Book Review: Under the Never Sky, by Veronica Rossi

Photo by Frankzed. 

Most of the falcons in the photos I found in my FlickrCreative Commons search looked quite scary but this one looks cute and happy, which made me laugh!

I haven't read any other books from the recent crop of YA dystopias, so I started Under The Never Sky without any preconcieved ideas in my head. I expected that there would be a romance and it would be quite a prominent part of the story, but other than that I wasn't sure of what I would find.

The plot takes the form of a quest - Aria is searching for the truth about her mother, and Perry is searching for a way to get his nephew back. At first they form an uneasy alliance, but eventually the perils they face and the discoveries they make about each other and their worlds bring them closer together and trust starts to develop.

What I liked the most about Under the Never Sky is the relationships between the characters. None of them are straightforward and simple. Even the relationships between close friends and family members have a lot of tension under the surface, because of the heirarchies and power relations in the societies that live in the world of the novel. As the characters develop, we see them gain a more nuanced view of these power relations and their relationships develop too as a result.

Aria and Perry both come across as being practical and sensible people foremost, which is appropriate for the world they have to survive in, and makes them good role models! Aria was a little naive at first and Perry seemed really arrogant, but after a while these traits, which I would have found annoying eventually, broke down and they developed into more well-rounded characters.

I especially liked the romance. I don't think that talking about this is really a spoiler, as the cover makes it pretty clear that there will be a romance, but if you want to avoid knowing any of the details, skip the next paragraph. [As an aside, although the cover is pretty, I think I would have preferred one that didn't imply the romance quite so heavily and that promoted the sci-fi elements a bit more. But I expect that making it romantic attracted quite a few readers!]

There is no instalove, instead there's instarevulsion, but that peters out after a while, and that's when their friendship develops and turns to lust. The book finishes without the 'l' word being said, which I found quite refreshing and realistic. Although Aria and Perry do get quite attached to each other, they are realistic about their futures. Under the Never Sky has an open ended romance - almost anything could happen next in terms of Aria and Perry's relationship and I'd be happy with the realism. I'm not absolutely clamouring for them to end up together, but I wouldn't find it unrealistic either.

I also really liked Marron's character and his little enclave broke up the dictotomy of dome-dwellers vs outsider, and introduced even more sci-fi elements to the story. I also liked the action scenes and the set-up for the next book in the series, and will be looking forward to reading it!

Few books are perfect, however, and there were a couple of things that bothered me although I enjoyed it overall. Firstly, the 'aether'. Why was it never explained? There's enough description of what it looks like, what it sounds like, and what it does, so I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been too much of an infodump to quickly explain what it is, or what the characters think it is. The absence of explanation makes it seem like the author hadn't decided exactly what it was. 

Secondly, the Outsider characters' abilities are awfully convenient. I know that they live in a tough world and their abilities serve to even up the odds a bit, but sometimes things are a bit too easy, and the way they've been assigned to each character gave me suspicions about which way the story will go eventually. I really hope that what I suspected doesn't happen as it would be so cheesy and such a typical sci-fi/fantasy trope! Under the Never Sky was pretty devoid of cheese though, so I hold out hope that the rest of the series will continue on the same path!

I'm happy to say that I really enjoyed Under the Never Sky and I'm looking forward to the sequel. If my description appeals to you, I'd definitely give it a go!

Final note, Re: genre: after I read Under the Never Sky, I wasn't sure that I would categorise it as a dystopia. If most of the action took place inside Reverie, then yes, but it doesn't, and the outside world isn't an organised, tightly-controlled society. However, maybe 'dystopia' works as shorthand - it does seem quite wordy to describe it as 'post-apocalyptic soft SF with some elements of dystopia, though it doesn't get bogged down in all the rules and restrictions'. What do you think makes a story a dystopia?

Thank you to Atom Books for providing me with a review copy.

Top Ten Tuesday: Favourite Book Quotes

This is my eighth Top Ten Tuesday post. Top Ten Tuesday was created and is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.I love finding my favourite quotes on Goodreads and liking them, and I often remind myself of my favourite quotes whilst going about my life, so this is a fantastic one for me! Great quotes can remind me of great books, and inspire me or remind me of basic facts about life and other people.

