The Celestial Globe

The Celestial Globe
by Marie Rutkoski
Recommended Ages: 12+

When evil Prince Rodolfo of Bohemia discovers the persons responsible for plundering his Cabinet of Wonders were clockmaker's daughter Petra and her gypsy friend Neel, he sends his Gray Men - monsters created from the corpses of condemned criminals - to arrest Petra, or worse. But she is saved by her mental connection with John Dee, a magician and spy in the service of Queen Elizabeth I of England. Her friend Tomik runs to her rescue too late, finding the headless corpses of four Gray Men and a magical rift leading to a beach in Portugal, where he is abducted by sea gypsies who plan to sell him into slavery. Luckily, Tomik befriends Neel, who is on board their ship. Unluckily, Petra finds herself stuck in England, worried sick about her father and forced to learn magic from Dee, sword-fighting from an untrustworthy scamp named Kit, and the identity of a murderer who has stuck within the queen's inner circle. Her bargain with Dee is that if she solves the murder before he does, she can go back to Bohemia.

Meantime, back on board the Pacolet, Tomik has earned a position of trust among the sea-gypsies. But his search for Petra has gotten mixed up with the gypsies' search for an artifact called the Celestial Globe, which is crucial for exploiting all the rifts that lead magically from one side of the world to another. In the wrong hands, it could be a weapon of unthinkable power. In the gypsies' hands, it might mean salvation for their downtrodden brethren in scattered lands. But they aren't the only ones looking for it. Dee and the queen want it in England. Rodolfo and his minions want it in Bohemia. And someone has already proven willing to murder for it. When the resourceful young heroes of this book finally get together in a final search for the globe, it will be just on time to be caught between all the other forces in play.

This story has a lot of exciting action and fascinating historical details. The character of John Dee is intriguing, and the developing relationship between Tomik and Neel was fun to watch. Petra's familiar, a talking mechanical spider named Astrophil, is really a marvelous creation. The only thing about this book that irritated me was, frankly, the character of Petra. I found her chronically hard to sympathize with - negative, bad-tempered, sharp-tongued, and a little historically anachronistic. I kept feeling sympathy for the people she was antagonizing - with a couple of exceptions. What I didn't feel was chemistry between her and either Tomik or Neel; I had to take their word for it on their feelings for her. I guess it is possible for a strong-willed character to come on too strong. But with that reservation, I had fun reading this book, and immediately picked up its sequel.

This is the second book of the Kronos Chronicles trilogy, between The Cabinet of Wonders and The Jewel of the Kalderash. Rutkoski's other fiction includes the more recent Winner's Trilogy, comprising The Winner's Curse, The Winner's Crime, and The Winner's Kiss, and the stand-alone novel The Shadow Society. A sometime lecturer at Harvard with a Ph.D. from that university, she has actually lived in Prague - a fact that perhaps influenced her depiction of the historic city in this series.

The Diabolic

The Diabolic
by S.J. Kincaid
Recommended Ages: 14+

Nemesis is a Diabolic. That means she is a humanoid creature, bred and conditioned for one purpose: to protect the life of Sidonia Impyrian, the daughter of a senator of the galactic empire. She is a flawlessly engineered killing machine, biochemically programmed to love Donia and no one else. If anything were to happen to her, Nemesis would feel compelled to tear out the heart of whoever was responsible - but after that, her life would be worthless.

Up to a certain point, it isn't a bad way to live. Other than her memories from before she imprinted on Donia, of the awful things done to her and that she was forced to do, Nemesis leads a fairly soft life in the Impyrian family fortress, doted on by a sweet and loving girl, rather like a life-sized, living dolly. But then Donia's senator father falls out of favor with Emperor Randevald von Domitrian, by daring to take the wrong side of an ideological division within the empire.

The emperor is a devotee of the Helionic faith, which worships the Living Cosmos and considers all attempts to learn about science and technology to be blasphemy. Senator von Impyrian, meanwhile, thinks the empire is running out of time. The machines that keep its starships running are breaking down, and the starships themselves soon follow - with devastating results spreading across huge regions of space. No one understands how they work any more, let alone how to repair or replace them. Soon there won't be anywhere mankind can go, or any means for going there.

