Today marks the second stop on the official Blog Tour for author Carrie Ryan’s newest release, The Dead-Tossed Waves – book 2 in her planned trilogy documenting a world ravaged by the zombie apocalypse. You can check out the first stop on the tour over atCynsations and her interview with Carrie yesterday.

Poignant. Memorable. Heartbreaking. These are words that describe Carrie Ryan’s work – and The Dead-Tossed Waves is no exception.

We are proud to have the incredibly talented Carrie Ryan over for a chat about her book, and to talk about her own favorite zombie books/comics/movies. Without further ado, we give you the awesome Carrie!

The Book Smugglers: Ever since delighting and terrifying mainstream audiences vis-a-vis George A. Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, zombies have been an iconic “monster” in popular culture. Some authors and films use zombies for the obvious schlock, horror and gore…but some authors, like yourself, use the zombie story as an insightful critique of human nature. To you, what does the zombie represent? Why do you write about humans living in a zombie-plagued world?

Carrie: Wow, great question! I think the zombie can represent so many things: the inevitable and inescapable march of death, fear of the future, nihilism, uncertainty about the world. In my stories I think the zombie often represents existence for existence sake — the idea of plodding through time for no other reason than to occupy space. This is something that I think we all wonder about at some point — the idea of why am I here, what do I contribute to those around me, what will I do with my life?

As for why I write about humans in a zombie-plagued world, I think I’ve just always been fascinated by the idea of survival and the extremes people will go through to stay alive. I’ve always been fascinated by books like Hatchet or movies like Alive. The zombie apocalypse is something that the world wouldn’t recover from quickly and I really enjoy pondering the question of what you do when everything you’ve ever known so radically changes?

The Book Smugglers: There are some striking themes in THE FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH and THE DEAD-TOSSED WAVES – the loss (and restriction) of knowledge, fear of the known and unknown, and in the midst of this oppressing fear, love and the will to survive. Instead of overwhelming bleakness (i.e. Cormac McCarthy’s THE ROAD and other post-apocalyptic novels), there is the light of hope in your books – can you tell us why you choose this path for your stories? Are you an optimist?

Carrie: I’m glad you see the hope in my stories because to me it’s definitely there! I think that since the dawn of time people have had to struggle to survive and carve out a place in the world but even in the most daunting of circumstances, they find time for love, friendship, companionship. To me this is what life is about — it’s sort of the phrase you always hear that life isn’t about the destination but the journey. My characters could focus only on getting through the life they’ve been given or they can choose to take advantage of the calm moments.

I like to think of myself as an optimist though I think I have an uncanny knack for coming up with the worst-case scenarios (which served me well as a lawyer).

The Book Smugglers: Another resonant image in both of your books is that of fences and barriers. These enclosures keep inhabitants safe from The Unconsecrated/Mudo, but simultaneously imprison them – not only are the walls obstacles, but their fear and lack of knowledge shackles them too. Do you think these barriers are more harmful than helpful? If you were faced with the decision to stay safe behind the fences or risk the outside world, what would you choose?

Carrie: I definitely think the lack of knowledge is more harmful than helpful — I think that it’s hard to ask someone to make a decision about their life without giving them all the tools they need to make that decision, including all relevant information. At the same time, I think Sister Tabitha withheld knowledge purely out of love (you learn a lot more about her in my short story Hare Moon coming this summer in the Kiss My Deadly anthology edited by Trisha Telep).

To use another quote I had in my “quote journal” growing up: “a ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not why ships are built” (William Shedd). This is how I see Gabry in The Dead-Tossed Waves. I think it’s easy to want to stick with the status quo and avoid scary/hard to take risks. I remember the first time I had to go to court and I was terrified. My initial reaction was to say no but if I wanted to learn, I had to overcome the fear (yes, my fly was down when I stood up in front of the judge so I figured it could only get better from there).

That’s a great question, what would I choose? I think there are a lot of people who live very happy and fulfilled lives in my books — people content in Mary’s village and in Gabry’s town and so I don’t think they made bad choices for wanting to stay behind their barriers. At the same time, I know Mary would never be content to stay safe and Gabry made her decisions out of fear which constantly held her back. I’d like to think that I don’t make decisions out of fear, but that I’m also not reckless — that I appreciate what I have.

The Book Smugglers: Why did you decide to write Young Adult novels, as opposed to any other genre or category?

Carrie: When I was in high school I read about a romance author who said she sat down to write after reading a book and thinking “I can do that!” Reading those words I thought to myself “if she can do that, I can too!” And I think that because I was reading romance at the time I always assumed I’d write romance when I grew up. For a couple of years after college I did write romance and then after law school when I dedicated myself to writing again I realized that what really inspired me were young adult books. These are the books that taught me to love reading, to escape in other worlds and kept me up late speed reading to the end. The idea that I could join those ranks was just too tempting for me to give up!

I also really love that young adult books are all shelved in one mass — you can combine romance and sci fi and fantasy and horror and anything else and not worry about where you’ll get shelved in the bookstore.

The Book Smugglers: What books do you recommend for readers, ravenous for more books like yours after they have devoured THE FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH and THE DEAD-TOSSED WAVES?

Carrie: Anyone interested in the zombie apocalypse would probably enjoy World War Z by Max Brooks. For tense dystopia I’d recommend The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. For action Diana Peterfreund’s Rampant and for romance Graceling by Kristin Cashore and The Season by Sarah MacLean.

And now, for Carrie’s Favorite Zombie/Post-Apocalypse/Dystopia Books/Comics/Movies!

1. World War Z. Max Brooks is just a genius with this book — not only does he go through the zombie apocalypse step by step but he creates a huge cast of very distinct voices and stories along the way. Utterly absorbing.

2. Dawn of the Dead. I know most people hate the remake, but it will always have a place in my heart as the movie that started it all.

3. Night of the Living Dead. George Romero’s movie that really created the modern zombie (though they weren’t called zombies in the film). I actually really hated this movie the first time I saw it because I was so frustrated at the characters inability to get it together to survive. But then I heard Romero talk about the point of the movie which was society’s inability ot get their act together to solve really big issues in the world like poverty, hunger, war, etc. This made me love the movie.

4. Shawn of the Dead. This zombie flick perfectly nails the kitch humor of zombies and then the utter pathos and despaire that can come along with it. I don’t think I’ve laughed as hard at a movie or been more moved.

5. The Walking Dead. Robert Kirkman notes that his goal with this graphic novel series is that it has no end — there’s not set story arc but instead he just wanted to explore what happens to people constantly trying to survive after a zombie apocalypse.

6. Left 4 Dead (1 and 2). Brilliant video game with lots of zombie killing.

7. Zombie Fluxx is a fun little card game where the rules are constantly changing. And one rule is that every time you draw a zombie card you have to groan like a zombie – best rule ever!

8. 28 Days Later. Sure some zombie purists don’t count this as a zombie flick, but these fast zombies are utterly terrifying.

Born and raised in Greenville, South Carolina, Carrie Ryan is a graduate of Williams College and Duke University School of Law. A former litigator, she now writes full time. She lives with her writer/lawyer fiancé, two fat cats and one large puppy in Charlotte, North Carolina. They are not at all prepared for the zombie apocalypse.

You can read more about Carrie on her website HERE, or her blog HERE.

A huge thank you to Carrie Ryan! And make sure to check out the next stop on The Dead-Tossed Waves blog tour! Tomorrow, she’s at MTVNews.com’s “Hollywood Crush”.

Title: The Dead-Tossed Waves

Author: Carrie Ryan

Genre: Horror, Post-Apocalypse/Dystopia, Young Adult

Publisher: Delacorte
Publication Date: March 2010
Hardcover: 416 Pages

Gabry lives a quiet life, secure in her town next to the sea and behind the Barrier. She’s content to let her friends dream of the Dark City up the coast while she watches from the top of her lighthouse. Home is all she’s ever known, and all she needs for happiness.

But life after the Return is never safe, and there are threats even the Barrier can’t hold back.

Gabry’s mother thought she left her secrets behind in the Forest of Hands and Teeth, but like the dead in their world, secrets don’t stay buried. And now, Gabry’s world is crumbling.

One night beyond the Barrier…

One boy Gabry’s known forever and one veiled in mystery…

One reckless moment, and half of Gabry’s generation is dead, the other half imprisoned.

Gabry knows only one thing: if she is to have any hope of a future, she must face the forest of her mother’s past.

Stand alone or series: Book 2 in a planned trilogy, however can be read as a stand alone novel.

How did I get this book: Review Copy from the publisher

Why did I read this book: I am a huge Carrie Ryan fangirl. Her first novel, The Forest of Hands and Teeth was one of my Top 10 Reads of 2009 – needless to say, I was chomping at the bit (ho-ho!) for the chance to read The Dead-Tossed Waves.

Review:

On the shore of a horizon-spanning placid ocean is a lighthouse, its beacon a lone, strong light in the night, cutting through the darkness that enshrouds the seaside town of Vista. With her mother, Mary, Gabrielle tends to the shore, living a life of relative calm and security. When the Mudo wash up on the shore following high tides, Gabry helps her mother decapitate and dispatch of them, as is their duty as keepers in the small town. Gabry has always known a life of safety behind the village barriers; a beloved daughter, a dear best friend, and maybe even one day, someone’s girlfriend. When her friends decide to sneak over the barrier for a night in the rundown amusement park just outside the walls, Gabry is terrified. She has never broken the rules and does not wish to step beyond the safety of her world; especially not into a place where the insatiable Mudo could be lurking. But, urged on by her best friend Cira and the boy that makes her heart race, Catcher, Gabry sneaks out with the others into the ruins. It is here that she shares her first kiss with Catcher, and revels in the promise that her life holds. All of those dreams and hopes, however, come crashing down – a “breaker” senses the humans nearby, and sprints towards the group of teens, infecting and killing three of the group, Catcher among them. In an instant, Gabrielle’s life, and her friends’ lives, have been turned upside down. While Gabry is able to escape, her surviving friends aren’t so lucky, and are sentenced to service with the Recruiters – the force that patrols and protects the villages of the loose confederation from the Mudo threat – but without reward of citizenship at the end of their two year term. To Gabry’s mind, this is a death sentence – and still shocked by the loss of Catcher to infection, she’s also losing everyone she’s ever known. When Cira begs her to find out, to follow her brother Catcher until his demise, Gabry cannot refuse – and so she makes her way across the sea of the dead, and beyond the barriers of her safe, now shattered, world.

