"The Lightning Thief" by Rick Riordan

Summary: Percy Jackson has been expelled from the many private schools he has attended.  Between his problems with dyslexia and ADHD and his propensity for attracting trouble, he's finding he doesn't fit in with any school.  However, as Percy's life becomes increasingly in danger, he begins to learn about his origins and connections to the Olympians of Greek mythology.  It turns out the Greek Olympians are real and alive, and Percy is the son of one of them.  Percy joins other demigods at Camp Half-Blood and is soon on a quest with a daughter of Athena, Annabeth, and a satyr, Grover, to discover who has stolen Zeus' thunderbolt.

Musings: I'd heard about the Percy Jackson series from my students for a couple years; it always got brought up when we began our Greek Mythology unit prior to studying the Odyssey.  However, it wasn't until this year that I had a large contingent of students who had read and followed the series.  The Lightning Thief came out in 2005, so it would have been timed perfectly to arrive with my current students' emergence into middle school.  After their hearty recommendations, I began the series myself.

The Lightning Thief is written for a middle-school audience (the hero is a sixth grader), so some of the fantasy elements were a bit (and understandably so) juvenile.  Nonetheless, I enjoyed this classic adventure story with a mythological twist.  The continual references to mythology are fun, even if they're glaringly obvious to someone familiar with the material (anyone who knows the Odyssey would know better than to enter a hotel called "Hotel Lotus").  The kids' mistakes were also a little too dumb, even for middle schoolers (even a 12-year-old knows that if someone offers food and a warm place to stay for free there's danger ahead), but such mistakes kept the story going along at a brisk pace.

I enjoyed the primary characters and their relationships with the gods.  Riordan does a nice job exploring what the relationship between a half-blood son and an all-powerful god would be like.  It's a world in which the gods maintain power despite no mortals believing in them, and I liked the way Riordan worked that into the story.

Like in many young adult novels, the characters are not particularly unique or new, and there is an American-centric basis that was a little annoying (Mount Olympus is now located above the Empire State building because the United States is the epicenter of the world).  However, I'll definitely pick up the next book (I don't think my students would let me do otherwise), even though I know that means accepting the reading of the entire five-book series!

"Neverwhere" by Neil Gaiman

Summary: Richard Mayhew is living an ordinary life in London when, out one night on an important dinner date with his fiance, he runs into a girl injured on the street and in need of help.  When he brings her back to her apartment, he finds himself drawn into her world.  Hidden beneath the streets of London, a strange subculture exists separate from London Above  Richard and Door (the girl) begin a journey to find the truth about Door's family's deaths.

Musings:  I picked this up at my school library from recognizing Gaiman's name.  Unintentionally, I also ended up with Good Omens at about the same time, so I was a little wary of beginning Neverwhere since I'd just read another of his books (I try to space out genres, subjects, and authors, if possible, but I've been failing miserably at that recently).  Fortunately Neverwhere was right up my genre alley and was sufficiently different from Good Omens to avoid deja vu.

Although Everwhere possesses some of the random sardonic humor that marks Good Omens, humor is not at the core of the work.  Instead, Everwhere is a fully-fledged fantasy adventure novel full of strange worlds, bizarre customs, and extraordinary characters (notice all the synonyms for weird?).  Although there's not anything particularly new or ground-breaking about the story line (it follows the heroic cycle perfectly-- not that that's unusual), I enjoyed going along for the ride with the warm characters.  You pull for Richard the entire time as life continues to smack him in the face, and he continues to pick himself back up again.  The delightful marquis de Carabas takes some unexpected turns and even the henchmen Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar were fun to be around.

The book has a satisfying and appropriate end, and I missed Richard and Door--a little bit--once they were gone.

P.S.  Just learned that Neverwhere was first a BBC television series before being adapted into a book.  Wow; I don't think I've ever seen literature come from that directions.  Almost makes me feel somehow differently about it all.  It was still a great read, but I think I'm glad I didn't know going in.

"The Knife of Never Letting Go" by Patrick Ness

Summary: In a month, Todd will be a man and will stop being the only boy left in Prentisstown.  When his parents and others landed in the New World trying to start a new life, they didn't realize their settlement would be infected by the Noise.  All the women and half the men died. Now, all the remaining people in Prentisstown can hear everyone else's thoughts, all at once.  The constant Noise that surrounds them is deafening and overwhelming.  When Todd accidentally discovers a girl--and the silence (not Noise) that surrounds her--he finds himself being forced to run from Prentisstown without knowing its dark secrets.