When the emperor decides to purge his realm of dissenting views, he begins by outlawing all Diabolics (except his own). Then he orders Sidonia to come to his court - which, if history is any guide, means she will either be a hostage to keep her father in line, or a scapegoat to suffer punishment for his crimes. Donia's family flouts both decrees, first by concealing the fact Nemesis was not put to death, then by sending her to court in Donia's place. After a crash course in comportment and a series of microsurgeries to change her appearance, Nemesis sets out on the most perilous assignment a Diabolic ever performed - protecting Sidonia by becoming her, when detection means a death sentence for both of them.

But that's just the setup for an exciting, complicated, and extremely romantic adventure in a totally engrossing, far-future fantasy world. Also involved - though I haven't space to explain how - are rival heirs to the imperial throne, among them a magnetic young man who feigns madness to survive in a royal family in which murder is almost an everyday occurrence. And though Nemesis has always been impatient with her mistress' unshakable belief that there is more to her than her deadly conditioning - that, perhaps, even a Diabolic might have a soul - it isn't until she meets Prince Tyrus that Nemesis starts to experience real emotions and explore the possibility that her life may have a purpose outside of protecting Donia.

The upshot is, perhaps surprisingly, one of the most emotionally convincing and moving depictions of romantic love I have ever read in a science fiction book that, also surprisingly, doesn't stoop to the near-pornographic. If it deserves an Adult Content Advisory, it is mainly for frequent and extreme violence. There is a core of kindness and hopeful humanity at the heart of this book, and a story structure that times its surprises, its emotional revelations, and its stretches of suspense to perfection.

S.J. Kincaid is an American author, also known for her trilogy of Insignia, Vortex, and Catalyst, plus their prequel novella, Allies. This review, made possible by a pre-publication proof via NetGalley dot com, has convinced me Kincaid is a talent to follow. The book goes into U.S. release Nov. 1, 2016.

Lilliput

Lilliput
by Sam Gayton
Recommended Ages: 10+

Lilliput was just one of the places Lemuel Gulliver visited on his well-known travels. Even if you don't remember much about the other stops on his trip, it's very likely that if the title Gulliver's Travels means anything to you, you've heard of this island nation whose miniature people look up to us regular humans as we look up to giants. So imagine the terror six-moon-old Lily feels when Gulliver rears up out of the sea, making a return trip just to snatch her and bring her back to England as proof of his stories from his previous visit. She spends the next six months of her fairy-sized life in a birdcage, hatching 33 escape plans, none of which succeed. Meanwhile, Gulliver obsesses over the journal of his travels, which he hopes to finish soon so he can show Lily to the King of England and prove his story is one of scientific discovery, not madness or tomfoolery.

Then one day, a message Lily sneaked out of Gulliver's garret on the tail of a friendly mouse brings an answer. She finds a friend in the apprentice of the evil clockmaker who is also Gulliver's landlord. Forced to wear a wristwatch that tightens painfully after every wasted minute, Finn is not just Mr. Plinker's apprentice; he's a slave. But the two orphans help each other escape Mr. Plinker's vile clutches, experiencing wonderful and scary adventures together. Finally, they join a couple more colorful characters to plan Lily's escape back to Lilliput. But Mr. Plinker has also been making plans, plans that put Lily and all her friends in terrible danger.

An afterword to this book notes its place among a large body of "Gulliveriana" - basically, the oldest body of fan-fiction in English literature, dating back to 1726, the very year Jonathan Swift first published Gulliver's Travels. Considering that, plus the abiding impact of Swift's book on the shared imagination of western (or at least English-speaking) culture, and the fact that his title character was the first literary hero to wear spectacles, Gulliver blazed a trail for Harry Potter in many ways. But perhaps it is this book's origin as a tale a young man told his brother during a ramble along seaside cliffs that best explain its compelling drama, its fast-paced and exciting action, its winning combination of friendly and villainous characters, and its magical depiction of the tiniest of heroines prevailing against a gigantic and dangerous world. It's an unexpected sequel to Gulliver, but a wonderful little adventure in it own right.