Well, wow. The Dead-Tossed Waves was my numero uno; my absolute MOST highly anticipated novel of 2010. In other words, The Dead-Tossed Waves had quite a bill to live up to – and, for the most part, I am happy to report that it does.

There’s a strength of plot and of continuity with The Dead-Tossed Waves. We readers get ANSWERS in this book. We learn why some of the Mudo/Unconsecrated are fast, and some are slow; we finally see the origins of Mary’s village in the forest of hands and teeth; we learn about the outside world, how it is governed, and what future is available to the living, surviving amongst the undead.

Beyond the strengths in terms of plotting, The Dead-Tossed Waves works so well because of how tragically flawed and heartrendingly human all of its characters are. This novel is a continuation of The Forest of Hands and Teeth, but instead of following protagonist Mary, the novel follows Mary’s daughter in an interesting twist. Inevitably, this invites a whole bunch of comparisons between Mary and Gabry, as heroines and narrators. Gabry is not as winsome as her mother – but that’s a tough legacy to live up to. Heck, even Gabrielle knows this, as she constantly compares herself to her mother! Countless times, she extrapolates about her lack of strength, her lack of curiosity and lack of a sense of adventure – especially since her mother was willing to risk so much on a mere dream. Though, Gabry is much more like her mother than she gives herself credit for – she too makes a number of impulsive, not-so-hot decisions yet is strong in her own, different way. It should be said, however, that Gabry is ever-so-slightly irritating with her emotional equivocating between two devoted boys (seriously, where do YA heroines find these guys?), and in her tendency to put blame on herself for EVERYTHING (which reads as slightly ego-centric).

But… isn’t that what people are really like?

Not always brave and strong, not always right, not always knowing what they want, not in tune with where their hearts lie? I loved that Gabry was terrified, paralyzed by fear, and unlike Mary. In stark contrast to her mother, who grew up with dreams bigger than her village’s fences could contain and who lost her family to the Unconsecrated, Gabry has grown up in love, and in a home sheltered in safety. Does that make her “weak”? I don’t think so. In fact, it makes it harder for her, because she has so much more to lose. And the most endearing thing about Gabry is the fact that she is so afraid of the outside world, and in spite of that fear, she does take the risk and lives, challenging the barriers that have held the Unconsecrated/Mudo out, but also trapping her in, too. And that, dear readers, is really, really freaking cool.

Beyond the first-person protagonist, the other characters of The Dead-Tossed Waves are similarly endearing. Elias, the boy shrouded in mystery, is awesome. He is a shadowed, uncertain figure; an outsider that uses Gabry’s mother’s terminology to describe the Mudo – Unconsecrated. Then there’s Catcher, Gabry’s first love interest – who also is a very interesting character, connected to Gabry in a way that Elias never really can be.

All this said, The Dead-Tossed Waves is by no means a perfect novel. It falls short of its predecessor, straying towards the melodramatic in its last few chapters, with plot twists thrown in to tear apart characters for the sole reason of emotional exploitation. There’s also the familiar YA syndrome of two dreamy dudes head-over-heels in love with the same girl, and you know how that song goes. Yet, despite these minor drawbacks, The Dead-Tossed Waves is a beautiful, heartwrenching novel. These are very genuine characters, in an impossible, terrifying reality, confronted with the choice to survive, or to live.

And that, my friends, makes all the difference in the world.

You’ve got to love (or at least respect) an author that does not shy away from heartache. When you live in a forest of jagged teeth and sickly moans, on the shores of a sea teeming with bloated, ever-hungry corpses, you are unquestionably surrounded by death. Death is inevitable. And for all this sorrow and bitterness, The Dead-Tossed Waves is tempered with hope, and with love. That’s a wonderful, rare thing. Written throughout with Carrie Ryan’s dazzling, almost poetic, poignant prose, The Dead-Tossed Waves is a novel to be read over and over again.

I loved it. And I cannot wait for more from this incredibly talented author.

Notable Quotes/Parts: From the first chapter:

The story goes that even after the Return they tried to keep the roller coasters going. They said it reminded them of the before time. When they didn’t have to worry about people rising from the dead, when they didn’t have to build fences and walls and barriers to protect themselves from the masses of Mudo constantly seeking human flesh. When the living weren’t forever hunted.

They said it made them feel normal.

And so even while the Mudo—neighbors and friends who’d been infected, died and Returned—pulled at the fences surrounding the amusement park, they kept the rides moving.

Even after the Forest was shut off, one last gasp at sequestering the infection and containing the Mudo, the carousel kept turning, the coasters kept rumbling, the teacups kept spinning. Though my town of Vista was far away from the core of the Protectorate, they hoped people would come fly along the coasters. Would still want to forget.

But then travel became too difficult. People were concerned with trying to survive and little could make them forget the reality of the world they lived in. The coasters slowly crumbled outside the old city perched at the tip of a long treacherous road along the coast. Everyone simply forgot about them, one other aspect of pre-Return life that gradually dimmed in the memories and stories passed down from year to year.

I never really thought about them until tonight—when my best friend’s older brother invites us to sneak past the Barriers and into the ruins of the amusement park with him and his friends.

“Come on, Gabry,” Cira whines, dancing around me. I can almost feel the energy and excitement buzzing off her skin. We stand next to the Barrier that separates Vista from the ruins of the old city, the thick wooden wall keeping the dangers of the world out and us safely in. Already a few of the older kids have skimmed over the top, their feet a flash against the night sky. I rub my palms against my legs, my heart a thrum in my chest.

There are a thousand reasons why I don’t want to go with them into the ruins, not the least of which is that it’s forbidden. But there’s one reason I do want to take the risk. I glance past Cira to her brother and his eyes catch mine. I can’t stop the seep of heat crawling up my neck as I dart my gaze away, hoping he didn’t notice me looking and at the same time desperately wishing he did.

“Gabry?” he asks, his head tilted to the side. From his lips my name curls around my ears. An invitation.

Afraid of the tangle of words twisting around my own tongue, I swallow and place my hand against the thick wood of the Barrier. I’ve never been past it before. It’s against the rules to leave the town without permission and it’s also risky. While mostof the ruins are bordered by old fences from after the Return, Mudo can still get through them. They can still attack us.

“We shouldn’t,” I say, more to myself than to Cira or Catcher. Cira just rolls her eyes; she’s already jumping with desire to join the others. She grabs my arm with a barely repressed squeal.

“This is our chance,” she whispers to me. I don’t tell her what I’ve been thinking—that it’s our chance to get in trouble at best and I don’t want to think about what could happen at worst.

But she knows me well enough to read my thoughts. “No one’s been infected in years,” she says, trying to convince me. “Catcher and them go out there all the time. It’s totally safe.”

Safe—a relative term. A word my mother always uses with a hard edge to her voice.

Additional Thoughts: Delacorte has released new covers for both The Forest of Hands and Teeth (for the paperback version), and the current cover of The Dead-Tossed Waves is another replacement for an earlier model. I, for one, prefer the older covers. The new ones are still rather pretty, but more…commercial. I suppose that’s a good thing for a book, but those first covers are so hauntingly gorgeous! Any thoughts?

Also, make sure to stop by later today as we host a stop on the official blog tour for Carrie Ryan’s release!

Rating: 8 – Excellent

Reading Next: A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire

Title: Black Magic Sanction

Author: Kim Harrison

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Publisher: Eos
Publication Date: February 2010
Hardcover: 496 pages

In New York Times bestselling author Kim Harrison’s most complex and nuanced adventure yet, bounty hunter and witch Rachel Morgan fights a deadly battle—mind, body, and soul

Black Magic Sanction

Rachel Morgan has fought and hunted vampires, werewolves, banshees, demons, and other supernatural dangers as both witch and bounty hunter—and lived to tell the tale. But she’s never faced off against her own kind . . . until now. Denounced and shunned for dealing with demons and black magic, her best hope is life imprisonment—at worst, a forced lobotomy and genetic slavery. Only her enemies are strong enough to help her win her freedom, but trust comes hard when it hinges on the unscrupulous tycoon Trent Kalamack, the demon Algaliarept, and an ex-boyfriend turned thief.

It takes a witch to catch a witch, but survival bears a heavy price.

Stand alone or series: Book 8 in the ongoing Hollows (Rachel Morgan) series

How did I get this book: Review Copy from the publisher

Why did I read this book: Do you even have to ask? The Hollows series is among my all time favorite UF series’ – in the top 3, to be precise. There’s just something about Kim Harrison’s writing that *does it* for me. And even though I was a tad bit disappointed with the previous novel in the series, I was still foaming at the mouth to get my grubby paws on Black Magic Sanction.

Review:

Every time I open a new Hollows adventure, I know that I’m in for a good adrenaline rush, the likes of which only Rachel Morgan can deliver.

Black Magic Sanction is no exception, delivering the white-knuckle action in spades, while simultaneously advancing the overall series storyline in a dark direction. Me likey. Me likey a lot.

