The Raven Boys

One of the things that makes me really enjoy a book is when I find it is like no other book I have read. New setting, new characters, and new themes generally add up to a good read for me. In The Raven Boys we have psychics, rich private school boys, ghosts, a dead Welsh king, and mysterious lines around the Earth called "ley lines" which have an unusual amount of psychic energy. 

Blue Sargent is the daughter of a psychic and even though she is not herself psychic, she helps others by somehow magnifying and focusing psychic energy with her presence. Blue and her mother live in a house with other psychics and they make a living from reading tarot cards for clients. Blue also works in a diner and she makes friends with a group of students from the prestigious Aglionby Academy after one of them leaves a journal filled with entries about a dead Welsh king and ley lines. Could these be related to the corpse lines that her mother and her friends feel in the area?

I like Blue. She is smart, brave, and independent. She has an interesting relationship with her mother which can be seen in this conversation.

Way back before you were born, Calla and Persephone and I were messing around with things we probably shouldn't have been messing around with __. Drugs?  Rituals.  Are you messing around with drugs?  No. but maybe rituals.                                                                                               Drugs might be better.   I'm not interested in them. Their effects are proven - where's the fun in that?

I highly recommend this book to teens who enjoy a little fantasy and mysticism. This is the first of a series and I really hope the originality continues into the next book.

My rating for this book: 

Flight of Shadows (2010)

A walled-in city known as Lynchburg separating the Influentials and Invisibles from the Industrials and Illegals is the setting of this book by Sigmund Brouwer. Away from the city is Appalachia, rural and oppressive, and ruled by a religious leader. Caitlyn was brought to Appalachia by her father but wants to return to the city. She needs the assistance of a surgeon to correct a congenital deformity that was the result of genetic engineering.

As the story opens we find Caitlyn and friends escaping to Lynchburg in the hope of contacting the surgeon. Along the way she meets a shadowy character named Razor who can get her into the city. The problem is that they are being chased by a bounty hunter and others eventually join the chase. It appears there is more to her genetic makeup than meets the eye.

The story was very dark, being a dystopia, and even our glimpses to life inside Lynchburg are not that rosy. The action is non-stop. Chapters vary in length and switch locales so the rhythm is choppy. I have not read them but this books makes me think of the Maximum Ride series by James Patterson in that some of the characters have wings.

Some fantasy readers might enjoy the book, but I really did not.

My rating for this book: ++ 1/2

Black Girl/White Girl (2007)

During the summer months I try to read "adult" books since I can devote more undistracted hours to reading, whether it be outside on the deck or enjoying a balmy evening on top of the covers of my bed. I buy books off the clearance rack and from new releases, I read books waiting patiently for me in piles around the house, and I pull books off my library's shelf as I perform an inventory. My first summer book was by Joyce Carol Oates, an author new to me.

This book reminded me a little of Davita's Harp since both books are about extremely bright, young women raised among liberal activists and, for the most part, without a father, as Genna's father is constantly on the move, hiding from the feds. Her mother is not occupied by her work like Davita's, but by drugs and self-pity.

In 1974, Genna goes to a liberal, all-female college in Virginia founded by wealthy ancestors and is eager to become friends with her black roommate, a scholarship student from Washington D.C. who seems to have enough in her life (religion and family) to not befriend anyone at the school. The story is told from Genna's viewpoint as she tries to support Minette through several instances of racism.

The genius of this book is that like Genna, we are not offered any insight into Minette's lack of response to Genna. While this book could have been, like so many, a cross-race friendship story, instead is how people from different backgrounds may never cross the race divide. Like Genna's father wrote:

"Some truths are lies. Some lies are truths. For all human utterances are provisional and expedient. And what we wish to believe to be REAL is but our political perspective and our political perspective is determined by race, class, social privilege from which we must be wakened to be free to throw off our skin-consciousness which is our collective blindness and sometimes that awakening must be violent for there is no other way."

This is an outstanding book and I recommend it to people who enjoy good character development stories.

My rating for this book: ++++