This was the second published book by the British author of Hercufleas, but his first to be released in the U.S. I snapped up a copy of the edition illustrated by Alice Ratterree as soon as I spotted it in the children's fiction section of my local public library, and was richly rewarded for the time I spent reading it. Piecing together snippets I have read about the author in both of his books that I have read, and on his website, he is keen on stories about miniature people, and he has a master's degree in writing fiction for children - the first I have heard such a degree exists. Gayton's other books include The Snow Merchant, published in the U.S. as The Adventures of Lettie Peppercorn, and His Royal Whiskers.

The Final Exam

The Final Exam
by Gitty Daneshvari
Recommended Ages: 12+

The final book of the School of Fear trilogy breaks the pattern of series of books about weird and whimsical schools, by continuing from where the second book ended without breaking until next year. School of Fear's four, I mean five, "contestants in the pageant of life," as the eccentric Mrs. Wellington calls them, have succeeded in luring Abernathy, the wild man of the forest who was once the student Mrs. Wellington couldn't help, back to the school for another try. But overcoming his novercaphobia is going to be tricky, since it's the fear of stepmothers... and, well, Mrs. Wellington is his stepmother. Now an elderly man himself, Abernathy is in a state of arrested development, stuck at the age when the glamorous beauty queen and phobia fixer came between him and his widower father. As the object of his neurosis, and an oddball in her own right, Mrs. W is in no position to help him. But some way must be found to bring Abernathy to forgive her, before a strangely pig-like tabloid journalist publishes a tell-all article that will destroy School of Fear and embarrass everyone connected with it.

Once again, a lot will depend on youthful phobiacs Lulu, Garrison, Madeleine, Theo, and Hyacinth. Even while the stress of the situation makes them irritable and triggers minor and major attacks of their respective problems, they must pull together to survive an expedition to yet another off-the-grid school for kids with special problems - the stupid-risk-taking Contrarians, whose teacher, the one-eyebrowed Bishop Basmati, practices a method of therapy that makes Mrs. Wellington's methods seem totally grounded and reasonable. For while Basmati may be the only person who can bring Abernathy out of his decades-long fugue state, it's up to the School of Fearians to solve the mystery of a missing canary named Toothpaste. If they don't find the smart-beaked bird, Basmati will turn Abernathy against his stepmom again, right in time for an interview with the reporker (ha ha, I just made that up) who has been sniffing at the kids' heels all summer.

As usual, Gitty Daneshvari serves up a goofy and hilarious, yet also insightful and sensitive, interplay of oddball characters who come fully loaded with their own built-in conflicts. Maddie doesn't want to go through life wearing a shower cap, but her fear of bugs (especially spiders) has come back with a vengeance since she smashed a brown and burgundy spider on her own forehead. Garrison wants to be a real surfer dude, but his fear of water almost keeps him from crossing the drawbridge over the Contrarians' moat. Theo's obsession with safety has made him more irritating than ever, and even tough cookie Lulu loses it big-time when her claustrophobia catches up with her. But thanks to their shared fear of failure, and their need for School of Fear to survive this latest threat, the kids rise up to face a challenge that terrifies all of them. So while their adventure is ridiculous (in a fun way), it is also kind of inspiring.

It was nice to discover this complete trilogy on the young adult fiction shelf of my local public library. School-of-magic fans should be just as happy to see it, though it depicts more of a summer-school of unconventional psychotherapy. It is, however, a place just as secretive as Hogwarts, and a place that provides a different kind of escape from the misery of its students' ordinary lives - one that helps them face their ordinary lives with less misery. It also abounds in warm friendship, sharp dialogue, smart humor, and bizarre surprises. I'll be on the lookout for Get Smart-ish, the sequel to this author's equally funny book The League of Unexceptional Children.

Class Is Not Dismissed!

Class Is Not Dismissed!
by Gitty Daneshvari
Recommended Ages: 12+

In this sequel to School of Fear, a year has passed since batty beauty-pageant maven Mrs. Wellington started four quirky kids on the road to recovery from their phobias. But during that year, they have all secretly relapsed. Madeleine, the arachnophobe, lives a mostly normal life, but she still sleeps with an insect veil over her face. Formerly water-phobic Garrison now tries to pass himself off as a surfer dude, but he still hasn't put one toe in the ocean. Lulu, who armors herself with sarcasm to cover a deep and abiding terror of enclosed spaces, is exhausted after a year of faking trips to the bathroom and waiting for someone to share a trip in an elevator with her. And though Theo no longer drives his family crazy trying to confirm their "alive or dead" status every hour of the day, he thinks they might soon realize he is secretly spying on them. So they all have to go back to Mrs. Wellington's secretive School of Fear for another summer.