A warning – this review contains necessary spoilers for the first seven books in the series. If you have not read the first seven books and do not wish to be spoiled, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Picking up almost immediately after White Witch, Black Curse, Black Magic Sanction follows Rachel as she has fully embraced her status as the student (not the familiar) of demon Algalirept (better known simply as “Al”). Unfortunately for Rache, a whole bunch of folks are pissy that she’s running around able to twist demon curses – not to mention the fact that any time some sort of very public disaster, Vampiric Charms always seems to be at the center of it. Though she’s been shunned by the Coven (a huge deal and last resort, reserved for only the wickedest of witches), Rachel soon realizes she has a lot more to worry about than finding new places to buy her magical goods and shifty looks – because now someone has a death warrant out on her. Again. Facing the tempting choices of becoming a lobotomized broodmare for the Coven (popping out demon-magic babies), or six feet under and pushing up daisies, Rachel’s got to find a way out of her uncomfortable predicament, even if it means taking Trent Kalamack head-on again, and reuniting with an unwelcome face from her past.

Tink’s titties, Black Magic Sanction is a riproaring-good read! Personally, I found Black Magic Sanction a step back in the right direction for Rachel and company after the disappointment that was White Witch, Black Curse. This book was exciting, it was emotional, and it meant a lot of changes for Rachel. In many ways, it’s a throwback to Dead Witch Walking as Rachel has another death warrant on her head, but this time, she’s facing some serious danger from her own kind. And let me tell you – white witches are just as scary as the black magic kind (and much scarier than anything the I.S. can throw at Rache). As with almost all of the books in this series, Ms. Harrison excels when it comes to tight plotting and non-stop danger, and as such Black Magic Sanction is an incredibly fast-paced read. But don’t think that fast-paced means a lack of depth; this novel is another turning point of sorts for Rachel, in coming to grips with her past and everything she’s ever been taught about “good” and “bad” magic. Given her own lineage (and the lineage of all witches), are demons truly evil? Is the ability to twist black magic truly a bad thing – especially if Rachel is the one to take the smut on her own aura, willingly? Or is she becoming more and more a demon each day? There’s a whole bunch of moral ambiguity in this book as Rachel has to resort to getting her hands dirty in order to stay alive – but in true Rachel Morgan fashion, she manages to keep her heart, if not her head, in the right place.

In that vein, Black Magic Sanction embodies the characteristics that I both love and abhor about Rachel Morgan as a character. She’s one of those heroines that never fails to piss me off with her numerous TSTL (too stupid to live) moments and her sometimes complete obtuseness as to what she actually wants, emotionally. But at the same time, the struggles that Rachel goes through each book, and especially in this one, make her one of the most endearing heroines in the female-protagonist centered UF genre. In spite of her flaws – or perhaps, because of them – I love Rachel as a character, and I do want her to be happy. Despite her lapses of idiocy, her heart is always in the right place as one scene in this book in particular, involving assassin fairies, proves.

Of course, what’s a Rachel Morgan book without the myriad relationship complications? Rachel is notorious for her attraction to danger, and for jumping into relationships without truly thinking things through beforehand. But in Black Magic Sanction, with the attraction to Pierce (a witch from the 1800s, now inhabiting the body of the recently deceased black witch that gave Rache so much trouble in the last book), Rachel shows some growth in the relationship arena. There’s also some closure with a blast from the past – but I’ll let you discover that for yourself. Also, I’ve gotta say that I LOVE the ever-evolving relationship between Kalamack and Morgan. It’s a love-hate thing, and it has been such ever since their steeped history as children, which, incidentally, we get to see a little bit more of in the form of a flashback in this book. And while Rachel is growing stronger and more assured in what she wants and needs in a relationship, she also has reached an understanding with Ivy (whom I’ve always wanted Rachel to end up with). I love that the emo-drama between the two has been toned down, although Ivy’s backseat in this book is a bit of a regret. The most fun character, however, has got to be demon teacher Al. He’s terrifying, inhuman, and yet hilarious all at the same time – and that’s quite an accomplishment.

Most of all, I love that as the title suggests, Black Magic Sanction shows Rachel embracing the fact she can twist black magic and is using it as she needs. It’s the only way she can stay alive, and she’s forced to ask herself some tough questions. The biggest question the book leaves with readers is – what exactly is Rachel? And what is she becoming? Is she a demon? You know how the saying goes – if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck…

Needless to say, there’s a lot of speculation one can make concerning Rachel and where the story goes next. Black Magic Sanction provides a lot of VERY interesting fodder in the next few books in the series, and I, for one, am very excited to see what happens next!

Notable Quotes/Parts: From the first chapter:

Tucking my hair back, I squinted at the parchment, trying to form the strange angular letters as smoothly as I could. The ink glistened wetly, but it wasn’t red ink, it was blood—my blood—which might account for the slight tremble in my hand as I copied the awkward-looking name scripted in characters that weren’t English. Beside me was a pile of rejects. If I didn’t get it perfect this time, I’d be bleeding yet again. God help me. I was doing a black curse. In a demon’s kitchen. On the weekend. How in hell had I gotten here?

Algaliarept stood poised between the slate table and the smaller hearth, his white-gloved hands behind his back. He looked like a stuffy Brit in a murder mystery, and when he shifted impatiently, my tension spiked. “That isn’t helping,” I said dryly, and his red, goat-slitted eyes widened in a mocking surprise, peering at me over his smoked spectacles. He didn’t need them to read with. From his crushed green velvet frock, to his lace cuffs and proper English accent, the demon was all about show.

“It has to be exact, Rachel, or it won’t capture the aura,” he said, his attention sliding to the small green bottle on the table. “Trust me, you don’t want that floating around unbound.”

I sat up to feel my back crack. Touching the quill tip to my throbbing finger, my unease grew. I was a white witch, damn it, not black. But I wasn’t going to write off demon magic just because of a label. I’d read the recipe; I’d interpreted the invocation. Nothing died to provide the ingredients, and the only person who’d suffer would be me. I’d come away from this with a new layer of demon smut on my soul, but I’d also have protection against banshees. After one had nearly killed me last New Years, I’d willingly entertain a little smut to be safe. Besides, this might lead to a way to save Ivy’s soul when she died her first death. For that, I’d risk a lot.

You can read the full excerpt online HERE.

And if you’re hungry for more, you can read the first SEVEN CHAPTERS of Black Magic Sanction online for free, thanks to Harper Collins’ awesome Browse Inside feature:

Additional Thoughts: Want more Kim Harrison? Well, check out her interview, in which she talks all about Black Magic Sanction and The Hollows:

Verdict: Much better than its predecessor and a kickback to the early days in the series, Black Magic Sanction shows Rachel Morgan (and Kim Harrison) in top form. A must-read for fans – especially for those who (like myself) may have felt the last book was a step backwards.

Rating: 8 – Excellent

Reading Next: The Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan

Our giveaway of Wherever Nina Lies by Lynn Weingarten has officially come to a close, and we’ve got THREE lucky giveaway winners to announce.

Nina was beautiful, wild, and adored by her younger sister, Ellie. But, one day, Nina disappeared. Two years later, everyone has given up home that Nina will return, but Ellie knows her sister is out there. If only Ellie had a clue where to look. Then she gets one, in the form of a mysterious drawing. Determined to find Nina, Ellie takes off on a crazy, sexy, cross-country road trip with the only person who believes she’s got a chance—her hot, adventurous new crush. Along the way, Ellie finds a few things she wasn’t planning on. Like love. Lies. And the most shocking thing of all: the truth.

And the lucky winners are:

Congratulations to the winners! Now, you know the drill. Send us an email (contact AT thebooksmugglers DOT com) with your snail mail address, and we will get your winnings out to you as soon as possible!

Thank you to all that entered!

Howdy folks, and happy Sunday!

As the first part of our official Steampunk Week comes to a close, we return to our regularly scheduled programming…but fret not! If you want more dirigible-inspired goodness, we’ve got our second installment of Steampunk Week coming at you next month…

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes:

Well, not much today other than – we got a makeover!!!!! Which you’ve probably noticed. If you look above, we’ve installed a brand spankin’ new navigation bar, for your reading pleasure. One of the most frequent comments we got from you good folks in our recent customer satisfaction survey was the need for easier navigation of the site. And we’ve listened! Want to read all about Ana and Thea? Want to search for a specific review? Want to shoot us an email, or peruse our review policy? All is listed and linked above.

We’ve also widened our post area and lightened the background for our sidebars to help readers with different browsers access our material more easily.

We hope you like the changes! And, as always, please let us know if you’re having any technical issues with the site – we’ll try our best to iron things out.

This Week on The Book Smugglers:

On Monday, Ana reviews coming of age YA novel, The Unwritten Rule by Elizabeth Scott.

On Tuesday, Thea reviews another of her most highly anticipated books of 2010 with the newest installment in Kim Harrison’s ongoing sweet-ass Urban Fantasy series, The Hollows: Black Magic Sanction.

Wednesday, Thea *FINALLY* gets to read and review The Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan – sequel to the Stoker-nominated sensational debut novel The Forest of Hands and Teeth (one of Thea’s Top 10 Books of 2009) by Carrie Ryan! Later in the day, we’ll have Carrie over for a Top 10 List, and to answer five questions about the themes in her harrowing YA novels.

On Thursday, Ana reviews one of her most highly anticipated novels of the year with Maureen Johnson’s Scarlett Fever, sequel to Suite Scarlett.

And finally, we close out the week with a joint review of Seanan McGuire’s second October Daye novel, A Local Habitation!

It’s another busy week, and we hope you enjoy…

And just because this is fun:

Title: Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium

Author: Robert C. Rodgers, illustrated by Todd Wills

Genre: Steampunk, Fantasy, Adventure, Comedy, Young Adult

Publisher: Steam-Powered Press
Publication Date: October 2009
Paperback: 288 pages

In an era of bygone anachronisms and steam-powered ambulatory engines, a sharp-witted street-thief with a heart of semi-precious metal finds herself locked in a battle of wits against a secret plot to bring the city she loves to its knees. Arcadia will need to enlist the help of a reformed mad scientist, a stern suffragette, and a persnickety pigeon to unravel the mysterious past of the Steamwork Consortium – and stop the cabal of sinister mathematicians who would use that past to destroy all of Aberwick. Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium is both a cautionary tale against reckless mathematics and an accurate historical account all rolled up into one. In fact, the story is so accurate that you might consider it more of a history lecture than an illustrated novel.

