Read these now
I don't often talk about the books I'm reading on my blog, but I've recently read two books that are about to make their North American debuts, and I would love to see both of them reach lots of readers, because they are both fabulous. I thought: it would not hurt to do my part.
The first is Zoe Marriott's Shadows On The Moon, which a high-concept blurb writer would probably call "A Japanese Cinderella." That does not begin to do it justice. For starters, take it from me, it's not easy to make the jump from fairy tale to novel, and most writers fail. They forget to fill in what almost all fairy tales leave out: motivations for the characters, and rules for the world. So, you must imagine a story in which Cinderella was not a fairytale cipher, but had an agenda of her own. What, exactly, does it mean to dance so well a prince might fall for you? And why would you need him to?
But I love Shadows most and best for its first scene, its first sentences, which I just want to diagram and study. Here's how you do it, folks:
On my fourteenth birthday, when the sakura was in full bloom, the men came to kill us. We saw them come, Aimi and me. We were excited, because we did not know how to be frightened. We had never seen soldiers before.
Go on, put the book down after that. I dare you.
(Also, let's hear it for non-white people in Fantasy Land, hurrah!)
Shadows On The Moon comes out April 24th.
I also just finished Elizabeth Wein's Code Name Verity. Here's a book to give to your friends who shy away from reading YA because they think it's all broody vampires. It is straight up fabulous, shatteringly good.
The novel largely takes the form of a rather rambling written confession of a female British special agent being held in Nazi-occupied France. From the title on in, you suspect the agent is up to something. Indeed, I've always loved unreliable narrators, and who is less reliable, for better reasons, than a confessing spy?
On the surface, the confession tells the story of her friendship with the (also female) RAF (or rather, Air Transport Auxiliary) pilot who brought her to France. And here's something else I've never seen done this well. The agent and the pilot have one of those fearsome "first friendships" that many of us have in college -- the girls are of just that age. That first adult friendship that is not sexual, but in other ways just that intense, and just that new, because *you* are so new. Of course I've seen this first friendship explored for young men, but much more rarely for young women - and I have never, ever seen it done this well.
Code Name: Verity comes out May 15th.