In a utopian future where “angels” have rooted out the “monsters” that beset humanity, protagonist Jam draws a creature of vengeance out of a piece of her mother’s artwork, and finds herself an unwilling participant in its hunt for evil. It’s an interesting situation because all her life Jam has been told that there are no more monsters to fear, so that when she does wish to hunt one, she finds that the biggest obstacle is the adults’ lack of belief that danger exists at all. Simply told but sits uncomfortably in the mind; well done.
Tag: genre-ya
Trickster Drift / Return of the Trickster, by Eden Robinson
Books 2 and 3 of the trickster trilogy continue to be crude, hilarious, violent, and still quite sweet. Jared just wants to go to college and study medical imaging, but his heritage includes magic and his family situation is complicated way beyond the normal trauma inherited by Indigenous peoples in Canada. The interesting thing about this trilogy is that Jared doesn’t really grow as a character; he remains the same solid, thoughtful guy that he was at the beginning of the books, except he gradually gets less dependent on drugs and alcohol, more traumatized by external events, and more aware of his magical heritage. Instead, the growth and change can be seen in the people around him: his mom, who gets better at expressing her feelings; his various grandmother figures, who come to terms with his origin; his father figures, who figure out what they really want in life (or in afterlife), and his friends, who become stronger and better people around him.
The Seventh Sun, by Lani Forbes
This book was suggested based on the magic system and its callouts to Aztec mythology, but sadly that was the only good thing about the book. Otherwise it felt like the cool magic system was grafted onto a story about modern teenagers, complete with contemporary turns of phrase in their dialogue. Much of this story is literally The Bachelor where a bunch of hot, catty girls (ok, their magic powers are pretty cool) participate in meaningless contests to impress the eligible prince. The central character is a Sailormoon-esque clumsy goodhearted princess, whose defining character trait is that she selectively reads scripture to suit her personal preferences and arbitrarily chooses which to follow, which for me hit a little too close to home given all the “I did the research! By which I mean I looked for corroborating evidence on the internet and ignored everything that said otherwise!” nonsense going on these days. Nearly everyone in the story is a hot teen and the supporting cast is suuuuper two-dimensional. Maybe this is more YA that I’m too grumpy to read, but again, I don’t think I’d be complaining this much if it were done better.