Stand alone or series: Stand alone novel

How did I get this book: Review Copy from the author

Why did I read this book: Though we mostly review books from larger publishers, we also like to share the love with independent/self/small-presses too – provided the book sounds like something we want to read. When we received a review query from the author of the book last year, I read the synopsis and first chapter online and was instantly hooked – and what better a time to review this novel than during Steampunk Week?

Review:

“Dear Madame,” the letter read. “Although we remain appreciative of your continued attempts to bring a feminine touch to the world of aeronautics, the Royal Society of Aviation regrets to inform you that your design shall fly only once swine have taken to the skies.”

The letter was framed and mounted on the dining room wall.

So begins Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium (henceforth Arcadia Snips), described quite aptly in its tagline as “Being A Wholly Accurate Historical Account Concerning Matters Of Steam, Skullduggery, And The Irresponsible Application Of Reckless Mathematics In The 19th Century.” Of all the books I’ve read this week (so far), Arcadia Snips is by far the most traditionally Steampunkish (Steampunky?). Taking place in the late nineteenth century, the novel includes no shortage of creative machines, flying contraptions, and other steam-powered miscellanea. There’s even political intrigue, a dash of romance, and Great Peril – all of this in spades. Alternating storylines between “the past” (twenty years in the past), in which an unlikely partnership forms between three far-sighted individuals, and the present, in which a thief named Arcadia finds herself in the employ of a powerful Count, as his consultant in the Watts and Sons Detective Agency’s investigation of the murder of Basil Copper.

Arcadia Snips, the titled protagonist, is a delightfully quirky heroine in this delightfully quirky book. Just look at our initial introduction to her:

Beneath Arcadia Sinps’ derby hat and short black curls was the face of a silver-fanged cherub — a mocha-toned antel with enough charm to sell a pack of matches to a man doused in lamp oil. But whenever she grinned, the very tip of that silver fang would tuck over the edge of her bottom tooth. It gave her a savage, frightful look.

It is also worth mentioning that we first meet Arcadia as she is shackled in prison (having escaped from jail twice, and about to accomplish this wriggling, lock-defying feat for the third time in a row). She’s a thief, a wise-cracker, and, again, altogether delightful with her wit and verve. And while Arcadia on her own as a protagonist would be enough personality for this book teeming with silly cleverness, she also has a male counterpart in young William Daffodil, the son of two “mad scientists” (that greatly endangered the city of Aberwick in the past storyline) and a young man that is much more interested in the safety of mathematics than the perils of mad science. This pair…well, they just work.

Beyond these protagonists, there are the “past” characters that are wonderful in and of themselves – Abigail Parsley, for example, has one of the best opening sequences in the book. We also get into the minds of villains, a most unique perspective.

What I loved the most about Arcadia Snips, beyond the characters, was the pure delight of reading the book entails. It’s silly, to be sure, but so witty and absurdly fun, it’s all the better for it. Dialogue between characters verges on the persnickety and crazed at times, but the authenticity and eminent readability of this novel make it all worth it. For every misstep, there’s a gem like this:

The city of Aberwick was a topographical nightmare wrested from the laudanum-fueled fever dreams of half-mad cartographers. It was cradled in a yawning canyon of volcanic rock, with communities swelling up into massive heaps of brick and timber; the trains flowed aside, above, and even through these mounds.

As I said, truly wonderful stuff.

I also should mention that Arcadia Snips is an illustrated novel, with the visual stylings of artist Todd Wills. While I’m not a huge fan of the cover (a bit cartoony and a strange color scheme – does the cover version of Arcadia look like Calamity Jack to anyone else?), I do love the black and white illustrations within as they capture the book’s mood perfectly.

I’m always a little bit scared of taking on independently or self-published books – but books like Arcadia Snips remind me of why I agree to do so in the first place. Every now and then a true undiscovered gem comes along, and I’m happy to say that this book is one of them.

Whole-heartedly recommended to all looking for a farcical, somewhat deranged (in a good way!) steampunk read. Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium is a delight.

BUT IS IT STEAMPUNK? Oh, hell yes. It’s the most traditionally steampunk novel I’ve read this week!

Notable Quotes/Parts: From the introduction:

ACT 1

“In yet another example of tragically misapplied genius, the mysterious anarchist who calls himself Professor Hemlock has done it again—several of the Eastern Aberwick Bank’s calculation engines have been crippled through the irresponsible application of reckless mathematics. The rogue chaotician claimed responsibility for the financial disaster in a letter delivered to the Isle Gazette (see page 9a), citing the company’s cutthroat business tactics, support of imperialism, and rude bank tellers as justification. Authorities continue to investigate the anarchist’s activities while urging all citizens to behave no differently during this time of fiscal duress. Meanwhile, one question lingers upon the lips of every man, woman, and child: Who is Professor Hemlock?”
—Front page of the Isle Gazette, ‘PROFESSOR HEMLOCK STRIKES AGAIN’

Additional Thoughts: The coolest part about Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium? It’s available in its totality for FREE online!

You can check out the book’s website HERE and the illustrator’s website HERE. To download a free PDF copy of the book, go HERE. You won’t regret it.

Rating: 7 – Very Good

Reading Next: Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

Title: Airborn

Author: Kenneth Oppel

Genre: Young Adult, Steampunk, Fantasy

Publisher: Harper Collins
Publication Date: May 2005
Paperback: 544 pages

Sailing toward dawn, and I was perched atop the crow’s nest, being the ship’s eyes. We were two nights out of Sydney, and there’d been no weather to speak of so far. I was keeping watch on a dark stack of nimbus clouds off to the northwest, but we were leaving it far behind, and it looked to be smooth going all the way back to Lionsgate City. Like riding a cloud. . . .

Matt Cruse is a cabin boy on the Aurora, a huge airship that sails hundreds of feet above the ocean, ferrying wealthy passengers from city to city. It is the life Matt’s always wanted; convinced he’s lighter than air, he imagines himself as buoyant as the hydrium gas that powers his ship. One night he meets a dying balloonist who speaks of beautiful creatures drifting through the skies. It is only after Matt meets the balloonist’s granddaughter that he realizes that the man’s ravings may, in fact, have been true, and that the creatures are completely real and utterly mysterious.

In a swashbuckling adventure reminiscent of Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson, Kenneth Oppel, author of the best-selling Silverwing trilogy, creates an imagined world in which the air is populated by transcontinental voyagers, pirates, and beings never before dreamed of by the humans who sail the skies.

Stand alone or series: Book 1 in the Matt Cruse trilogy

How did I get this book: Bought

Why did I read this book: I’ve heard nothing but praise for the works of Kenneth Oppel, and when looking for a new YA novel to read for Steampunk Week, Airborn was the clear choice.

Review:

Matt Cruse was born in the sky.

The son of a dedicated airman, Matt has always longed to fly like his father. And, after his father’s death, Matt finally gets to live out his wish, serving on his father’s old ship, the Aurora, as a cabin boy. Two years in service, the luxury airship comes across a marooned balloon in their path – and young Matt helps to bring the balloon’s sole inhabitant on board to safety. This old adventurer asks Matt if he had seen “them” – beautiful, flying creatures in the sky – just before he dies. One year later, Matt is still hard at work on the Aurora as a cabin boy, having lost out on his opportunity to advance to a junior sailmaker position (to a well-connected, rich young man). Though his hopes are temporarily dashed, Matt is always happiest in the air, and relishes his time aboard the magnificent ship. Then, he meets a girl named Kate de Vries – sassy, intelligent, and adventurous…as well as rich, pretty, and spoiled. As it turns out, Kate is the granddaughter of the man Matt rescued a year prior, and she is travelling on the Aurora with a very specific mission to discover exactly what her grandfather saw. Matt and Kate, despite their difference in class, become fast friends and work together to find answers, and elusive proof of Kate’s grandfather’s magnificent, winged creatures. Of course, things are never so easily accomplished and a number obstacles present themselves – namely pirates, a shipwreck, more pirates, and wild, unfettered danger.

Airborn is a rollicking adventure novel, blending aeronautics with compelling characters, stunning images, and a swashbuckling plot. It’s kind of like Titanic the The Swiss Family Robinson meets Up meets Treasure Island meets Die Hard in the sky. Sounds like an unlikely, unappetizing mix? Let me assure you, gentle readers, I mean this multi-genre/film/book mishmash comparison in the best possible way. I LOVE ALL OF THESE THINGS.

Ergo, I love Airborn.

At 500 pages, Airborn is a swift, unputdownable read. Narrated by Matt Cruse in a clear, level-headed, youthfully honest voice, this book managers to tread familiar waters – or rather, fly familiar skies, a more apropos metaphor – with pirates, young love across class differences, shipwrecks, and mythical bird creatures, and yet still feel fresh and exhilarating. This is the kind of adventure story I want to pass on to younger, reluctant readers, to get them excited about books, about the escapist, fun experience reading can be.

And fun Airborn truly is. Matt Cruse’s world is familiar in its Victorian-type era and aesthetic (impressive, dominant airships, strong class-dividing lines, era-specific wardrobes, etiquette and mannerisms), but Mr. Oppel manages to put a new, steampunk worthy spin on his technology, inventing an entirely new element called “hydrium,” lighter than hydrogen (enabling massive airships to fly to great altitudes without the need for gas or steam power) that smells, strangely, of mangoes. Throughout the book, it is little touches like this that make the setting seem completely natural, and the world plausible (for example, as Matt guides Kate on a tour of the Aurora he points out the many “Depressionist” paintings on display in the cigar room).

