Angelfall by Susan Ee--a review

In a post-apocalyptic world, a human joins forces with an angel to rescue her little sister as a resistance movement launches its first mission against the supernatural creatures.

Definitely in the dystopian tradition of Hunger Games, this story of a world in which paranormal creatures rule the night has a fine, feisty heroine, an intriguing anti-hero angel without wings and a quest. It’s well-written but derivative (especially for readers of the genre in general and Hunger Games in particular).

PENRYN YOUNG is 17 and basically in charge of her family—her mentally ill mother and her disabled sister PAIGE—in the wake of world-wide apocalypse involving angel attacks. Everyone on earth saw GABRIEL, the Messenger of God, killed in Jerusalem and since then, angels have hunted and killed humans for their own uses.

            Penryn is uniquely suited to protect her family since her paranoid mother signed her up for a series of self-defense classes. That’s good because her mother is off her meds and unpredictable and her sister is useless. The family has been hiding out on the top floor of an apartment building, but the bands of roving gangs have been scavenging closer and closer for days. Penryn realizes it’s time to move and despite her mother’s terror of the night (when the streets are empty of humans but filled with all kinds of predators), she wants to move at night. With her mother pushing a shopping cart and Penryn pushing her baby sister in a wheelchair, the trio sets out.

C is for Collins, Suzanne

Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games was one of those books that hit the zeitgeist like a bomb. Pegged as a YA dystopian author after Hunger Games, she was formerly known for her fantastic quintet of books in her Overland Chronicles series. It's a quest story, a story about finding and fulfilling one's destiny in a strange world beneath New York City. Gregor and his little sister (called "Boots") are terrific characters, and the way Boots bonds with the giant cockroaches (they love her and treat her like a princess) is endearing. The series goes on maybe one book too long, but if you love fantasy, you owe it to yourself to check out the Underland Chronicles.
YA, it pretty much blew up the genre and set off a publishing frenzy that supercharged the movies based on the trilogy. But before Collins wrote

When I was reading Hunger Games, I found myself thinking about readers and why some books succeed while others fail. Dan Brown wrote a couple of novels before hitting it big with The DaVinci Code. Now the Robert Langdon books make up one of the top ten best-selling series of all time. Something to think about when your books aren't selling and you're contemplating going back to grad school or taking that job with your sister-in-law's accounting firm.

Coming Soon...the Frontier Trilogy of YA Science Fiction

some people get books for Christmas, I get book covers.
Thanks to Joy Sillesen of Indie Author Services, I now have covers for my upcoming YA science fiction trilogy, tentatively titled Frontier. Set in a future where a Chinese corporation (The Double Fortune Trading Company) has colonized the known universe, the books follow the adventures of a young colonist who takes on the corporation on behalf of the colonists. I'd love to reach the readers of the Hunger Games books, of course, but I had the original idea almost a decade ago when I was developing television series for my then-boss at Warner Bros.
The books are: Frontier, Beixing, and Zhanghai. Frontier sets up the conflict and takes place on the planet of the same name, which was named by the colonists. Beixing is the planet that houses the corporation's political power
for the galaxy, as well as the most prestigious university in the sextor. Zhanghai is a planet-sized trading post of sorts, a place that sits at the crossroads of intergalactic travel and attracts human and alien traders.
The first book is nearly complete and I hope to finish the sequels and have both out by the end of the year. I'm writing them under my "Kat Parrish" pseudonym to keep them separate from the mysteries I write under my own name. 

Feminist Fiction Friday: The Dystopian YA Edition

I am not a huge fan of Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games. I prefer her wonderful Underland Chronicles, the first of which, Gregor the Overlander, is particularly good. But one thing Hunger Games did, and did really well, is open up the market for books about young heroines who aren't torn between two lovers. Katniss Everdeen is a kick-ass character, and thanks to Collins, she's not the only one out there.

Illustration by Jason Chan

Hugh Howey's Wool (originally self-published as five separate books) features reluctant heroine Juliette who discovers the terrible secret kept by those in charge and ends up the unlikely leader of a growing rebellion. The world of Wool, an arcology that determines status by the floor, with the higher regions reserved for the politicians and those who run things, is worked out neatly. There are a lot of great characters and romance and treachery and political shenanigans. Juliette is thrown into a difficult situation and it only gets worse. it's a very satisfying read and there are clearly a lot more stories to come.
Then there's 16-year-old Yukiko, the heroine of Jay Kristoff's dystopian Japanese steampunk novel Stormdancer due out in September (in the US). It's the first book in a planned series called The Lotus War. check out this site for more information on the book and the world.
If you love that Stormdancer cover (I do), check out the interview with the writer and the artist on Tor.com showing the evolution of the image.
Lauren Oliver, whose lovely Liesl & Po is one of my favorite books, has a series featuring 17-year-old Lena, who has defied the law against love in her Portland, ME community. The first book is called Delirium; the second, Pandemonium, was published in February.
Sixteen-year-old Tris Prior is the heroine of Veronica Roth's Divergent. (The cover art shamelessly evokes the "Mockingjay" logo of Hunger Games, just in case readers don't immediately identify the book's genre.)  Book 2 of the series Insurgent, was published this month.
Graceling actually came out the year before Hunger Games (2009) but its intrepid teenage heroine Katsa is a bold woman whose particular skill is killing. Written by Kristen Cashore, who has written a "companion volume" called Fire.
YA has changed a lot since I was a YA. I love that young women have their own action heroines now. Romance is fine, but give us sword fights too!