Top Ten Favourite Book Quotes

1. “It is better to be alone, she figures, than to be with someone who can't see who you are. It is better to lead than to follow. It is better to speak up than stay silent. It is better to open doors than to shut them on people. She will not be simple and sweet. She will not be what people tell her to be. That Bunny Rabbit is dead.”
      ― E. Lockhart, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

Sometimes I pick up my copy, or I should say, one of my copies, of The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks and read this section and it makes me feel better about everything.

2.  “A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea, this by no means signifies that he respects her opinions, admires her understanding, or will refuse, though the rapier is denied him, to run through the body with his pen.”
      ― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

In other words, people can want your attention even when they don't respect you or really care about you at all.

3. “Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colours. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
      ― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

This is such a perfect description.

4.  “Believe it or not, Dimple–and I would believe it–I am just a regular person who has decided to be who I am in life. That's all. That's how you make your life magical–you take yourself into your own hands and rub a little. You activate your identity. And that's the only way to make, as they say, the world a better place; after all, what good are you to anyone without yourself?”
      ― Tanuja Desai Hidier, Born Confused

I actually added this one to Goodreads myself, because I loved it so much.

5. “Meghan: Get over it, Roo. If you have friends who actually like you, you’re popular enough.”
      ― E. Lockhart, Real Live Boyfriends

I love how Meghan is the voice of loving reality and reason in Real Live Boyfriends and this is so true. As long as you have a few people who actually genuinely like you, I think you're doing okay. You don't need hundreds of Facebook friends or to get invited to cool parties.

6.  “Noel: Maybe a friend is someone who wants your updates. Even if they're boring. Or sad. Or annoyingly cutesy. A friend says "Sign me up for your boring crap, yes indeed"--because he likes you anyway. He'll tolerate your junk.”
      ― E. Lockhart, Real Live Boyfriends

Oh, Noel *sigh*. Real Live Boyfriends is full of such wisdom. Review in seven books time.

7. “14th September

What kind of stupid name is Veronique anyway? No one's called Veronique! No one except Dylan's new girlfriend! Yeah, that's how much he was missing me! He was so busy pining over me that he managed to cop off with some stupid posh girl from Cheshire. I mean, whatever.

      And she so dyes her hair.”

       ― Sarra Manning, Kiss and Make Up

Odd, but I love this bit! The first time I read it I burst out laughing at Edie's reaction to meeting Veronique, and every time I re-read it I remember my initial laughter and laugh again. The whole Veronique/Carter thing is so ridiculously over the top and yet real in its drama. 

8. “Little lies that make people feel better are not bad, like thanking someone for a meal they made even if you hated it, or telling a sick person they look better when they don't, or someone with a hideous new hat that it's lovely. Remember that writing is to put love in the world, not to use against your friends. But to yourself you must always tell the truth.”
       ― Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy

From Ole Golly's letter.

9. “Her room felt wonderful to her, as usual. She looked around with satisfaction… She imagined to herself that she would always live this way, even after she had grown up and moved away from her family. She planned to have exactly the same room wherever she was, because this room was her. No matter what happened out there in the rest of the world, she felt totally comfortable once she got into this room and closed the door.”
       ― Louise Fitzhugh, Nobody's Family Is Going to Change

This is why I love Louise Fitzhugh's writing. It just feels so true. The children in her stories think about things the way I remember thinking about things. And I love Emma so much, probably as much as I love Harriet.

10. “They were steaming out of the station before Maia asked, 'Was it books in the trunk?'

      'It was books,' admitted Miss Minton.

      And Maia said, 'Good.'”

      ― Eva Ibbotson, Journey to the River Sea

Maia's new governess is intimidatingly tall and gruff until Maia correctly guesses that Miss Minton is as obsessed with books as she, and after that they are bonded for life. I fell in love with Journey to the River Sea as soon as I read those lines! Review in two books time!

Book Review: Wayward Girls and Wicked Women, edited by Angela Carter

I've been really busy since the start of February and the result is that I've gotten ten books behind in my reviewing. But today, this seems like serendipity rather than poor time management as I'm reviewing Wayward Girls and Wicked Women on its editor's birthday (she would have been 72!).