Musings: After reading a number of other reviews on this novel, I had some idea of what to expect and wasn't disappointed.  The Knife of Never Letting Go immediately inundates the reader with secrets and action at a break-neck speed and doesn't slow down right down until the last page.  The choppy sentences, following one line after another, increase the reading adrenaline, which made me physically nervous and excited as I read.  The action never stops, meaning there's really no good place to put down the book for another time.

The speed makes the book draining emotionally, and one death, in particular, had me cursing the "effing" author Ness for several minutes as I grasped for tissues.  I still don't think I've forgiven him, even though I rapidly drank in the remainder of his book.

The book definitely falls on the darker side of YA dystopian lit.  Beyond the deaths and grisly truths of the new society, Todd also finds himself dealing with self-loathing in a way that was scary and real.  He developed more as a character for me than the girl, Viola, but I'm hoping she'll be given more room in the next book.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book; it felt most similar to The Hunger Games although the basic premise of that book attracted me more than Ness's did.  But, that's not to say Knife is not without flaws.  The book begins with a mountain of secrets, and very little is revealed through most of the novel.  When some truth finally surfaces, near the end, it's a little anti-climactic.  Todd narrates the novel, and in an attempt to imitate his "hick" style, occasional words in the narration are misspelled (like "yer" instead of "you" or "conversayshun" instead of "conversation").  I found it distracting rather than enlightening.  One main "bad guy" comes back from the dead so often you'd think you were in a bad horror movie.

Nevertheless, I'm more than willing to pick up the next book in the series, The Ask and the Answer.  Unfortunately my library system doesn't have a copy, so I'll have to get creative.

"The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico" by Sarah McCoy

Summary: Verdita details her "coming of age" in Puerto Rico. She deals with her burgeoning awareness of sexuality, her ambivalence about her parents, and her desire to look and be American.

Musings: This book was presented (in the inside flap, certainly not the best source of information) as following in the tradition of The House on Mango Street and Annie John. Although McCoy attempts to capture the bildungsroman and lyrical nature of more famous "island" literature, her slim book just doesn't capture the spirit or life of her predecessors.

Verdita goes through the surprises and shock of sexual growth (walking in on her parents having sex, developing pubic hair) in a way that feels done and trite. Her irrational anger at her mother and attachment to her father during this time felt confusing rather than indicative of puberty.

The parents are confusing figures, and it's uncertain what their motivations or feelings really are.

Verdita's beginning awareness of her sexuality and her desire to be "Americanized" are only half-explored, and the hopefulness with which the novels ends (with Verdita traveling to America for the first time) didn't feel in sync with the rest of the novel.

The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico is a quick read, but it offers nothing new to the genre.

"Good Omens" by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Summary: The apocalypse is coming, but Aziraphale, an angel of Heaven, and Crowley, a demon of Hell, aren't quite ready for it. They like earth. They attempt to "neutralize" the child anti-Christ with an equal dose of heavenly and hellish influence, but they later find out that due to a baby mix-up, the anti-Christ has been raised normally, with no extraordinary influence at all. An assortment of odd characters, including the Four Horsemen (ahem, Bikers) of the Apocalypse, a prophesying witch, and some witch hunters come together to try to destroy or save the world.

Musings: This book most immediately reminded me of the movie Dogma although the movie came out after the novel was published. The concept of a satiric look on Armageddon in both cases caught my attention, and both works succeeded in delivering a funny and random story that explores some basic assumptions about religion.

The beginning of the book was a little slow for me, and the irreverence was less funny than I had hoped. As the book continued, though, the story picked up steam. I especially enjoyed the comradeship between Aziraphale and Crowley. One of the primary themes of the book is that "good" and "evil" are not so nearly different as they appear, and this message is certainly apparent in the angel and demon's relationship.

The quirky, random moments are the book's funniest, which include Famine's plot to destroy the world through creating fast food that makes a person fat while dying of malnutrition and the Hellhound's reduction to a yapping small dog.

The book has a fast pace and covers a number of different characters, but all the pieces are brought together in a satisfying end.

If nothing else, the book is a great read for lines like this: "He could recall how he and his wife used to go there to spoon, and on one memorable occasion, to fork."

