father is his fault.
When he starts to accompany his mother now and again to the local Seniors’ home, and plays games of Scrabble with an old man named Duke, he feels like he’s hit a new low. But after a fight, he comes to realize he’s grown to like his time with Duke, and that it’s about a lot more than Scrabble.
When his mother starts dating his dentist, he can only hope the relationship with “Dr. Vermin” won’t last, yet the more time he spends with Berm, the more he gets to like it. He even joins his bowling league.
Though he keeps trying with his father, he can’t seem to please him. Nor can he make him understand he’d like to see him alone, without his babe of the month. When good old dad refuses to teach him to drive after promising to do so, Mike starts to see the light.
And such is the life of a high school Freshman—full of trials and some more trials. But Mike prevails, and comes out much better for it on the other side.
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This is one of the most unique Fantasy books I think I’ve ever read. Which isn’t to say that the rest are all cookie cutter books, but I do read a lot about magic, and as different as the books are, the stories share similar genes. Dark Ground enters a new realm of real versus the unimaginable.
On a flight with his family, Robert Doherty takes a trip to the restroom, where he happens to look at himself in the mirror, and feels he sees someone looking back out at him. That’s the last thing he remembers. When he wakes up in the woods, bruised and alone, he’s sure the plane must have crashed, and that if he searches long enough, he’ll find other survivors.
After some time passes, Robert realizes he needs food, water, clothes. While searching for these, day after day, he comes to realize he has even bigger issues—he could die, easily. The woods are huge, the creatures are gigantic, and no one is to be found.
But there are others. And unbenknownst to him, one of them has taken a liking to him. After a few surprise gifst, he catches on, and sets a trap to find out who else is out there with him. To his surprise, he catches a frail girl. But she moves like lightning.
Eventually, he gets her to let him tail her back to where she’s come from. Only at the end of the journey he loses her, and ends up being taken by an ogre bird.
Dizzy with pain, Robert manages to climb up and out of his prison, only to arrive on a large branch, from which he can see his own home. So close. And yet so far.
Eventually he makes it back down to the ground, and a party of the others finds and rescues him. Little does he know that the journey is just beginning.
Anyone who appreciates fantasy, sci-fi, or serious challenges to consciousness, should be taken in by this story. I’ll be eagerly awaiting the second installment.
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