It's an anthology of short stories, all about women and girls who don't behave in the way that they're supposed to. Some of them just bend the rules of femininity, tiptoeing around scandal, others wander down morally grey paths, a few are borderline evil, but most of them show the irony of the title - the behaviour of their characters may be regarded as wayward or wicked, but they are just trying to live their lives. I can honestly say that I enjoyed every story in this collection, and all of them made me think. Some of them are still regularly popping into my mind two months later.

Wayward Girls and Wicked Women features tales of varied lengths and a couple of the longest, Colette's 'The Rainy Moon' and Vernon Lee's 'Oke of Okehurst' did drag a bit, though they are also two of the most memorable and interesting stories.

I also really liked 'Violet' by Frances Towers, 'The Long Trial' by Andrée Chedid, and 'The Earth' by Djuna Barnes. I'd read Angela Carter's own contribution, 'The Loves of Lady Purple' before, as it also appears in one of her own collections, Fireworks, and of course in the collected short stories volume Burning Your Boats (I own both), but it's a story with wonderful atmosphere and I really liked the way that the author summarised it when giving an overview of the stories in her introduction to the anthology.

My copy is one of the old green covered editions which is cool in a retro way, but I really like the design of the reissue, both in hardback and paperback.

A much better review than mine

Book Review: The Book of Blood and Shadow, by Robin Wasserman

When Nora decided to swap school classes for the Latin translation project at the local university, she didn't expect it to take over her life. It was just a way to get out of school for a few hours a week, to add something extra to her college applications, and to spend more time with her best friend Chris. But when she is assigned the letters written by Elizabeth Weston, stepdaughter of the alchemist Edward Kelley, to her brother, she finds herself fascinated by Elizabeth's life, the decisions she has to make, and her attempts to carry out her father's wishes and build the Lumen Dei - a machine that, according to myth, is a direct line to God. Nora doesn't believe a word of it, of course, but it's interesting, and she's falling for one of the other students, sweet, quiet, Max.

Nora and her colleagues are not the only one fascinated by the project. Firstly, their professor suffers a stroke that may not have been natural - an ambiguous warning that they do not heed. Then comes the night that changes everything. Nora arrives at Chris' house to find him dead and his girlfriend Adriane in some kind of waking coma. Max has fled the scene, the prime suspect in the murder. Nora is sure that her gentle boyfriend couldn't have done it, and she is determined to solve the mystery of the Lumen Dei and clear his name.

The Book of Blood and Shadow has been described as a YA version of The Da Vinci Code which made me feel quite apprehensive about picking it up, because I've never read The Da Vinci Code nor do I have any desire to! But it has such a pretty cover and Atom kindly sent me a review copy, so I decided to give it a chance.

I immediately liked Nora's narration. She's quite a serious teenager, but she's still got a definite voice. It's quite surly, and at times she can be a bit self-pitying, but not so often that it's hard to read. I think the style of the narration will definitely appeal more to older readers. I also really liked the supporting characters, although I wanted to get to know them better than the novel allowed me to, especially Eli. One thing that bothered me was that all of the parents were conveniently incompetent or distracted by their own emotional problems, and I know that the lack of parental interruptions made the plot move faster, but it felt unrealistic to me. I was intrigued by Nora's dad and I would have liked to have seen more of him.

I also really liked the translation element to the story, it helped to push the plot forward and kept me interested. Like Nora, I really wanted to uncover the story of Elizabeth Weston and the choices she made, in fact, I was more intrigued by Elizabeth than by her project, the Lumen Dei.

It was pretty easy to keep reading, because although none of the plot developments took me by surprise, I really wanted to know how everything would be explained in the end. I enjoyed The Book of Blood and Shadow a lot, but I have to admit to being dissatisfied by the book's conclusion. The speed at which the climactic scenes flew by made the book seem top-heavy, and not enough was explained - I'm referring to the Lumen Dei in particular.

If the ending of The Book of Blood and Shadow is a door, I would say that it's left slightly ajar. There's no obvious route for a sequel to take, but Nora's conclusions seem shaky and there's a lot that she could be wrong about. I probably would read a sequel, if it contained some good explanations! And more Prague.

