My favorite books of 2013

I'm sure some people looked at that title and wondered if I got the date wrong, nope! Since I get so many books from libraries it takes a little while for me to get to everything and, since last December the list of books from 2013 I wanted to read was greater than the list of those which I had, I decided to revisit the idea halfway through 2014. I'm actually not done posting all my reviews of 2013 books yet, who knows if I'll ever be done, but all of the ones on this list I have reviewed previously so let's get started! Oh and, unsurprisingly, not only is this a short list but it's also all YA, I really am trying to read more broadly but I'm having a hard time finding adult fiction that simply entertains me as much as YA that's not straight-up non-fiction.

Book Review: The Summer Prince

This is a book that I was really hoping to have a chance to read (futuristic Brazil sci-fi? I'm in!) and I was surprised that I found it so quickly at my not-so-local library, although I feel like they either do a better job at getting YA books faster or at least make their new books more visible. And even without already knowing about this book I think I would have picked it up anyway because of how gorgeous the cover is, normally I'm a little leary of putting green and yellow right next to each other (it can make things look sickly really easy) but, if the cover here doesn't fully convey it, it makes the cover just pop and I hope a lot of other people pick it up for either of those reasons.


The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Summary: 400 years ago the world became a nuclear wasteland and while humanity still survives most of the world does so in the ruins of it’s former glory. One of the few exceptions to this is the city-state of Palmares  Tres, a giant city in modern day Brazil which has thrived because of it's isolation and rules made by all of its ruling ladies. While they resist much technology being created by the outside world they have embraced some of it and become extraordinarily long lived and because of that few young people have any say in anything about their world. Many want their world to change but few succeed in the way that June and Enki manage, her by being a modern artist whose work is compelling and different and him by becoming the Summer King, the highest position any man in the city can hold which occurs once every five years and after a year of power will be ritually killed in order to reaffirm the authority of Palmares Tres' queen. 

The Good: Johnson creates a futuristic setting that is neither dystopian or utopian (that’s actually a dystopia) which helps make it one of the most realistic science-fiction settings I’ve ever come across. This isn’t a little detail either, the struggles and conflicts of the city are the center and heart of this story, it's Enki's reason for becoming the Summer King in the first place, and Johnson succeeds wildly in portraying a city where ordinary people live and are unsure of what future they should follow and where politicians have a mix of their own and everyone else's wishes as their goal. As for all the other parts of the setting, I’m a sucker for a story with strong settings and the way that the technology is integrated into everything and is explained so casually is what really makes the story for me. Johnson creates a setting that is mostly foreign to me but does it with such confidence and vivid descriptions that I had no trouble accepting it* and, once I figured out how the city was laid out, visualizing it. I also loved the kind of art June did, in real life I'm not a big fan of modern art (or post-modern, I'm not completely sure which one hers is) but two things made it work here. One is that I'm simply of tired that nearly every time there's a character in any story whose an artist that they normally sketch or paint, it just gets a bit tedious. And secondly because June's art makes so much sense in this setting, it's wild, it's thought provoking, it makes use of the materials in and around her city. It ends up being a perfect fit with her character, Palmares Tres, and with the entire story.  

The Bad: There was a lot of unfamiliar slang used in the book (I don’t know if it’s real, Brazilian slang or made up for the sake of the book) and I wish that there had been a small glossary in the back since I was never able to pick up on what some of the words meant when they were only used once or twice. I also wish the ending had been a slight bit clearer, I had a few questions which I don't I was supposed to have and just a paragraph or two could have cleared them up (unless I was supposed to have these specific questions in which case obviously the story succeeded). Finally, by the end I had a few problems with how Enki grew and developed. Some people might consider this a spoiler so I shall try to be as vague as possible, Enki does A Thing which ultimately results in a change in character, I'm not exactly sure it can even be called development since he doesn't have full control or choice over changing, and I felt like this short-changed the story in some ways. I'm entirely sure that this was all deliberately done, Enki is supposed to be a tragic character after all, when I remember where he started and the goals he had then, versus what he was like by the very end well, I wish that had been pulled off a little differently.


So for a story with an amazing setting, interesting characters (all of whom are non-white I should note, both due to the gene mods and from growing up in a culture which has more than just American or European influences), and two prominent gay relationships (plus a take on a love triangle which is a bit different than usual) I'm giving this book four out of five stars, plan on buying it someday and plan on checking out Johnson's other works. And while recommending this I'd also like to mention some books that I was reminded of while reading, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu's Zarah the Windseeker which also has a great, vivid setting whose inspiration was completely foreign to me yet I fell in love with due to how confidently Okorafor-Mbachu described it and Karen Healey's The Shattering but for slightly spoilery reasons, it and The Summer Prince have one rather large plot element in common but it's done completely differently. 






 
*well, except for the one detail of people having children after they turn 50 and much later than that. But, given the passing mention of gene mods and that people’s skin tones must fit into a certain range of colors I can easily hand wave that and say that they just do something either to the uterus or eggs to make this viable. And really, I have just one problem with the technology out of a story which is chock-full of it and is one of the main plot drivers? That’s amazing!

Book Review: Zombies vs Unicorns

Considering my overall impression of the Mars anthology was only lukewarm at best it may seem a bit odd that I decided to read another anthology immediately afterwords, the only explanation I can offer is that I'd been meaning to read this book for years (I followed Justine's blog back when she was still able to update and might have been around for the original blog post). So, knowing full well that just because an anthology is hyped well and has a lot of authors in it that I like doesn't mean that it's going to be good (I'm looking at you Geektastic) I decided to give this one a shot anyway.

Zombies vs Unicorns edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier

 

I'm curious how the paperback cover works since the hardcover book here has the black dust jacket with cut-outs of a zombie and a unicorn which can be removed to show a mural of unicorns and zombies fighting each other printed onto the book cover itself. I think the dust jacket idea is clever although I'm not that fond of the art style used for the images themselves, it's a neat idea regardless however.

 

Summary: Originating from a debate in the comments of author Justin Larbalestier's blog, she and Holly Black head up this anthology which compare zombies and unicorns with 12 stories from well known young adult authors who try to prove why their side is better.

 

The Good: I was quite pleasantly surprised to see that not every story in the anthology involved romance, I simply like a break from it sometimes, and that there were two LGTB romances in the anthology as well (oddly enough both zombies, "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Alaya Dawn Johnson and "Inoculata" by Scott Westerfeld), a very nice change of pace overall. There are some stories in here which I’m confused if they were written to be parodies (all unicorn stories, Meg Cabot’s "Princess Prettypants" and Naomi Novik's "Purity Test")*  but they ended up being so genuinely hilarious that in the end I ended up not caring, I had fun reading them. Fun actually sums up a lot of the anthology, given my bad track record with anthologies I really wasn’t expecting much out of this one yet I enjoyed it and can see why so many other people have as well.

 

The Bad: I’m simply not a big fan of dystopias, for reasons that deserve their own post someday, and since a number of the zombie stories were set in dystopias I didn’t like them as much (which may sound harsh but as I’ve said before, it’s not plot but setting that’s the most important part of a story for me and that’s extra true with such stories like these). None of the stories were bad however, there were just some not to my taste and only about half of them stuck in my mind only a month after I read them which speaks volumes on it's own.

Probably the best anthology I've tried in the past few years but since it had been at least six months between whatever my last anthology was an the Mars one that's not as grand a statement as it sounds. Not sure if I would want a copy of my own for rereading but I'd certainly recommend this to many of my friends, it's a fun book with variety that I can see appealing to a lot of people.

 

  

*so zombies do romance and unicorns do comedy? No wonder I like unicorns better