In addition to the swashbucking, altogether wondrous plot and worldbuilding, the characters are what make Airborn soar. Kate, as the headstrong and adventurous (dare I say young Amelia Peabody-esque – minus the parasol and ample…well, you know) young heroine is feisty and winsome, more so because she is not without her flaws. In addition to having the usual YA fantasy heroine traits (smart, driven, restless with the constraints of her class and family expectations), she also is uppity, spoiled, and careless – and it’s cool to see that. She’s not perfect, but that’s ok – she’s all the more real and endearing for it. But the true showstealer in Airborn is young Matt Cruse – Cabin Boy, narrator, and heart-wrenchingly honest young man. Matt’s voice is pure and resonant; he shares his fears and emotions without reserve, allowing readers to truly get a feel for this remarkable young protagonist. He’s (obviously) smitten with Kate, but infuriated by her manner at times too, and the interactions between these two characters is alternately tender and hilarious. They make quite the duo on their adventures together, and I cannot wait for more.

If you couldn’t tell, I truly loved Airborn. It’s a feast for the Young Adult, but also for the older, more world-weary reader, looking for pirate-story adventures to sweep them away on a current of mango scented Hydrium.

Plus, Airborn ends with the best closing line ever.

BUT IS IT STEAMPUNK? Hell freakin’ yeah it is. Ok, it’s light on the “punk” component. It doesn’t really challenge or critique society in any way – but the imaginative (yet still relatively simple) technology is central to the story, and it is set in a very Steampunk appropriate world. The book basically takes place on an airship, which isn’t just for show – we readers learn how it works, how the world looks, and what dangers accompany this strange technology. There’s also an almost a “Darwin goes to Galapagos” feel to the book so far as Kate and Matt’s excursions to discover the mysterious Cloud Cats and – very era and sub-genre appropriate.

Notable Quotes/Parts: From the official excerpt:

“Sir, there’s a ship headed towards us!”

The airship was small, and I could now see why I’d not picked her out earlier. Her skin was painted black, and she carried no running beacons anywhere. No light emanated from the Control Car either. Her side bore no markings, no name or number. It was only her dark sheen from the moon’s light that made her visible at all.

“She’s at ten o’clock and sailing straight for us, half a mile.”

“Bear away,” I heard the first office tell his rudder-man. “Elevator up six degrees. Summon the captain.”

That meant we were going into a climb. The Aurora was as responsive as a falcon. Stars streamed to my left as the ship began her turn, angling heavenward. High in the crowsnest, I swivelled in my chair so I could watch the smaller vessel. As we turned and climbed, she turned and climbed with us, keeping herself on a collision course. This was no mistake. She was chasing us. She was smaller and faster than the Aurora, and I could feel the vibration of our engines at full capacity. We would not be able to outrun her.

“Where is she, Mr. Cruse?”
“She’s changed course, but still coming right at us. Closing, at eight o’clock.”
“Raise her on the radio!” I heard the first officer shouting out to the wireless officer.
“She’s not responding.”

A collision seemed sure now, but for what purpose?

“Distance, Cruse!”
“Some two hundred yards, sir.”
“Send out a distress call,” I heard Mr. Rideau instruct the wireless operator.
“We’re too far out, sir,” Mr. Bayard’s voice replied.

It was clear there was no shaking her, this sleek black raptor shadowing us through the night sky.

“She’s angling up, sir,” I said into the speaking tube, “as though she means to overshoot us.”

“Take us down, Mr. Riddihoff, take us down five degrees, with haste!”

I felt the Aurora pivot and her bow dip. My ears popped and heaviness rose through me. I swirled in my seat, peering up and almost over the ship’s stern as the airship pulled closer, altering course as seamlessly as if she’d anticipated our moves.
“Fifty yards off our stern!” I shouted into the speaking tube. “Forty, thirty . . . she’s pulling up over our tail.”

And so she was, this predatory airship, skimming over our tail fins and gradually overtaking us, only a few dozen feet overhead.

“She’s directly overhead, sir, matching us.”

We were levelling out now and so was the other airship. Less than half our size, she was like some agile black shark hounding a whale.

“Hard about, please.”

Through the speaking tube it was the captain’s voice I heard now, and I felt a surge of confidence to know he was on the bridge. He would see us through this. Again the Aurora swivelled, trying to throw off her predator, but once more the smaller ship matched our movements, slinking over us like a shadow. A spotlight flared from its underside, and I saw ropes springing from open bay doors and unfurling towards the Aurora.

“She’s dropping lines on us!” I shouted into the speaking tube.

Pirates! That was all they could be.

“They’re trying to board,” the captain said. “Dive and roll to starboard, please.”

The lines were weighted, for they hit the ship and didn’t slide off. I saw six men already dropping down towards me. But then the Aurora banked sharply, dipped, and the lines slewed off the Aurora’s back, leaving the men dangling in mid-air.

“Ha! You’ll not have us!” I shouted, shaking my fist.

But the pirate airship was already adjusting its course, keeping pace, and as it forced us closer to the waves, we would have less space to manoeuvre. There was a great flash from the pirate ship’s underbelly and a thunderous volley of cannon fire scorched the night sky across our bow.

A voice carried by bullhorn shuddered the air.
“Put your nose to the wind and cut speed.”

There was no need for me to repeat this into the speaking tube for I knew they had heard it in the Control Car. There was a moment of silence, and I could imagine them all down there, standing very straight and still, the elevator men and rudder-men watching the captain, awaiting his command. He had no choice. That cannon could sink us in an instant.

“Level off and put her into the wind, please,” said Captain Walken. “Throttle back the engines to one-quarter. Thank you.”

You can read the full excerpt online HERE.

Additional Thoughts: Airborn is actually the first book in a trilogy following the adventures of Matt and Kate – the next two books are Skybreaker and Starclimber:

Former cabin boy Matt Cruse, now a student at the prestigious Airship Academy, is first to identify the Hyperion, the private airship of a reclusive and fabulously wealthy inventor that disappeared forty years ago with its owner. Armed with the Hyperion’s coordinates, which only he possesses, Matt, heiress Kate de Vries, and a mysterious young gypsy board the Sagarmatha, an airship fitted with the new skybreaker engines that will allow them to reach the Hyperion, 20,000 feet above the earth’s surface. Pursued by others who want the Hyperion and will stop at nothing to get it, and surrounded by dangerous high-altitude life forms, Matt and his companions are soon fighting not only for the Hyperion but for their very lives.

In this thrilling sequel to Airborn, a Michael L. Printz Honor Book, Kenneth Oppel evokes the classic storytelling of Robert Louis Stevenson and Jules Verne, creating a world in which a new discovery can have unimagined consequences — on earth and miles above it.

“Mr. Cruse, how high would you like to fly?”

A smile soared across my face.

“As high as I possibly can.”

Pilot-in-training Matt Cruse and Kate de Vries, expert on high-altitude life-forms, are invited aboard the Starclimber, a vessel that literally climbs its way into the cosmos. Before they even set foot aboard the ship, catastrophe strikes:

Kate announces she is engaged – and not to Matt.

Despite this bombshell, Matt and Kate embark on their journey into space, but soon the ship is surrounded by strange and unsettling life-forms, and the crew is forced to combat devastating mechanical failure. For Matt, Kate, and the entire crew of the Starclimber, what began as an exciting race to the stars has now turned into a battle to save their lives.

Award-winning and bestselling author Kenneth Oppel brings us back to a rich world of flight and fantasy in this breathtaking new sequel to Airborn and Skybreaker.

The series has an awesome interactive website, chock full of great extras. I highly recommend you go forth and check it out.

Rating: 8 – Excellent, and I cannot wait to pick up the next two books in the series!

Reading Next: Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium by Robert C. Rodgers

Title: The Windup Girl

Author: Paolo Bacigalupi

Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopia

Publisher: Night Shade Books
Publication Date: September 2009
Hardcover: 300 pages

What Happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits? And what happens when said bio-terrorism forces humanity to the cusp of post-human evolution? In The Windup Girl, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi returns to the world of “The Calorie Man”( Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award-winner, Hugo Award nominee, 2006) and “Yellow Card Man” (Hugo Award nominee, 2007) in order to address these questions.

Stand alone or series: Can be read as a stand alone novel, although it is set in the world of two of Bacigalupi’s short stories – “The Calorie Man” (Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award-winner, Hugo Award nominee, 2006) and “Yellow Card Man” (Hugo Award nominee, 2007).

How did I get this book: Bought

Why did I read this book: Ever since I heard of The Windup Girl and saw it on numerous Best of 2009 lists, I have been dying to read this book.

Review:

First things first – I had seen this book praised to the high heavens after its late 2009 release, and have been looking forward to reading it ever since. Then, when I started to see it pop up on “Steampunk Essential Reading” lists, I was even more excited, and I set a firm date to read and review this highly anticipated release for Steampunk Week.

Well folks, I’m a little chagrined to report: The Windup Girl really is not Steampunk.

At least, it doesn’t fit in with my conceptualization of steampunk. That’s not to say that it isn’t a good book – because it is. But as a feature for this week, it falls a little short. But more on that later.

The Windup Girl is a futuristic dystopia, set in a shocking incarnation of Thailand. The world as we know it has changed drastically – genetically engineered crops have fallen to strengthened, bio-engineered pests; food is controlled by corporations; fossil fuels are all but exhausted; sea levels have risen and reclaimed incredible surface areas…Bacigalupi’s is a dying world. In this version of Thailand, tensions tear the nation from without and within – the government corrupt, the locals resentful of “yellow card” refugees and the encroaching farang (or foreigners), their factories, and their attempts to steal . And, embroiled in this volatile world are four important characters: Anderson Lake – a “Calorie Man” farang intent on discovering gene-ripping secrets for The Company. Hock Seng – a “Yellow Card” Chinese-Malay refugee, foreman of Anderson’s factory, and with a business agenda of his own. Jaidee – a vigilante-type local “hero,” set on sticking it to those in command and fighting corruption with his own glory-seeking style of mayhem. And finally, there’s Emiko – a “New Person,” a “herky-jerky” Japanese genetically engineered woman made to be a sexual companion and personal secretary, left behind by her keeper, left to a world of degradation and abuse each night at a Thai flophouse.

