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A Book By Its Cover: My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix

Picture yourself on a boat or a lakeshore, with pastel balloons and ominous skies; Some monster calls you, you answer quite slowly — the girl with the GLOWING RED EYES! My Best Friend’s Exorcism, by Grady Hendrix, is a work of art. You can tell just by looking at the cover. There is a LOT going on here! It tells a story all by itself, but go on and read the book, too. I can’t promise you’ll be glad you did, since I don’t know you, Gentle Reader, but I’d be amazed if you’re not interested! The first thing to notice — well, no, the first thing I noticed was the girl with the glowing red eyes, but I’ll get back to her in a bit. The first thing to talk about is the cognitive dissonance introduced by the cover. It has a yellow smiley “BE KIND, REWIND” sticker at the top right. (The Young Adult audience of today won’t remember this, but there used to be things called videotapes, sort of like DVDs, but once you watched them, the next viewers couldn’t watch until rewinding to the beginning. But I digress.) Just below and to the left, there’s a green “A NOVEL” sticker. Then at the bottom, it says VHS, which refers to the most common, if not the best, format of videotape. This book/movie disparity is explained by the fact that the story is about the filming of a direct-to-video flick that never even got released, because things went horribly awry during the location shots.

Book Review: Children of the Different by S.C. Flynn

Stories dealing with those often-painful transitions of adolescence dominate mainstream young adult fiction. On the genre side of the fiction divide, post-apocalyptic settings contain characters constantly beset by external dangers, characters that simultaneously must struggle to adapt themselves to their civilization’s collapse. In both cases these tales combine peripheral threats with internal struggles, shaping varying degrees of character growth and/or plot development. Thus, it’s fitting that S.C. Flynn combined aspects from both sides of young adult fiction’s spectrum in his debut novel Children of the Different. Though comprised of many familiar elements, the novel is aptly named. Flynn’s story feels fresh and intriguingly different. With inspirations from analytical philosophy and biological metamorphosis, Children of the Different explores the transformation of his young characters into adulthood within post-apocalyptic settings that merge science fiction and mythical fantasy.

Book Review: Poisoned Blade by Kate Elliott

Second in the Court of Fives series, following Court of Fives, Poisoned Blade by Kate Elliott continues the epic YA fantasy story of Jessamy, as she struggles to preserve herself and her family. Her expertise and skill at the Fives has put her into the intrigue and machinations of Garon Palace, as factions within the court struggle to influence, if not outright control, the throne. But what can the daughter of a General, struggling to keep herself and her family above water, do against that? She has a game to master, and in the mastery of that game, and protecting her family, young Jessamy is going to be catapulted out of the capital,  and into the countryside. There, away from all she has known, treachery, betrayal, loyalty and the struggle for the future of her country irrevocably change her own quest.

Mining the Genre Asteroid: Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin

A century and a half after Earth has been wrecked, humanity exists in two spheres. There are the hardscrabble colonies, where survival is the watchword, as man tries to live on alien, often unfriendly environments. The people are often poor, desperate and technologically backward. And then there are the Ships that travel the spaceways. Technologically advanced and relatively rich, the Ships have a strict regime for keeping themselves from being overpopulated. Every person who reaches their fourteenth birthday must train for an ordeal called the Trial.

Book Review: Enchanted and Hero by Alethea Kontis

    Monday’s child is fair of face,     Tuesday’s child is full of grace,     Wednesday’s child is full of woe,     Thursday’s child has far to go,     Friday’s child is loving and giving,     Saturday’s child works hard for a living,     But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day     Is bonny and blithe and good and gay. This rhyme opens Enchanted, the first in a series of the tales of the Woodcutter sisters. When we first meet them, Sunday, the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, is out in the Wood, writing stories in a journal. She meets an enchanted frog named Grumble, and the rest, as they say, is history. Alethea Kontis hooked me in quickly with the easy conversational tone of Sunday’s encounter with Grumble. The Princess and the Frog is a fine story,

Giveaway: James Dashner’s The Kill Order AND The Eye of Minds + Dashnerian Swag!

That’s right.  We’ve got two books to give away this week as part of James Dashner’s blog tour for the paperback edition of The Kill Order.  Entry is going to be super simple.  All you need to do is answer this question in the comments OR via Twitter (@skiffyandfanty — use the hashtag #dashnerarmy) OR via email (skiffyandfanty[at]gmail[dot]com — use the subject line Dashner Giveaway): What is your favorite young adult fantasy or science fiction novel? So get your entries in right away.  The giveaway will close on January 24th, 2014 (Friday).  Winners will be announced on the following Monday. On top of that, Dashner’s Army is going to give away some swag (t-shirts, etc.) if they reach 1,000 members.  Joining is pretty darn easy.  You just need to go here and sign up!