"Super Human" by Michael Carroll

With an off-putting cover, this one hasn't moved much.  A determined student, however, was persistent in his efforts to get me to read it.  I'm so glad he did.  This is the first of three books to focus on a new crop of super heroes.  Much like those in the DC and Marvel universes, the characters in this book read minds, fly, throw fire and do any number of very cool things.  The entire story takes place over a day and a half (with some Ancient World excerpts) -- switching back and forth between four main characters, all teens.  Hugely action-packed, there is a page-turning quotient, in that you hardly get a breath between one battle and the next.  If asked, I would say this isn't my kind of thing but Carroll manages to weave a real mystery around the events and describes each fight very specifically and somewhat uniquely.  He makes sure that each character fights (or doesn't) in ways that match that person's skills ~and~ personality.  There isn't a whole lot besides action but the characters come off as real and well-rounded, and Carroll does manage to insert some very accurate Science into the whole thing.  The author also gets two thumbs up for making half of his "cast" African American and for giving the female characters some major ***-kicking skills.  My favorite character is Lance, a bad-boy-in-training that you just have to like.  I'll admit -- it's not "literary" in any sense of the word but it is very well written for what it is -- both accessible and engaging.  There are also "quite a number" of hints dropped at the end which will likely pay off in the next installment.  The copy I had contained the first chapter of the next book, a trend publishers are engaging in which is meant to tease the readers.  It works.  Fans of The Tomorrow People, The Avengers, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and even Star Trek will find this an entertaining romp. 

"Scarlet" by Marissa Meyer

Sadly, I kind of bashed the first book in this series since I didn't realize it *was* a series and I was surprised and felt unsatisfied by the ending.  Now that I do know it is a series (of four books) and have read the second, many of my fears have been  qualmed.  The writing really is excellent.  Meyer has that "page-turning" quotient I love and creates characters that are complex and amazingly real for a Sci Fi Fairytale set hundreds of years in the future.  Meyer's greatest skill, however, is in world-building.  Important for any book, but particularly in Sci Fi, Marissa Meyer's Earth-of-the-future is believable and palpable.  Having met her recently, I get it -- she paints scenes like a filmmaker and it helps the reader to "see" the tale unfolding in front of them. 

I stand by my review of "Cinder,"(Dec 4th, 2012) the first book in the series -- in the sense that Marissa Meyer is a tremendously strong writer who weaves fairytales into SciFi like a master.  It's just that I now appreciate these books as part of a much larger epic.

SPOILER ALERT

For those who read "Cinder" and felt, as I did, that it was a story unfinished -- well, it is.  But Cinder, a character I came to love, doesn't disappear in this second book and new characters weave into the tale so seamlessly that it all makes very deep sense (many, many teasers are in the first book ... a great many of them play out here).  Prince Kai isn't the complete ****-wad I imagined him to be when Cinder ended, and I now look forward to "Cress" and "Winter" -- although "Winter," the last book in the series, isn't due out until next year. 

Keep up the good work, Marissa ... but the publishers should make it clear when something is part of a series ... yes?

“Heaven is Paved With Oreos” by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

I wanted to like this book -- I did.  I had heard good things about Murdock’s writing and liked the premise … a girl is surprised by a summer trip to Rome with her wild and crazy Grandma.  Unfortunately, the book kept stumbling on me.  First and foremost, there is the main character, Sarah, who is supposed to be 14 but comes off as much, much younger.  The overwhelming innocence might play if this was 1970, and the girl was a very sheltered 12, but it just seems unrealistic that any 14 year-old (at least the ones I deal with on a day-to-day basis) would be this clueless.  Not to mention, she’s a fan of Oreos but has never heard of “Cookies and Cream” ice cream?  Maybe I’m just too much of a city girl.  So, that was issue #1.  The second tripping point for me was the Rome section.  It read like an encyclopedic travelogue.  I bought the part about pizza being “ucky” (cuz it has a fried egg in the middle) but the church descriptions sounded like they were lifted from “boring European History 101.”  Then, there is this “blank” that occurs near the end of the Rome trip.  It’s left oblique – Sarah is “too stressed” to even think about it, so we, as the readers, are left out of important knowledge.  When the big reveal happens at home afterwards it feels anticlimactic … not only was I not surprised, but the great mystery wasn’t really a big deal.  The ending … overly sweet and hugely predictable, held no “release” for me as a reader because it didn’t feel like something large had really happened in the book.  Told in diary form, the entire thing felt dated and had little page-turning appeal.  Murdock clearly wanted this to be a contemporary setting, but I can’t help feel that this is yet another semi-autobiographical tale dressed up as fiction.  Some, like Meg Medina, pulled that off well.  Others, like Jack Gantos and, apparently, Catherine Murdock, not so much.  While the characters had some potential the plot didn’t help them be that interesting.  This one is kind of a companion novel to the “Dairy Queen Trilogy” which includes some of the adjacent characters, but I can’t say, at this point, that I’m hot to read them.  Next, please.

“Eleanor & Park” by Rainbow Rowell

Park:  a run-of-the-mill kid.  Not popular, not a loser, just a guy trying to maintain a low profile amidst the vicious cliques in his Midwest high school.  Eleanor:  Eleanor’s got issues.  A messed-up home life and significant bullying at her new school are playing havoc with her sense of self.  The simple act of trying to find a seat on the school bus (which, most teens know, is a major thing) results in these two 16 year-olds being thrown together.  They don’t like each other, then they like each other, then they move beyond like.  It is a love story, but not a mushy, drippy “I luuuuvvv yoooou” story.  Told in alternating voices, Park tries to navigate girls (which is not easy for any 16 year-old boy) and Eleanor tries to move past the emotional damage her family has done to her.  She’s hard, she’s angry, she’s defensive and she doesn’t trust.  Breaking down the walls she has built to protect herself takes the length of the novel, plus some.  Ms. Rowell does some really neat things from a literary perspective to bring the two together.  At first, their voice are separated by chapter breaks, then pages, then paragraphs.  Eventually, their opening thoughts mirror each other.  It’s like watching a poem of people being built in front of your eyes.  Rowell also gets credit for making the adults fairly complex – the Guidance Director at school “gets it” within her limited capacity to make a difference, the parents aren’t universally absent or one-note.  They are all given pasts that color their present, so that the reader can see the elements in who they become.  Park’s parents, in particular, are so layered that when push comes to shove, their reactions are more human and less predictable than you might think.  I also like the setting (1986 to 1987) – maybe it’s cuz I’m old, but there is something endearing about a tale that takes place before cellphones, computers, and all the many ways we distract ourselves today.  Park and Eleanor connect over a Walkman – would they still connect today if it were an iPod?  Hard to know.  It’s not all fiction, however.  Rainbow Rowell (whose picture looks a whole lot like a grown-up version of Eleanor) makes it clear in the acknowledgements that this is her story.  Maybe it is the truth of it that spoke to me, but “endearing” is a word that is tremendously apropos here.  Yes, the very last sentence had me reaching for a tissue – but don’t think you know how it will end.  Mature, interesting, insightful – and deserving of the Printz Honor it received this year.