Unfortunately, they are joined by a chatterbox named Hyacinth, who is so frightened of being alone that she instantly anoints everyone she meets as "besties" and clings to them, I mean physically, until their fingers grow numb. She claims to understand her pet ferret Celery, to whom she attributes all her snotty remarks and naughty impulses. And when the other kids try for a moment of privacy from her, she throws a Category 4 panic attack. I just made that category up, but when it comes to creating offbeat characters and putting them in woolly situations, it's hard to out-do Gitty Daneshvari. If you think nothing can top the bizarre setting of the first installment in this series, wait till a burglar's blackmail note leads Mrs. W, her faithful manservant Schmidty, five kids, one ferret, and a fat bulldog named Macaroni on a race to a beauty pageant for dogs - complete with reckless driving, atrocious wardrobe decisions, a police interrogation, and a disruptive confrontation in front of a crowd of people dressed as their pets.

But the real crisis happens when one of the kids - don't ask me to hint about who - rats out School of Fear to a tabloid journalist. Now the secrecy, the very existence, of the only program that has ever helped these fear-afflicted kids is at stake, and that scares them most of all. To have any hope of saving School of Fear, they need (once again) to face their fears, get to the bottom of the mystery of Mrs. Wellington's one disastrous failure, and try to lure the one patient she couldn't help back for another go.

This is the middle book of a trilogy, which concludes with The Final Exam. It is also rich in the type of comedy that develops naturally from the interplay of several oddball characters. Their hopes and fears, their flaws and good intentions, their mutual frustrations and friendships, all play into a constant stream of hilarious repartee, embarrassing mishaps, and touching moments. In many ways School of Fear is too silly to be believed. But on the human level, it engages the reader's full sympathy and willingness to imagine. Whoever Gitty Daneshvari is - and I still think her head-shot is too good-looking to be true; besides which, her copyrights are registered to Cat On A Leash, Inc. - she knows how to cue laughter, build sympathy, and mine the heroic potential of ordinary, mostly unheroic kids.

The Boy Who Knew Too Much

The Boy Who Knew Too Much
by Commander S.T. Bolivar III
Recommended Ages: 11+

Commander S.T. Bolivar III seems to be one of those authors of the school of N.E. Bode, Pseudonymous Bosch, and Lemony Snicket, whose true identity may perhaps eventually become known, but who currently enjoys the freedom to paint himself into the background of a tale of hero kids measuring themselves against grown-up villains. In this first book of the "Munchem Academy" series, the Commander aims to set the record straight about the greatest thief who ever lived, starting with Mattie Larimore's first and only arrest - for stealing a subway train. A disappointment to his loud, bossy businessman father and his Dominican telenovela starlet mother, Mattie is condemned to join his juvenile-delinquent older brother Carter at a reform school called Munchem Academy.

As soon as he arrives at Munchem, Mattie can't wait to go home. He tries and tries to be good enough, but somehow he keeps getting into trouble. Call it an impulse-control problem, like when he hits the class bully on the nose with a wet washrag. Call it a conflict between wanting to be the son his parents want and the brother Carter wants. He tries so hard to make the teachers like him that he makes enemies of the other students, but still it isn't enough. In desperation, Mattie recruits his two best friends - technology nerd Eliot and his bossy, animal-rescuing sister Caroline - to break into the headmaster's office in search of a handbook on how to be good. Funnily enough, he doesn't spot the book (though an eagle-eyed reader might). Instead, he finds himself in the middle of a scary adventure involving a conspiracy to replace bad students with good clones. And his biggest worry is that if Carter doesn't shape up - Carter, who never listens to him - he'll be next.

