A very loose sequel to Tithe, the Holly Black book I read a couple of days ago. A third one, Ironside, is coming -- if all goes well, I'll read that tomorrow.This won the very first Andre Norton Award (which is to the Nebulas what the John W. Campbell Memorial Award is to the Hugos -- given at the same time, and administered the same way, but Not The Same Thing At All) for YA Fantasy fiction, and I have to say that I liked it much better than Tithe (which was a bit too YA for my tastes -- filled with utterly self-absorbed teens who I wanted to batter heavily with a clue stick).
Anyway, these books are sort of the fantasy version of the YA problem novel, with runaways, teen sex, and drug abuse -- which, of course, has led to much public clucking about them from the kind of Southern librarians/teachers who had wooden poles inserted anally at the beginning of their careers. (I was reading the Amazon reviews a minute ago, and, if they think this book has bad language, those people are ridiculously sheltered.)
I probably wouldn't have gotten to these books if not for work -- the kind of problem novels I read as a teen tended to be the "I'm rich and my parents are divorced and my life is full of Stuff but still sucks until I learn that what's important in life is Good People" type -- but this one is really good. I am so much not the audience for it, though. So take anything I said above that looks negative with about three metric tons of salt.
The Fabulous Book-A-Day Index!
No comments:
Post a Comment