There Can Never Be Too Many Book Blogs

New Yorker Magazine enters the fray. Their blog is called Page Turner. Check it out here.

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!

Update to Less is More

The new winner of the longest title for a biography goes to Dr. Thomas Noguchi for:

Coroner; America's Most Controversial Medical Examiner explores the unanswered questions surrounding the deaths of Marilyn Monroe, Robert F. Kennedy, Sharon Tate, Janis Joplin, William Holden, Natalie Wood, John Belushi and many other of his important cases

 

Knock Knock. Who's There?

It's Mark Satchwill who has written and illustrated the first NoHo comic strip story "Knock Knock," "Knock, Knock" will be published tomorrow and will be available for download as a pdf. Stop by the NoHo site tomorrow to check it out. And please leave a comment.

Book Titles: Less is More

I freely admit--I'm terrible with titles. They either occur to me right away or I end up agonizing over them for way too long and go with something lame. However, after compiling a list of biographies and memoirs for a new site (details soon), I don't feel so bad. You would not believe the number of authors who couldn't let well enough alone after coming up with a catchy title and saddled the book cover with the longest subtitles they could think of.
For instance: We Bought a Zoo.  Not the greatest title in the world but it tells you what you need to know about the story, But just in case a reader has reading comprehension problems, the author added this subtitle: The Amazing True Story of a Broken-Down Zoo, and the 200 Animals That Changed a Family Forever. Then, when the movie tie-in audio book edition was published, it got an even loner subtitle:  the Amazing True Story of a Young Family, a Broken Down Zoo and the 200 Wild Animals that Changed Their Lives Forever.  That's a total of 26 words. A couple of other book titles matched that total but so far, I haven't found any that surpassed it. There were a lot of titles in the 20-word range though.
Makes me even more appreciative of one-word mystery titles. And here's a  link to a column by Bill Morris about the Appeals and Perils of the One-Word book title.

Pulp Ink 2 is coming!

I just signed off on Nigel Bird and Chris Rhatigan's edit of my story "Thicker than Water." And what graceful edits they were! I am thrilled to be in the company of so many great writers and cannot wait to read their stories. You can see the lineup here. Check out the great cover art.

Review: BLOOD WILL TELL by Christine Pope

A woman searching for her father’s killer.

A man looking for his next score.

Miala has nothing in common with inter-galactic adventurer Eryk Thorn, but when fate throws them together, they discover they have more in common than an instinct for survival. 

Author Christine Pope returns to the sci fi world of Breath of Life in this sexy, savvy space opera. 

Blood Will Tell begins with  Miala undercover in the compound of Arlen Mast, the  criminal mastermind who had her father killed. She's determined to take her vengeance and clean out his treasury while she's at it and she's got the hacker skills to do just that.

When fate intervenes and she finds herself in a position to claim Mast's booty, she also finds herself partnered up with the notorious Eryk Thorn, who hides his face under wrappings and keeps his past a secret.

But he's not the only one with secrets, and the longer Miala is around Thorn, the more complicated it gets. And just when we think we know how it's going to end, Pope surprises us by raising the stakes, raising the temperature and raising our expectations. The book is Pope's best yet. Not only that, but this book reads like the first in a series. I can't wait.