Submission Call: Year’s Best YA speculative fiction

 

This is more for authors and publishers but you should know and be excited about Twelfth Planet Presses plans below:

 

Twelfth Planet Press announces a new Year’s Best reprint series, the Year’s Best Young Adult Speculative Fiction.

 

Editors Alisa Krasnostein and Tehani Wessely are now reading internationally for the inaugural anthology, and are seeking Young Adult speculative fiction first published in 2013 for consideration.

 

Our goal is to uncover the best young adult short fiction of the year published in the anthologies dedicated to the form, the occasional special edition of a magazine, and individual pieces appearing in otherwise “adult” anthologies and magazines, and bring them together in one accessible collection. So many young readers are avidly reading speculative fiction in novel form; we want to introduce them to the delight that can be found in the short story as well.

 

[read on]

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Book Review–The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi

The Drowned Cities is listed on some sites as the second in the Ship Breaker series. It’s a novel set in the same post climate change world as Ship Breaker rather than a “Book 2”. 
So don’t feel you have to have read Ship Breaker to get the full experience.  The Drowned Cities shares some locations and one character with Ship Breaker - the half-man Tool.

Quality fiction

The Drowned Cities is published in Australia by Atom, Hachette’s Young Adult brand.  To adult readers I would like to stress that this really has no impact on your enjoyment as an experienced or mature reader - it’s just quality fiction.

A future dystopia or comment on current events

With The Drowned Cities Bagicalupi builds upon and expands his vision of a dystopian future.  Like Ship Breaker the theme and content mirrors or comments indirectly( I never feel as though Bagicalupi is preaching) upon present day issues.  Ship breaker concentrated on a characters whose living was made stripping great containerships – a modern day inspiration, was no doubt something similar to The Chittagong Ship Breaking yards in Bangladesh.
The Drowned Cities’ theme centres squarely on the horrors of low scale internecine warfare in failed states and the sad reality of child soldiers and child victims of war.  Bagicgalupi brings the tale closer to home with his setting – The Drowned Cities being the flooded remnants of the eastern states of North and South Carolina.

The Tale

Mahlia and Mouse are War Maggots, orphans or refugees taken in by Dr Mahfouz who administers medical treatment to the families of Banyan Town.  Mahlia is a mixed raced daughter of a Chinese Peacekeeper and American/Drowned Cities mother, she’s had her right hand cut off by the Army of God due to this fact. 
Mouse is a country boy with a talent for dodging bullets.   While their situation isn’t ideal i.e. the town’s folk distrust her, it’s relatively safe.  Until that is, Tool,an escaping half-man, a genetic augmentation, draws militia pursuers to their quaint little piece of post apocalyptic hell.
What ensues is part comment on the stupidity and futility of war but also on the strength of  friendships borne out of survival.

Good Characterisation

Mahlia is the star of the story and I find her depiction as a strong female character particularly realistic and refreshing.  She’s a child of war, a survivor and her strength shines through, in her dedication to her friends and her will to go on. 
She displays cunning in her battles against forces that are physically stronger than her and is a refreshing hero in that she doesn’t need a gun or kick-arse martial arts moves to be strong.
We also get a better understanding of Tool as a rare breed of half-man, one that has overcome his genetic tendencies and training to obey his masters.
I also saw the depictions of the various militias in the book as comments on the some of the extremes of current American politics or political ideologies both in terms of religion and patriotism/nationalism.  No doubt some American readers might find Bagicgalupi’s future imaginings a little pointed.

Concerns?

The book deals with some fairly mature content.  I never felt as though Bagicgalupi was playing to the more violent aspects of the book though. There’s death and dismemberment but is well handled, repectfully depicted and fits well within the context of the world that’s been created. 
I can see Ship Breaker and The Drowned Cities as good jumping off points for discussions in a class mixing literature/reading with social studies.
The depiction of sex within the book, such that it is, is handled “off screen”.

Judgement 

A good addition to Bagicgalupi’s vision of a world in decline or crawling out of one.  There’s violence, poverty and calamity, but there’s also hope. There’s always a sense that the protagonists can prevail - not without consequences mind you, but that it is possible.
This book was provided to me by the publisher at no cost to myself

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Cover Candy - Shine Light by Marianne de Pierres

The third in the Night Creatures series (Burn Bright, Angel Arias).  Its marketed as young adult, but having read Burn Bright I tend to think that it transcends marketing categorisation.

There’s interesting sci-fi, dystopic, social commentary elements to the series that should interest any fan of speculative fiction.

And of course its written by Marianne de Pierres who I find brings a special something to every genre she decides to explore.

 

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Book Review–Pure by Julianna Baggott

Pure from the outset is a striking book.  I mean that in a physical sense in addition to the narrative contained in its pages.