Nuanced and darkly grim, The Windup Girl is an original, memorable debut novel from the undeniably talented Paolo Bacigalupi. In many ways, this novel is an environmentally-conscious, precautionary tale and all the more terrifying because of its plausibility; we very well could engineer our own food and environmental demise intentionally (i.e. biological terrorism) or unintentionally (resistant, super strains of pests and diseases). The Windup Girl’s worldbuilding as well is solid. As a Southeast Asian from the Philippines and Indonesia, I can definitely see that Mr. Bacigalupi has done his homework, down to the fruit of the region (for example, rambutan, which translates from Indonesian as “hair fruit”) and the tensions between natives and their hatred for Chinese immigrants.

But it is thematically that The Windup Girl is at its finest. The overwhelming, unifying theme of the book is that of greed: corporate greed that caused the world’s death, human greed that dominates the Thai government, personal greed that motivates any number of characters in the book. The ugliness of humanity is prevalent throughout, painting a grimy, unflinching picture of the world.

So far as characters go, however, Mr. Bacigalupi left me feeling a little cold. While an equal amount of time is spent on each main character, they all felt a little bare-boned. Interestingly, the only character I felt any sort of connection with was the NON-”human” character Emiko, the titled Windup Girl. Her struggles, her alienation and sustained abuse is horrifying stuff, and her determination to live despite it all is a bright spot in a a decidedly grim novel. The reaction of humans towards “New People” is discrimination on an epic scale, and the kicker is, with the world so disintegrated, only the New People may survive as the next step in human evolution.

While I enjoyed The Windup Girl, I did find that it faltered in a few vital categories. As a novel of science fiction, the actual science element of The Windup Girl isn’t very strong – the concept of biologically engineered New People, made so that their motions are “herky-jerky” but also simultaneously lightning quick, and the genetic breeding of character traits like “obedience” rings as a little bit silly. Furthermore, the idea of using springs to store and generate energy is also not very believable – surely there were other power options available to this world (wind, solar, hydro, biodiesel, nuclear, etc)? Also, I found myself asking, is this story actually effective? The answer is both yes and no. There was a LOT of repetition in this book where there needn’t have been – there’s little advancement of any truly engaging plot. The actual point of the story, its atmospheric strengths and green-conscious warning for the future are made easily within the first 50 pages or so. Ultimately, I found it abundantly clear that Mr. Bacigalupi is a short fiction writer, as The Windup Girl felt like an unnecessarily protracted novella.

These failings in mind, however, I still ended up enjoying The Windup Girl, and look forward to seeing what else Paolo Bacigalupi has up his sleeve in the future.

BUT IS IT STEAMPUNK? Nope. The Windup Girl is not by any stretch of the imagination Steampunk. Using my own bizarre criteria of what constitutes Steampunk, The Windup Girl just doesn’t quite cut it. Other than a single scene involving dirigibles, there is absolutely no steam-technology in this book. None. Zilch. Nada. Though there is a significant amount of radical social and political critique in this book, there is basically nothing on the steam-technological or aesthetic end of the spectrum – and a couple of dirigibles does not a steampunk make. Sorry folks that have this on their Steampunk Essentials list – The WIndup GIrl doesn’t make it on mine. (Though it is a good example of a green-conscious dystopian novel!)

Notable Quotes/Parts: From the first chapter:

“No! I don’t want the mangosteen.” Anderson Lake leans forward, pointing. “I want that one, there. Kaw pollamai nee khap. The one with the red skin and the green hairs.”

The peasant woman smiles, showing teeth blackened from chewing betel nut, and points to a pyramid of fruits stacked beside her. “Un nee chai mai kha?”

“Right. Those. Khap.” Anderson nods and makes himself smile. “What are they called?”

“Ngaw.” She pronounces the word carefully for his foreign ear, and hands across a sample.

Anderson takes the fruit, frowning. “It’s new?”

“Kha.” She nods an affirmative.

Anderson turns the fruit in his hand, studying it. It’s more like a gaudy sea anemone or a furry puffer fish than a fruit. Coarse green tendrils protrude from all sides, tickling his palm. The skin has the rust-red tinge of blister rust, but when he sniffs he doesn’t get any stink of decay. It seems perfectly healthy, despite its appearance.

“Ngaw,” the peasant woman says again, and then, as if reading his mind. “New. No blister rust.”

Anderson nods absently. Around him, the market soi bustles with Bangkok’s morning shoppers. Mounds of durians fill the alley in reeking piles and water tubs splash with snakehead fish and red-fin plaa. Overhead, palm-oil polymer tarps sag under the blast furnace heat of the tropic sun, shading the market with hand-painted images of clipper ship trading companies and the face of the revered Child Queen. A man jostles past, holding vermilion-combed chickens high as they flap and squawk outrage on their way to slaughter, and women in brightly colored pha sin bargain and smile with the vendors, driving down the price of pirated U-Tex rice and new-variant tomatoes.

None of it touches Anderson.

“Ngaw,” the woman says again, seeking connection.

The fruit’s long hairs tickle his palm, challenging him to recognize its origin. Another Thai genehacking success, just like the tomatoes and eggplants and chiles that abound in the neighboring stalls. It’s as if the Grahamite Bible’s prophecies are coming to pass. As if Saint Francis himself stirs in his grave, restless, preparing to stride forth onto the land, bearing with him the bounty of history’s lost calories.

“And he shall come with trumpets, and Eden shall return. . .”

Anderson turns the strange hairy fruit in his hand. It carries no stink of cibiscosis. No scab of blister rust. No graffiti of genehack weevil engraves its skin. The world’s flowers and vegetables and trees and fruits make up the geography of Anderson Lake’s mind, and yet nowhere does he find a helpful signpost that leads him to identification.

Ngaw. A mystery.

You can read the full chapter, along with other sample chapters, online HERE.

Additional Thoughts: As I mentioned above, The Windup Girl is a full length novel set in the world of two of Paolo Bacigalupi’s prior, award winning short stories (the “Windup Stories”). Even cooler is, these stories are available for free download via the book’s page on Night Shade Books. You can check out the PDF version HERE.

Also, you may or may not have heard that Paolo Bacigalupi is making his first foray into the world of Young Adult novels this year! Check out his forthcoming title, Ship Breaker.

Set initially in a future shanty town in America’s Gulf Coast region, where grounded oil tankers are being dissembled for parts by a rag tag group of workers, we meet Nailer, a teenage boy working the light crew, searching for copper wiring to make quota and live another day. The harsh realities of this life, from his abusive father, to his hand to mouth existence, echo the worst poverty in the present day third world. When an accident leads Nailer to discover an exquisite clipper ship beached during a recent hurricane, and the lone survivor, a beautiful and wealthy girl, Nailer finds himself at a crossroads. Should he strip the ship and live a life of relative wealth, or rescue the girl, Nita, at great risk to himself and hope she’ll lead him to a better life. This is a novel that illuminates a world where oil has been replaced by necessity, and where the gap between the haves and have-nots is now an abyss. Yet amidst the shadows of degradation, hope lies ahead.

Verdict: A thoughtful, well-written and provocative examination of a dystopian future – the world run aground thanks to collective greed. Though it feels somewhat like a protracted short story and it certainly isn’t Steampunk, it’s an unquestionably strong debut, and I look forward to more from Mr. Bacigalupi in the near future.

Rating: 7 – Very Good

Reading Next: Airborn by Kenneth Oppel

It has recently been brought to our attention that another big Young Adult release may be pulling for a three-peat of Bloomsbury’s Liar and Magic Under Glass fiascos.

This time, the potentially whitewashed cover in question is the ARC of White Cat, the upcoming YA novel by Holly Black – and this time, the culprit is Margaret K. McElderry, a Simon and Schuster imprint.

An anonymous comment was left on our recent “Cover Matters: On Whitewashing” post. The commenter quotes directly from the ARC of White Cat that imply the protagonist, Cassel, is in fact a person of color, and that the cover is another instance of whitewashing.

Here are some of the quotes from the commenter about the book:

“Phillip’s dark skin makes his teeth look whiter when he smiles.” (ARC; pg 30).

(According to the commenter, “Many times throughout the book, we’re told that the Sharpe brother’s look a lot alike, so if Phillip has dark skin, it makes sense that Cassel does as well.”)

“I shake my head. ‘If they are, I don’t know where from. I bet mom for sure doesn’t either; although Gramps always says that his father–her grandfather– was a maharajah from India…” (ARC; page 43)

“‘Your grandfather told me that your family was descended from runaway slaves,’” she says. (ARC; page 43)

“People are always coming up to me on trains and talking to me in different languages, like it’s obvious I’ll understand them.” (ARC; page 43)

It is not a secret that we are against whitewashing. It is a racist, harmful practice. Before going off, denouncing the publisher and cover without all the facts, however, we decided to be cautious on this occasion for two reasons:

1) The quotes above seem to be indirect. They don’t describe the character that is depicted on the cover; they describe his relatives or how other people perceive him.

2) The book and cover are from Simon and Schuster, a publisher that has a good track record for publishing great, accurately depicted PoC covers.

We were outraged at the prospect of another whitewashed cover, but we also felt like we really needed to vet this ourselves. The above evidence seemed a little circumstantial and indirect – a person’s dark complexioned brother does not necessarily a PoC make (for that matter, teeth appearing whiter in contrast to skin could reflect anything from ethnicity to a good tan). So, we felt like we needed a bit more information – and luckily, we had an ARC for vetting purposes.

Here’s what we found:

The fourth quote above (about trains and different languages) isn’t in our ARC.

The second and third quotes are taken slightly out of context. Here’s the full quote from our ARC copy:

“Why did your parents call you Cassel?”

I’m defeated and amused. “Mom loved extravagant names. Dad insisted that his first son be named after him — Phillip — but after that, she got to name Barron and me whatever fanciful thing she wanted. If she’d had her way, Philip would have been Jasper.”

She rolls her eyes. “Come on. Are you sure they aren’t from her family? Traditional names?”

