Good Reads & Views

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin
Fiction

What it’s about: Not long after the death of her mother, Yeine Darre is summoned to the city of Sky to become a third heir for her grandfather, the ruler of the city of Sky and therefore the world. Yeine hopes to solve her mother’s murder but becomes embroiled in a plot by the captive gods to win their freedom. She does not plan to fall in love with the Nightlord himself.

Why you should read it: N. K. Jemisin just won her third Hugo Award and is one of the leading writers in the Afrofuturism movement. This book is a good starting point to experience her rich worldbuilding and an unusual cast of characters.

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An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson
Fiction

This fantasy story hooked me in fast with its beautiful cover and didn’t let go. I loved the lush descriptions of colors in the paintings, the fast pace, and the gutsy heroine. If you like stories about the Fae, give this one a try.

Isobel paints portraits of the fair folk, but when she captures the mortal sadness in the autumn prince Rook’s eyes, he kidnaps her in a rage, saying she has made him look vulnerable to his enemies. And then they fall in love, which makes things worse.

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Eliza And Her Monsters By Francesca Zappia
YA Fiction

Eliza Mirk is barely noticed at school, but online, she’s LadyConstellation, the anonymous creator of a hugely popular web comic called Monstrous Sea. (People buy Monstrous Sea t-shirts and even get tattoos.) When a new guy at school tells Eliza he loves Monstrous Sea, she pretends to be just another fan of the series, but as their relationship deepens, she wonders about telling him the truth.

Fans of Rainbow Rowell’s Fan Girl and Carry On, Simon Snow, this one’s for you. I liked the wistful tone of this story and the interactions of super shy couple Eliza and Wallace. In between their story are excerpts from Monstrous Sea, and at Wattpad, you can also find Children of Hypnos, a fantasy series alluded to in Eliza and Her Monsters.

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The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch
Fiction

Another treat in this wonderful mystery series, which incorporates fantasy, English history, and the supernatural. This time around, police officer/wizard Peter Grant investigates a series of hauntings on the London Underground, assisted by new and old friends, including his precocious young cousin, Abigail. Although this novella wraps up quickly, Peter’s quips about everything from how magic works to his ruminations on architecture are just as funny as in the rest of the books.

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11/22/63 by Stephen King
Fiction

If you love reading time travel books or suspense or adventure or historical fiction or romance or alternate history novels… this book just might be for you. In this big, absorbing genre-bender, King explores what would happen if we were able to change history. When Jake’s dying friend asks him to take over his mission to prevent JFK’s assassination by traveling back in time through a wormhole, Jake can’t think of any reason why not. And then the story’s off and running… Jake returns to the late 1950s and learns to love (and sometimes hate) life in a “simpler” time. Jake’s wry first-person narration puts us right there with him, in a richly evoked late ’50s / early ’60s setting, among memorable characters. If you like stories that take you on a long, winding, exciting, surprising ride, give this one a try.

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Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson
YA Fiction

Elisa is a pampered princess with a Godstone in her navel, which means she is destined for a life of service…if only she knew what that meant. When she is kidnapped and taken across the desert, she must figure out how to survive and how to stop the invasion of a powerful enemy. Although Elisa seems whiny at first, I was surprised how strong she became. This unusual fantasy world is based on medieval Spain and is richly imagined.

Marked in Flesh by Anne Bishop
Fiction

The fourth book in the Others series by Anne Bishop continues the story of the Lakeside Courtyard and its unusual inhabitants. I love this series for showing the very different mindsets of the shapeshifters who struggle to understand the human world and who must band together with humans to try to keep the peace in turbulent times. (At times the violence is graphic, but it is not superfluous.) At stake is the fate of humanity in a very altered world.

The Bees by Laline Paull
Fiction

This surprising and imaginative dystopian fantasy will have you thinking of bees and the intricate social rituals of a hive in a whole new way. Sanitation worker Flora 717, born to the lowest social order of the hive, is excessively large, and unlike her sister sanitation workers, Flora 717 can speak. She is a variation and not a deformity, and so is permitted to live and even become part of the priestess Sister Sage's private experiment. This gives her permission to move among the different social strata, where she witnesses much of the beauty and mystery of the behavior rituals of bees. She works in the nursery, becomes a forager, and fights off enemies. When Flora breaks one on the hive's sacred laws, and lays an egg of her own, her secret pits her against the hive. Much of the information about life in the hive and social structure is accurate, but Paull does take some liberties with science. Even so, after reading this, I feel even more compelled to avoid using pesticides.

The Murdstone Trilogy by Mal Peet
Fiction

For those who love epic fantasy as well as those who find it irksome, this book is a treat. Author Mal Peet skewers the fantasy genre and the book publishing industry in this laugh out loud tale. Author Phillip Murdstone’s agent tells him she can’t find a publisher for his latest young adult book, so she tells him he should write an epic fantasy story instead and details everything he must include on a cocktail napkin. Phillip flounders until he wanders up to the local stone circle drunk and awakens the next day with a great idea for a fantasy book, all laid out in his head. But the book idea comes with a price…

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate
J Middle School

Yes, this is a children’s book. (A Rebecca Caudill award winner.) Yes, it’s about talking animals. And yes, you should read it – it’s heartwarming and heartbreaking, and it reads really fast. It would make a great book discussion, especially paired with a book like Encountering Gorillas: A Chronicle of Discovery, Exploitation, Understanding, and Survival by James L. Newman.

Ivan is a gorilla. He and the other inhabitants of the mall zoo live in small enclosures and watch people pass by every day. Ivan doesn’t remember much about his life before the zoo, but when a baby elephant named Ruby comes to live with them, he begins to remember. And he wants Ruby to have a better life than being subjected to the claw stick.