I have the edition pictured to the left, though the black lettering on mine is almost a metallic pearl colour.  The book from a distance would appear almost entirely white. 

Some cover art is mere dressing, or a visual cue to attract a reader.  This cover of Pure is a beautiful artistic referencing of the story - kudos to Headline and the cover artist for a lovely piece of book art.  Hard, though it is to keep clean.

Young Adult?
It’s a coming of age novel, the protagonists are teens.  It’s already been marketed at fans of the Hunger Games and The Passage.

Which I fear may lead to it being pigeon-holed as a Young Adult novel.  Which is not bad in and of itself but would, I think, put off some adult readers who would otherwise really enjoy it.

It’s dystopic/apocalyptic near future science fiction - though you are likely to find it shelved under both science fiction and contemporary fiction.  This struggle to find a place for it suggest perhaps that it’s doing a good job of hitting different genre cues, that it is indeed a good story with wide appeal.

The Story
The setting is a beautifully created and detailed near future.  The world of the before is gone, obliterated in a nuclear and nanotech cleansing. 

The Pure live in a sealed dome, a restrictive patriarchal society that enhances itself through gene manipulation. 

Those that live outside are fusions of human and animals or human and inanimate objects.  The female protagonist Pressia, has her hand fused to the head of a baby doll, her friend has living birds embedded in his back - these are the lucky ones.  The cleansing has wrought more destruction and odd creatures neither human or animal lurk in the melt lands beyond what is left of the crumbling city.

The scope of Baggott’s world building is hard to quantify in a few paragraphs, it’s immense as it is terrifying.

Partridge our male protagonist is a Pure who’s desire is to escape the oppressive and rigid society of the Dome and find his mother who was stranded on the outside.  Pressia simply wants to look after her grandfather and avoid being taken by the OSR, a militia of fanatical killers intent on raising and army against the Pure. 

Fate throws them in each others path, or so it seems and they embark on a journey to find Partridge’s mother. This journey turns their concept of the world and its warring factions on its head.  Who to trust, and who to fight becomes blurred.

Veiled Commentary
Interwoven with a simple story of a boy finding his mother are some exciting and terrifying technologies, some thought experiments on where certain science might lead us. 
There’s also some very gentle commentary on various conservative movements existing in modern American society - the feminising of Feminism(really a cloaked conservatism), the influence and meddling of Church on State.

A slow start
It did seem to take a while for Pure to get going for me.  A side-effect of Baggott’s world building perhaps. The last 100 pages, however, flew by as events were brought to a head and revelations unfolded.  It was in that sense worth the wait and Baggott has done solid groundwork for the following two books in the trilogy.

Wide appeal
I enjoyed the book and I think fans of post apocalyptic dystopias presented in Mad Max, Blood of Heroes or 2000AD will also.

If science fiction isn’t your thing then call it contemporary fiction and allow yourself to enjoy the characterisation and vividly evoked setting. 

It does contain violence, some shocking scenes and some mature concepts, but then if you are buying and reading post apocalyptic fiction that’s pretty much a given.

This book was provided to me by the publisher at no cost

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Book Review–The Song of the Quarkbeast

I was looking forward to this book.  In general I find reading young adult novels to be a breath of fresh air and I was hoping that The Song of the Quarkbeast would live up to its press as a magical adventure with a bit of nerdy wordplay.

The Story

Young Jennifer Strange, a foundling, is left in charge of Kazam, the more ethical of the two companies that perform magic.

Their newly renamed competitor iMagic is up to no good, manipulating King Snodd into ordering a contest between the wizards of both companies; the losers to  merge with the winning agency.

Jennifer expects to win, that is until they begin losing sorcerers to Runix powered spells and trumped up magical misdemeanours.

The search for magical allies results in the revelation that nefarious plans are afoot.

My Issues

Initially I liked the word play, the short tangents away from the movement of the story, and the jokes or allusions that might escape younger readers. 

I usually give a novel 25 % of its length, or about 100 pages to hook me in, some novels require an adjustment due to style.  I found that by a third of the way through The Song of the Quarkbeast, I wasn’t.  The witty wordplay and divergent descriptions began to feel overdone and I longed for the story to pick up pace.

I also had issues with Jennifer.  She seemed to me to be a bit wooden, perhaps standoffish – I didn’t feel she was a convincing 16 year old girl.

Recommendations

My 15 year old self would have liked this book, it was reminiscent of Douglas Adams and the sense of humour that produced the Deeper Meaning of Liff, but even then I think I might also have had an issue with the pacing. 

I am hesitant to recommend it to all but the hard-core book nerds amongst the teen population, those who will find endless amusement in descriptions of the history, characters, oddities of the Kingdom of Hereford and who have the ability to make the connection with their real world equivalents.