I shake my head. “If they are, I don’t know where from. I bet Mom doesn’t for sure either, although Gramps says that his father — her grandfather — was a maharaja of India. He sold tonics from Calcutta to the Midwest. Makes some sense that he could be Indian. His last name, Singer, could be derived from Singh.”

“Your grandfather told me that your family was descended from runaway slaves,” she says. [...] “Yeah,” I say. “I like the maharaja story better. And don’t even get me started on the one where we’re Iroquois.” (ARC 43)

We’re a little bit hesitant to say that Cassel is a PoC based on this excerpt. Although the bolded line above does speak to the angle that Cassel’s (or at least Cassel’s mother’s) appearance may imply some different (read: non-white) traditional background, it’s still all rather inconclusive (for example, the very caucasian Angelina Jolie, Megan Fox, and Farrah Fawcett all claim to be of Iroquois/Native American descent). There is no physical description of Cassel throughout the book, and there aren’t any explicit clues as to his appearance or heritage here. With only this as evidence, we weren’t exactly convinced that White Cat was another egregious example of whitewashed covers.

So, we sat down with the book, combing through the pages for a physical description, and for anything racially/culturally/ethnically explicit rather than implicit. After a few hours of reading, we finally found what we were looking for:

“My cousin just got back from India,” I say, and nod in Lila’s direction. “Her parents were living in some ashram. I was telling her about Wallingford.”

Audrey’s hands go to her hips. “She’s your cousin?”

Lila scrunches her eyebrows for a moment, then a wide grin splits her face. “Oh! Because I’m so pale, right?’

Stacey flinches. Audry looks at me like she’s trying to see if I’m offended. Wallingford’s idea of political correctness is never to mention anything about race. Ever. Tan skin and dark hair are supposed to be as invisible as red hair or blonde hair or skin so white it’s marbled with blue veins. (ARC 226)

This is the closest to explicitly stated evidence that Cassel is a PoC (even at that, we find it a very interesting choice on part of author Holly Black – Lila remarks about her “paleness” as opposed to any mention of Cassel’s appearance or his implied darker skin tone).

We want to stress that neither Cassel’s physical features nor his ethnic background are ever fully revealed in the book. It’s also worth noting that Cassel is the first-person narrator, and he doesn’t seem to know (nor does he ever explore) his own background. It’s almost as if the Wallingford’s PC non-mention of race is something Ms. Black put into practice in her novel, which is rather cool in itself. Perhaps this quote is indicative of Holly Black’s point with White Cat, and with her non-descriptions of Cassel. (This kind of reminds us of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, in which Gaiman doesn’t reveal that protagonist Shadow is actually a black man until the end of the book) Perhaps Ms. Black’s point is that race isn’t really a part of the story. Perhaps it is meant to be an affirmation of colorblindness.

But we digress.

On the matter of whitewashing, we don’t know what Cassel looks like or what his cultural or ethnic or racial background is. But there is no doubt in our minds that Cassel is at least of a darker complexion – but this could mean anything. He might be Indian, or Hispanic, or Middle Eastern, or Greek, or Nigerian, or Indonesian, etc. Though the other quotes are circumstantial and inconclusive at best, with this last explicit remark near the end of the book, we can conclude that Cassel is, at the very least, not pale-skinned in appearance.

Thus, the ARC cover of White Cat, with its pale, caucasian-looking model, is a misrepresentation of the protagonist. It is a form of whitewashing, and we definitely want to add our voices to those calling Simon & Schuster to change the cover.

Before getting up in arms about White Cat, we think that a few things should be said. First, in order to come to this conclusion about the whitewashed cover and Cassel’s appearance, it took us several hours of combing through the book with the dedicated, sole task of finding a physical description of the protagonist. We had to search long and hard for this information, only to find no explicit descriptions and yielding instead a bunch of implicit ones.

Thus, the case of White Cat isn’t exactly the same as those of Liar, Magic Under Glass, or The Mysterious Benedict Society. There was no explicit description of a black protagonist with kinky, cropped hair and no subsequent publisher decision to replace this clearly described PoC with a caucasian girl with long flowing tresses on the cover. And, considering that we spent hours looking specifically for these descriptions, we can at least see where things might have gone awry between editorial and cover art departments, and how the assumption of a caucasian protagonist in this particular book may have occurred. Considering, especially, Simon & Schuster’s excellent track record with diverse PoC book covers, we don’t think this was an intentional decision (as it clearly was in the case of Liar, MUG, & TMBS) – it certainly is nowhere near as harmful or openly racist as Bloomsbury’s decisions to use white models for clearly described PoC characters.

Thanks to a wonderful second-opinion consultation from esteemed (and wicked cool) author Sarah Rees Brennan – the only person we knew of that had read White Cat in its entirety – and some online research, we have learned that Holly Black HAS spoken out about her cover:

Cassel’s racial background is indeterminate, which makes him very hard to describe. His story is actually partially based on a fantastic true-crime book, Son of the Grifter, that I read while I was doing research for White Cat. In it, a man named Kent Walker described being brought up by his grifting mother. She often told him different stories about where his grandfather’s family came from – essentially robbing him of a clear sense of identity. In White Cat, Cassel doesn’t know his background–only the contradictory things people in his family have claimed. I’m glad the final cover shows him looking more tanned, in keeping with the way he actually looks in the book.

Also, we have learned that the ARC cover is NOT the final cover for White Cat. Holly Black has posted about this matter on her blog, in response to a concerned reader’s comment about whitewashing:

You are absolutely correct. The lighting at the shoot and the desaturation done to the photo made the model look very pale on the cover of the ARC. Cassel looks browner and more like himself on the final.

Here’s the comparison of the ARC (left) and final cover (right) (click to enlarge):

It might not be perfect, but it is (in our opinion) a marked improvement. This version of Cassel on the new cover is much closer to our mental image of him!

In response to our question about how author Sarah Rees Brennan felt about the cover, she told us the following:

I’ve read the book, and I thought it was very cool how Cassel’s family being conmen means he literally doesn’t know where he comes from – to reflect that the three models for the Sharpe brothers (the other two are on the back) are all from different racial backgrounds. But it does mean Cassel’s look was always going to be tricky to portray with a people cover, since he doesn’t actually know whether he’s a PoC or not.

And after reading the book for ourselves, we wholeheartedly agree with Sarah’s opinion.

So what about you? Any thoughts? We’d love to hear from you about this particular cover!

For more on White Cat by Holly Black, check out these links:

Holly Black’s LiveJournal in which she responds to a heartfelt, awesome comment

And we will leave you this evening by letting you all know that while we made it sound like writing this post and gathering facts was some arduous task – it actually wasn’t, because White Cat is a fantastic, awesome read! (Don’t worry, we’ll review it closer to the release date this May)…

Title: Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron

Author: Jasper Fforde

Genre: Speculative Fiction, Dystopia

Publisher: Viking (US) / Hodder & Stoughton General (UK)
Publication Date: December 2009 (US) / January 2010 (UK)
Hardcover: 400 pages (US)

Part social satire, part romance, part revolutionary thriller, Shades of Grey tells of a battle against overwhelming odds. In a society where the ability to see the higher end of the color spectrum denotes a better social standing, Eddie Russet belongs to the low-level House of Red and can see his own color—but no other. The sky, the grass, and everything in between are all just shades of grey, and must be colorized by artificial means.

Eddie’s world wasn’t always like this. There’s evidence of a never-discussed disaster and now, many years later, technology is poor, news sporadic, the notion of change abhorrent, and nighttime is terrifying: no one can see in the dark. Everyone abides by a bizarre regime of rules and regulations, a system of merits and demerits, where punishment can result in permanent expulsion.

Eddie, who works for the Color Control Agency, might well have lived out his rose-tinted life without a hitch. But that changes when he becomes smitten with Jane, a Grey Nightseer from the dark, unlit side of the village. She shows Eddie that all is not well with the world he thinks is just and good. Together, they engage in dangerous revolutionary talk.

Stunningly imaginative, very funny, tightly plotted, and with sly satirical digs at our own society, this novel is for those who loved Thursday Next but want to be transported somewhere equally wild, only darker; a world where the black and white of moral standpoints have been reduced to shades of grey.

Stand alone or series: Book 1 of a planned trilogy

How did I get this book: Review Copy from the publisher

Why did I read this book: You already know my weakness for all things apocalyptic and dystopian. Blend that addiction with the quirky, absurdist style of Jasper Fforde, an innovative use of color, and I am a happy, happy girl.

Review:

It began with my father not wanting to see the Last Rabbit and ended up with my being eaten by a carnivorous plant. It wasn’t really what I’d planned for myself – I’d hoped to marry into the Oxbloods and join their dynastic string empire. But that was four days ago, before I met Jane, retrieved the Caravaggio and explored High Saffron. So instead of enjoying aspirations of Chromatic advancement, I was wholly immersed within the digestive soup of a yateveo tree. It was all frightfully inconvenient.

So begins the narrative of Eddie Russett; twenty-years old, son of a well-reputed Swatchman (doctor of sorts), almost engaged to the well-connected Constance Oxblood, and secretly can perceive of a shockingly high percentage of Red. Eddie’s world is a Colortocracy, with a strict hierarchy (called the Chromatic Scale) based on the colors that individuals can perceive – Purples are the highest, followed by Greens, Yellows, Blues, Oranges, Reds, and, at the very bottom of the scale, the subservient Greys (incapable of perceiving any significant amount of any color). While each class can perceive of their own color in nature, every other color appears gray – unless it’s artificially painted and enhanced (a very expensive, and seen by some as a garish, ostentatious flaunting of wealth).