For some spoilery thoughts on the Lumen Dei, highlight below. If you don't want to read it and you're a subscriber, you should probably scroll down really fast just in case!

So how does it work? The blood goes in and then how does the light/fire appear? There's no way I can think of that this machine would do anything without divine intervention, but Nora doesn't think about this at all! And that really bothered me. Okay, if she saw the mechanism and could tell that it was capable of doing what it did, that'd be one thing. But she couldn't (to be fair she gave about two glances worth of description) so are we supposed to believe that it was God that made it do its thing? And if so, why does Nora not think about the fact that she has seen proof of God's existence afterwards? Regardless of whether she thinks God is great or not, she can't exactly carry on being an atheist after that.

Book Review: Night School, by C. J. Daugherty

Photo by acme - I was really surprised that something actually came up when I typed 'croquet night' into Flickr's Creative Commons search.

After middle-class miscreant Allie is arrested for the second time, her parents, fed up with her behaviour since her brother disappeared, decide to send her to boarding school. Her phone and laptop gone, Allie enters Cimmeria Academy determined to keep to her rebellious ways. But she is disarmed by the charming headmistress, Isabelle, and by the fact that everyone there knows her name, teachers and pupils alike. Despite the fact that the school is unlike anything she's ever known, with pages of mysterious rules, servants to clear the plates away at dinner, and even balls, she settles in quickly. At Cimmeria she can forget her family, and focus on her new best friend, Jo, and the possibility of impending romance with the gorgeous Sylvain.

Well, that what she tries to do. That's what everyone seems to want her to do, except moody Carter, who keeps asking her questions, making her wonder what she's doing at a school where everyone else is legacy - the child of someone who went to Cimmeria. Nobody wants her going around trying to find out what's going on at Night School, but when the summer ball ends in horror, she won't stop.

It was inevitable that I enjoyed Night School enormously. It has a few elements that I find irresistibly charming - a boarding school, lots of gossip, and a heroine that wears Dr Martens. In fact, I'd forgotten how much I loved boarding school stories before I read Night School. It gave me the urge to find and read many more (suggestions appreciated in the comments!). I like contemporary teenage fiction best when the characters get to live lives that are a bit more glamourous and exciting than the lives of most actual teenagers are, so I loved the poshness of Cimmeria. Cimmeria Academy is now on my list of fictional schools I would happily have attended (under Hogwarts and Miss Cackle's Academy, of course). The library sounds like heaven, plus, they provide you with beautiful dresses to wear to balls! Amazing! Plus I totally want to play night croquet, pass me a mallet! Is it called a mallet?

Night School really piles up the mysteries right from the start. What happened to Allie's brother? What does the Night School actually do? I was hooked really quickly and constantly trying to guess what was going on. I loved the range of characters, from troubled Jo, to exasperating Carter. I liked that a few serious issues were thrown into the mix so that it wasn't a book solely about a girl trying to solve the mysteries that surround her. It took me a while to warm to Allie completely as she seemed to be a bit of a blank slate at first, despite her rebelliousness, but ultimately, I thought she was a good protagonist, self-conscious but still fairly assured and needing to be responsible for her own safety.

There were a couple of things that bothered me. Firstly, Allie's reaction to a certain incident that happens at the summer ball. Mostly the fact that she didn't tell anyone about it. I can understand that other things that happened on the same night were a little bit distracting, but she didn't even tell a friend, let alone a teacher. I also thought she put up with the perpetrator's presence too easily afterward. If that happened to me I wouldn't want the person near me. Secondly, although it is the first book in a series and its main purpose is to set up enough tension and possibility to sustain several more books, I would have liked an answer or two more than we were given!

These are fairly minor quibbles though. Overall, I thought that Night School was a gripping boarding-school adventure with just the right amount of glamour. It's a fantastic start to the series, and I am looking forward to reading the next one! And to trying out night croquet at some point in my life, now this novel has given me the idea. It sounds like like Skins meets Made in Chelsea, in sport form.

Many thanks to Atom Books for sending me a review copy.