I struggled to enjoy this one.

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Angel Arias coming out in 3 weeks

 

Angel Arias, sequel to Burn Bright, is coming out in roughly three weeks time – October 3rd if Booktopia is correct.

Burn Bright was brilliant, a dark, slightly sensual YA debut from Australia’s current queen of Sci-Fi.

To my mind it leaves Twilight and its clones in the dust.  Vampirism, mixed with social comment mixed with sci-fi, with a dollop of Dystopia.

Not heard of Marianne de Pierres? Check out the Interview I conducted with her here.  She also has a flash new comic.

Marianne’s Minions have already published some reviews – Cecilia at Confessions of a Bookie Monster and Jamie in the video below.

This is the type of young adult fiction that us …err older adults can really enjoy.

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Book Review–Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

If you are part of the Speculative fiction scene, even in this great southern land of ours, you will have heard of Paolo Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker .  It was published in the Northern Hemisphere last year and snared the 2011 Michael L Printz¹ award and was a National Book(US) Award finalist.

Now Bacigalupi (BATCH-i-ga-LOOP-ee²) is no stranger to awards.  His adult novel The Wind Up Girl was awarded both a Hugo and a Nebula and Ship Breaker seems to feature some of the ideas that made that book a hit. 

Dystopia? Biopunk? Just great fiction
Ship Breaker , features a dystopian future world with human society living in the wreckage of an age of excess, where green technology is not some fanciful ideal but a necessity, a part of life. 

Our story starts on Bright Sands Beach where our protagonist Nailer, works on a “light crew”-clans of young workers who crawl the ducts of abandoned container ship wrecks³ searching for copper wiring and other salvageables. It’s here we learn of a future world where the disparity between rich and poor has grown, where the rich travel the seas on futuristic sailing vessels and the poor are left to fend for themselves scraping a living off the bones of the past. Where strange religious cults have merged with old religions, where genetically engineered dogmen are grown, bought and trained as loyal soldiers and where even blood bonded crew will sell you out if the price is right.

This less than ideal lifestyle is interrupted by the wrecking of a “swank”(rich person) ship on the Teeth(the submerged ruins of an old city).  Nailer finds a young girl alive on the wreck and from this point on he is faced with a number of life changing decisions; to kill her so that he and his friend can claim salvage, to sell her to the life cult who will harvest her organs, or to return her to her father for a reward - if indeed she is who she says she is. What ensues,however, is a classic adventure tale with far future, Biopunk colour.

What I think makes this great fiction for teens is the choices Nailer has to make, the decisions that he has to weigh.  Life for Nailer, just like the rest of us, is not a case of making clear decisions based on black and white thinking.  Sometimes what advantages us isn’t what’s right and sometimes when we do what we must our actions don’t bring us solace.

Teens Plus
Don’t let the YA/Teen categorisation put you adult readers off.  Reading this book encouraged me to buy the rest of Bacigalupi’s work.  He’s a good story teller and like Scott Westerfeld and Marianne de Pierres he has a talent for making his work exciting and relevant to adolescents and enjoyable for those with a little more life experience.

Content
I note that this book was recommended by the Wall Street Journal as a “good book for young men” in a side panel of the now infamous Darkness Too Visible ⁴ article that castigated the young adult genre for being too dark. 

Considering the thrust of that article I find its inclusion odd, because while well written, there are depictions of brutal familial violence and killing(though not without consequence, emotional and physical).  Perhaps this is just moral conservatism, which seems to have little trouble with young men reading about violence but frowns heavily on depictions/mentions of sex  - and it isn’t mentioned(sex) in Ship Breaker, child prostitution is faintly hinted at and the male and female protagonists share a quick peck, but that’s it. 

Recomendations
I’d suggest the book for the 14+ age group because of the violence. I’d also recommend it to adults who want to participate in a deftly imagined and painted and possible biopunk future.  It feels very plausible to me, a world where our technology allows us to survive and progress as a civilization but where not everyone gets access to that technology. A subtle warning with a glimmer of hope.
This book is a review copy provided by Atom Books

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1. The Michael L. Printz Award is an award for a book that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature. It is named for a Topeka, Kansas school librarian who was a long-time active member of the Young Adult Library Services Association.
2.Start practicing the pronunciation now, I have a feeling Paolo is here to stay.
3. I am sure that Paolo used the ship breakers of in developing countries as for inspiration
4. An opinion article that I am sure was designed to be inflammatory, as it fails to establish with any degree of certainty what darkness is, uses Teen and child interchangeably, and fails to give produce any convincing evidence that the YA category is full of “kidnapping and pederasty and incest and brutal beatings”.

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