As such, Eddie, although part of the nouveaux couleur Russett family, has a carefully planned, bright future ahead of him. That is, until he and his father are sent out by the Collective from their cushy city life in Jade-Under-Lime on assignment to East Carmine, in the Outer Fringes of society – Eddie’s father is to fill in Swatchman position, while Eddie is assigned to conduct a census of all the chairs in the town (as Eddie explains, “Head Office is worried that the chair density might have dropped below the proscribed 1.8 per person.”). On the way to East Carmine, however, everything changes for the young Russett. He and his father discover a Grey masquerading as a Purple and a beautiful but prickly young Grey named Jane – whom Eddie instantly is smitten with (at their first meeting she threatens to break his. When they finally reach the Outer Fringes, Eddie discovers secret plots, cutthroat politics, and murder cover-ups – and again that strange, abrasive (but beautiful, retrousse-nosed) Jane. Eddie begins to question his entire society, and why he was sent out to East Carmine in the first place.

Shades of Grey is unquestionably one of the most deeply original books I have ever read. It’s bizarre, it’s absurd, it’s detail-laden, and, well, it’s…awesome. As quirky and smart as this book is, Mr. Fforde’s writing and his strange world never feels forced or contrived (a “trying-too-hard” pitfall I’ve unfortunately seen in other works of quirky, absurdist fiction). Rather, Shades of Grey puts me in the mind of the strange, delightful humor and world building of Terry Pratchett. Part of Mr. Fforde’s success is in those devilish details, as I adored all of the details in this novel. The ridiculous rules imposed on this Colortocratic society (“The Word of Munsell was the Rules, and the Rules were the Word of Munsell,”) range from an absolute prohibition on the production of spoons (causing a spoon shortage, making spoons one of the most valuable commodities), acronyms are outlawed, and handkerchiefs must be changed daily (and always folded). These rules are enumerated in pre-chapter epigraphs throughout the book, for example:

1.1.19.02.006: Team sports are mandatory in order to build character. Character is there to give purpose to team sports.

or

3.6.23.12.028: Ovaltine may not be drunk at any time other than before bed.

These sort of flourishes are everywhere, delighting and enhancing the reader’s picture of the world. Trains and the occasional Model-T are the primary modes of transportation (and are very limited). Familiar ancient relics are in this strange new world too – the Oz Monument (yes, for that Oz), the boardgame Risk, the strange A Christmas Story like throwback to Ovaltine.

In the midst of this rich, bizarre bouquet, the plotting falls second to the world building. Which is perfectly fine by me, as the story thread is there, and though it’s left behind at times for description, there’s enough mystery and plot to keep readers thoroughly engaged. In terms of characters, they too come short when compared to the details of the novel, but they are still undeniably compelling. The first person narrative voice of Eddie is delightful – he’s a bit of an unintentional fool, in his schoolboyish optimism, his crush on the antagonistic Jane, and his unquenchable curiosity. Jane is another stellar character too – her first lines to Eddie floor me (upon being elbow-grabbed by our intrepid hero, she responds, “Touch me again and I’ll break your fucking jaw.”). The other, assorted characters are varied and quirky, adding, if you’ll accept a lame pun, another layer of color to the story.

And then, there’s the reason I picked up this book in the first place – the dystopian and post-apocalyptic elements. And, I’m happy to report, just as with the details and world building aspects of the Shades of Grey, the dystopian angle is exquisite. One thing I absofreakinglutely love in a book is an author that doesn’t hand-hold his or her readers – unlike, say, the most recent episodes of LOST where subtext is as elusive as a hot shower. That is to say, Mr. Fforde lets these dystopian elements and the backstory of his world come out gradually, as Eddie reveals, piecemeal, little clues about the history of the Collective. What eventually becomes clear is that something has happened to Eddie’s world (referred to throughout merely as “The Something That Happened”), that changed everything – people became only able to see certain colors, chaos ensued until the great Munsell imposed order with a set of rigid, unchangeable rules. Outside of the Colortocracy’s borders there are the dreaded “Riffraff” – only alluded to as savage, uncivilized heathens. And then, there’s “The Rot” – a mysterious, fast-acting disease that infects citizens seemingly at random, and for which there is no cure. There’s a stagnation of ideas, a loss of technology (relics of which remain, silent and unused). These dystopian elements are little tidbits, revealed throughout the book (biochemical weapons, the presence of dangerous things in the Night, the intense fear and sensitivity the people in this world have to the dark)…and it’s very cool stuff.

In fact, the only place where Shades of Grey falls a little short is in extending some social commentary or analysis (as the blurb of the novel alludes to). The Color caste system is unflinching and based not necessarily on birth or wealth, but on the percentage of color seen (as taken in the one time only Ishihara exam) – an intriguing idea. But Mr. Fforde doesn’t really go into a true social critique of his color-caste world, which seems almost an automatic assumption. He could have taken this in a commentary on race, on apartheid, on classism, in a satyrical way. Reading, I found myself asking a number of questions that didn’t really get addressed – for example, are all these peoples’ skin tones the same? Even in shades of grey, a black person would look different than a white one. I even found myself questioning if these characters were even really PEOPLE at all! I felt like it could have been a lost Twilight Zone episode, in which Eddie, Jane and all those in this strange Collective are dolls or automatons. Regardless, even though Mr. Fforde never really “goes there” and doesn’t address any deeper rooted issues, this just means there’s room for exploration of these in the next two books. Plus, everything else is so wonderful in Shades of Grey, I could care less.

Overall, I loved this novel. LOVED it. I cannot wait for more, with the next two books!

Notable Quotes/Parts: From Chapter 1:

A Morning in Vermillion

2.4.16.55.021: Males are to wear dress code #6 during inter-Collective travel. Hats are encouraged but not mandatory.

It began with my father not wanting to see the Last Rabbit and ended up with my being eaten by a carnivorous plant. It wasn’t really what I’d planned for myself— I’d hoped to marry into the Oxbloods and join their dynastic string empire. But that was four days ago, before I met Jane, retrieved the Caravaggio and explored High Saffron. So instead of enjoying aspirations of Chromatic advancement, I was wholly immersed within the digestive soup of a yateveo tree. It was all frightfully inconvenient.

But it wasn’t all bad, for the following reasons: First, I was lucky to have landed upside down. I would drown in under a minute, which was far, far preferable to being dissolved alive over the space of a few weeks. Second, and more important, I wasn’t going to die ignorant. I had discovered something that no amount of merits can buy you: the truth. Not the whole truth, but a pretty big part of it. And that was why this was all frightfully inconvenient. I wouldn’t get to do anything with it. And this truth was too big and too terrible to ignore. Still, at least I’d held it in my hands for a full hour and understood what it meant.

I didn’t set out to discover a truth. I was actually sent to the Outer Fringes to conduct a chair census and learn some humility. But the truth inevitably found me, as important truths often do, like a lost thought in need of a mind. I found Jane, too, or perhaps she found me. It doesn’t really matter. We found each other. And although she was Grey and I was Red, we shared a common thirst for justice that transcended Chromatic politics. I loved her, and what’s more, I was beginning to think that she loved me. After all, she did apologize before she pushed me into the leafless expanse below the spread of the yateveo, and she wouldn’t have done that if she’d felt nothing.

So that’s why we’re back here, four days earlier, in the town of Vermillion, the regional hub of Red Sector West. My father and I had arrived by train the day before and overnighted at the Green Dragon. We had attended Morning Chant and were now seated for breakfast, disheartened but not surprised that the early Greys had already taken the bacon, and it remained only in exquisite odor. We had a few hours before our train and had decided to squeeze in some sightseeing.

“We could always go and see the Last Rabbit,” I suggested. “I’m told it’s unmissable.”

But Dad was not to be easily swayed by the rabbit’s uniqueness. He said we’d never see the Badly Drawn Map, the Oz Memorial, the color garden and the rabbit before our train departed. He also pointed out that not only did Vermillion’s museum have the best collection of Vimto bottles anywhere in the Collective, but on Mondays and Thursdays they demonstrated a gramophone.

“A fourteen- second clip of ‘Something Got Me Started,’ ” he said, as if something vaguely Red- related would swing it.

But I wasn’t quite ready to concede my choice.

“The rabbit’s getting pretty old,” I persisted, having read the safety briefing in the “How Best to Enjoy Your Rabbit Experience” leaflet, “and petting is no longer mandatory.”

“It’s not the petting,” said Dad with a shudder, “it’s the ears. In any event,” he continued with an air of finality, “I can have a productive and fulfilling life having never seen a rabbit.”

This was true, and so could I. It was just that I’d promised my best friend, Fenton, and five others that I would log the lonely bun’s Taxa number on their behalf and thus allow them to note it as “proxy seen” in their animal- spotter books. I’d even charged them twenty- five cents each for the privilege— then blew the lot on licorice for Constance and a new pair of synthetic red shoelaces for me.

Dad and I bartered like this for a while, and he eventually agreed to visit all of the town’s attractions but in a circular manner, to save on shoe leather. The rabbit came last, after the color garden.

You can read the full excerpt online HERE.

Additional Thoughts: As I’ve mentioned before, there are two more adventures planned for Eddie and company – Painting by Numbers and The Gordini Protocols.

Understandably this review might be a little confusing – and reading Shades of Grey takes some getting used to as there’s a lot of terminology and crazy stuff going on. Luckily, Jasper Fforde has an awesome primer on his book website to help keep things straight. The website also has a ton of awesome extras, such as an interview with Jasper Fforde, downloadable content, and a series of wicked cool movies – there’s the official book trailer:

…and then check out one of these National Color ” Peril Infogandas”:

I need to read more Jasper Fforde. STAT. Suggestions, anyone?

Also, on one final note – aren’t these covers grand? Both the US and UK ones truly rock.

Verdict: Skimpy on the thematic punch, but delectably juicy in all the details, world building and characters – I loved this book. Shades of Grey is seriously smart, chock full of bizarre humor with brains and heart. This is an amazing, truly original, highly imaginative work of fiction. And it is at this point my single favorite read of 2010.

(Ok, one last note – I know these books are marketed in the “literary fiction” section of bookstores, but this is a feast for the dystopian, for the Terry Pratchett-lover, for the Douglass Adams fan. Seriously. READ IT, folks!)

Rating: 9 – Damn Near Perfection

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