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Tuesday, September 6, 2011

The Princess Curse by Merrie Haskell

The Princess Curseby Merrie Haskell is officially released today. I've lost count of how many Twelve Dancing Princesses themed novels we've seen in the past decade. This is one of the only ones aimed primarily at middle readers however. I really like the cover art on this one.

Book description from the publisher:

Twelve princesses suffer from a puzzling (if silly) curse, and anyone who ends it will win a reward. Reveka, a sharp-witted and irreverent apprentice herbalist, wants that reward. But her investigations lead to deeper mysteries and a daunting choice—will she break the curse at the peril of her own soul? Ages 10 and up.

Monday, September 5, 2011

StarCrossed and Liar's Moon by Elizabeth C. Bunce

A special edition of StarCrossed by Elizabeth C. Bunce has been put up in the Kindle store with a bargain priced $2.99 preorder with a same day release as the sequel, Liar's Moon, on November 1st. So if you haven't read it yet, you can now wait and get it around the time of the sequel's release and read both since just about everyone who has read it has become a fan. But I encourage preordering since the price may fluctuate.

That said, the book is great enough to not wait for the bargain edition. It's really great and the early reviews for Liar's Moon are glowing, too. Just today this appeared on Kirkus: Hooked on the Thief Errant series
by Leila Roy:

Fans of Megan Whalen Turner, Robin McKinley, Kristin Cashore, Tamora Pierce, Sherwood Smith’s Crown Duel books and/or Ellen Kushner’s Privilege of the Sword: Take note. Everyone else—especially those predisposed toward fantasy novels featuring political intrigue, strong world-building and rough-and-tumble female protagonists—take note as well.

Elizabeth C. Bunce’s Thief Errant series—which debuted last year with StarCrossed and which will continue this November with Liar’s Moon—is one that you should seek out. At first glance, the series is nothing like her first novel, the William C. Morris Award-winning A Curse as Dark as Gold, but upon further reflection (and a reread or two), similarities emerge.

The books aren’t at all similar in terms of plot or character, and Bunce certainly doesn’t write according to a recognizable formula*. Even within the Thief Errant series, there’s not a formula: StarCrossed and Liar’s Moon are different in plot, setting and pacing. In StarCrossed, we meet our intrepid heroine as she escapes from a robbery gone so horribly wrong that she’ll be executed if she’s caught. She spends the entire book as a fish-out-of-water, both in an unfamiliar place and pretending to be someone and something she very much is not. In Liar’s Moon, Digger is back on her own turf and among her own people...until she gets plucked off the street and chucked into a jail cell with the last person she’d have ever expected to see there.

And, for full disclosure, I've had this entry in draft form for a few weeks since I saw the preorder special and debated the post since this is one time I think waiting for the bargain is not worth the wait, but if it encourages you to order both and thus support Bunce's career--she's really lovely and used to hang around SurLaLune during her Curse Dark As Gold Days--that's a wonderful thing.

And really who doesn't love these books? I myself have Sherwood Smith's newest on preorder--Blood Spirits--to be delivered to my Kindle after midnight tonight. I expect my elliptical time to increase as I read it tomorrow.

Alanna: The First Adventure (The Song of the Lioness)

YA Reading Thoughts and A Book: Sirenz by Charlotte Bennardo and Natalie Zaman

Sirenz by Charlotte Bennardo and Natalie Zaman (ebook link) was released this past June and caught my eye with its title, of course, after all my recent work with mermaids, sirens, etc. I could probably post about a different YA fantasy novel with mythology, folklore and fairy tale elements every day of the month. Well, the fairy tale ones get fast tracked onto this blog, but the other ones not so much unless they spark my interest. Should that change? I don't want this blog to be just about books--although they are my favorite thing--my primary purpose is to show how fairy tales and folklore appear in the world around us. But it seems that the books are most readers' favorite entries, so perhaps I will broaden the parameters. And, after all, Young People Are Reading More Than You. And I am all about that, too, so I enjoy being part of the push.

I'm not one to miss my earlier youth and I enjoy the age I have achieved, thank you very much, but sometimes I am wistful over the literature I missed reading as a teenager by being born earlier. I mean what I missed reading as a teen because it wasn't published yet. I can't complain because that meant some of the greats weren't overshadowed and they fed my soul during those years--I wouldn't give up reading Madeleine L'Engle or Robin McKinley over and over during those years again for anything. I also discovered the classics and devoured them more than I see the current avid teen readers doing these days because they have so many choices to distract them.

Oh well, enough rumblings. Back to the book. Sirenz is surely not soul-stirring but it sounds like fun that provokes a little thinking, too. The mythology usage sound intriguing so I thought I would share it here.

Book description from the publisher:

Bickering frenemies Meg and Shar are doing some serious damage at a midnight sample sale when the fashionistas find themselves arguing over a pair of shoes-with fatal consequences. One innocent bystander later, the girls are suddenly at the mercy of Hades, Lord of the Underworld himself. To make them atone for what they've done, Hades forces the teens to become special-assignment Sirens, luring to the Underworld an individual whose unholy contract is up.

Finding that delicate balance between their fashion addiction and their new part-time job in the eternal hellfire biz turns out to be harder than Meg and Shar expected, especially when an entire pantheon of Greek deities decides to get involved. Then there's the matter of the fine print in their own contracts...

Yes, there is the fashion hook to get the book started--I am rather weary of the high fashion schtick that chick lit's boom left us--but it seems to move away from that and use mythology in a quirky way, so more fun and perhaps inspiration to learn more about some various Greek gods.