This is a heart-warming, funny, exciting introduction to the career of a crook with a heart of gold. I know, I just used the word "heart" twice in one sentence, but this book has plenty of heart, as well as some wickedly clever banter, over-the-top goofy characters, strange-enough-to-be-almost-believable adventure, and a reform school setting that is both grim and quirky. It will be fun to visit again. And though there are many ways Mattie Larimore and Munchem are unlike Harry Potter and Hogwarts - notable examples including the older-brother character of Carter and the substitution of crime instead of magic - there are many more reasons to expect this new series to catch fire with fans of the boy wizard.

This review is based on a free Kindle proof made available through Netgalley dot com, though the book was already released in September 2016.

Etiquette & Espionage

Etiquette & Espionage
by Gail Carriger
Recommended Ages: 13+

I first became a fan of Gail Carriger through her frisky, adult "Parasol Protectorate" series, a quintet of paranormal-steampunk-comedy-romance-thrillers set in the 1870s. For a long time I've been hankering to try her "Finishing School" series, a young-adult prequel quartet set in the 1850s. Recently, during a raid on my local library's YA section, I discovered a full set of them, which is an excellent cue to get started.

This, ahem, debut book in the series introduces Miss Sophronia Temminick, the unladylike youngest daughter in a large family of country gentry somewhere in Wiltshire. Her curiosity about the inner workings of the clockwork- and steam-driven domestics (known, in the Parasolverse, as "mechanicals") and her habit of causing scandalous accidents with jam tarts leads to Sophronia being recruited to an exclusive finishing school that puts an unexpected weight on the word "finishing." At Madamoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy, girls receive lessons in seduction, poisoning, intelligence-gathering, and defending themselves against vampires and werewolves, all in the charming environment of a three-balloon airship floating above Dartmoor. It's so very hush-hush, even Mlle. Geraldine doesn't know the true nature of her school; practicing deception on her is one of the girls' lessons.

In her first term at Mlle. Geraldine's, Sophronia learns to dance, to dress, and to dissemble like a fine lady who will, presumably, one day marry well (perhaps more than once). She also learns to elude the mechanicals that patrol the hallways, to visit the "sooties" who shovel coal in the boiler rooms, and to hide a steam-powered sausage dog in the dormitory she shares with five other girls of varying trustworthiness. A couple of her friends may be familiar to those who remember the Parasol Protectorate. But friends aren't all she has. Sophronia also, very quickly, develops a full dance card of enemies, including airborne pirates known as flywaymen, tophatted hoodlums called Picklemen, an especially roguish clique called the Pistons at a boys' school for evil geniuses, and one of her own classmates.

Everyone is after a prototype thingummy, which has something to do with the fact that telegraphs don't work in the Parasolverse. Don't expect me to explain this, other than "because steampunk." As Sophronia gradually learns enough of the arts of a finished (or finishing) female to attend her older sister's coming-out ball during the holidays - and no, "coming out" doesn't mean what you think, you 21st-century goof - she also pieces together the mystery of where the prototype may have been hidden. Wouldn't you know, keeping it from falling into the wrong hands depends entirely on what one resourceful young lady does at a memorable evening of social disaster and fashion mayhem.

Other books in this series are Curtsies & Conspiracies, Waistcoats & Weaponry, and Manners & Mutiny. Carriger's other writings include the on-going "Custard Protocol" series, so far comprising Prudence and Imprudence; the "Finishing School" spinoff series "Delightfully Deadly" with, so far, only the book Poison or Protect; the LGBT "Supernatural Society" series, also with only one book so far, Romancing the Inventor; and a "Carriger Quartet" of racy short fictions in full-cast audio productions. It's safe to assume an Adult Content Advisory applies to all of them; but the "Finishing School" series seems, so far, to be quite teen-friendly, with only a far-off sparkle of sexiness to come. Mostly, it's just subversively funny, with all the steampunk hallmarks of high fashion, satirical wit, technological oddities, secret societies (frequently sporting octopus-themed bling), and class warfare sometimes, but not always, depicted in terms of the social attitudes of and about the undead. And even though it lacks the Gail Carriger hallmark of scenes that oblige you to take a cold shower after reading them, it radiates her love of all things 19th-century British, with frills and stays and petticoats and, now and then, a flash of tartan plaid. In four words: charming, adventurous, good fun.