"The Tattooed Girl" by Joyce Carol Oates

Summary: Joshua Seigl, a relatively famous author and academic, finds himself in failing health and decides to hire an assistant. In an unplanned moment, he asks Alma, a quiet and mysterious new arrival in town, to help him. Joshua battles his demons as a writer as Alma deals with her past.

Musings: I'm rather new to Joyce Carol Oates, but she appears twice in the 9th grade curriculum - one of the summer reading options is her young adult novel Big Mouth and Ugly Girl, and all my classes read her fabulous short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?". I picked this novel up at a book fair that was giving away books, and, enjoying the works above, finally got around to reading it.

To start: this book is terrible. Truly, terrible. Not boring terrible, dense terrible, or cliched terrible- just terrible.

Most of the book repulsed and disgusted me. Perhaps it's supposed to (for what purpose?), but it literally upset my stomach. There is a strong fixation on the body in the novel, particularly Alma's breasts and body odors. Everything was "fleshy." Both men in the novel were constantly thinking about and digesting her body. Objectification of women is certainly not new, but I curdled inside reading the men's descriptions. Not surprisingly, the insecure men blame women for their troubles, then only see women as sexual objects. I would assume we are supposed to be put off by this behavior (ugh, I was), but I didn't see the men being particularly condemned. Instead, their behavior was explored as deep and personal.

I was also confused (and, again, repulsed) by the virulent anti-Semitism. There is a huge emphasis on Seigl's "Jewishness," even though he's only half Jewish (on the wrong side) and not practicing. The hatred Alma and Dmitri felt for him as a Jew befuddled me more than anything else. I suppose the virulence is given so much attention to highlight Alma's later growth, but it didn't quite work for me.

Joshua's crazy sister appears in the first part of the book for no apparent reason, then disappears only to reappear randomly and without real explanation.

I started to feel a bit more positive toward the book in the last quarter as Alma and Joshua began to explore some kind of communication. Alma's thought process started to make some sense. Then Oates went and included the most moronic ending (way worse than Farmer's!) that's straight out of a terrible horror movie.

I typically feel more eloquent when praising a book than condemning it, but I do feel like I need to get this off my chest and out of my mind.

"The House of the Scorpion" by Nancy Farmer

Summary: Matt has always lived a sheltered life with his caretaker Celia, but at an early age he learns he's not human--he's a clone of the powerful drug lord El Patron. As a clone, Matt is reviled by all other members of the Alacran family except the young Maria. Over time, Matt learns the truth about why clones are created, the worker "zombies," and the world that has been created with the land of Opium dividing the U.S. and Aztlan (formerly Mexico).

Musings: This is my second Farmer book after The Ear, The Eye, and The Arm. I hadn't liked that novel much, but her name appeared on so many YA to-read lists, and I'd heard Scorpion recommended by several people, so I decided I'd give her another try. Unfortunately, this one wasn't much better.

Like The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, Scorpion's protagonist is a young and inquisitive male. However, in both books I felt absolutely no connection to the character. Matt's thoughts felt stale, and I truthfully was bored listening to him think. The dystopian society in which Matt is living is presented, but only half-heartedly explored. A miraculous happy ending was annoyingly unlikely, and Farmer throwing in a main character's death in the last few pages hardly added any emotional resonance.

Farmer also failed to explore much of the societal problems she introduces in this book. People fleeing from one country to another are captured and turned into "eejits" (zombies). The eejits are hated by regular people, and Matt feels bad about their situation, but otherwise this slavery is pushed aside.

Even more confusing was the introduction of a socialist-like mentality when Matt is trapped by the Keepers, men in charge of the work-orphanages in Aztlan. The boys are lectured on the dangers of individuality and the importance of group-work ethic. The Keepers' attempts at indoctrination are clearly supposed to be viewed as bad, but the reader is not told why they espouse this message. It doesn't seem like the rest of the country follows it (the few citizens of Aztlan we meet seem like normal, nice people). So why do these Keepers have so much power? Who's giving them the power? Is the government of Aztlan corrupt too (that didn't seem to be the case, but it was barely addressed)? What's going on with the U.S.?

Farmer has tried to create a certain view of society, but too many gaps existed in the world she created for the social commentary to make sense or deliver any message. Despite all the awards, I'm definitely done with Farmer's work.