Note: This is a list of all novels which fit the criteria described below. It does not express opinions on the quality, authenticity, or positivity of the portrayals of the characters in the books. Please use your own judgment in deciding which books you wish to read or buy.

I have not read all these books! Commentary on the ones I have read reflects my opinions on the books as literature. Title links go to Amazon, and some descriptions were taken from Amazon.

These were the criteria used to compile the list: 1) The book must be science fiction or fantasy or otherwise not realism, and must have been published, either originally in reprint, as YA (Vanyel was never published as YA), 2) It must contain at least one major LGBTQ character who is clearly identified as such within the book itself. (Dumbledore is not; neither are Tom and Carl), 3) Major is defined as having a POV and/or a storyline of their own and/or lots of page-time. 4) In most cases, it must be published by a mainstream or small-press publisher in the USA.

Books in which the protagonist is LGBTQ are marked with a star.

I made this list because less than one percent of all YA novels published in the USA within the last ten years have any LGBTQ characters at all, even minor supporting ones. Of those few novels, most are mainstream literature, not sf or fantasy.

I have not specified the authors' sexual orientation or gender identity. This list is about characters rather than authors, and I don't know how all the authors identify.

( Check out the list! )

This is a very difficult book to review. It's a sequel to Anderson's Ultraviolet, which had some nice twists. Though the cover copy suggests that Quicksilver can be read on its own, it spoils every plot twist in Ultraviolet, starting from the very first page. (I also think it would be pretty difficult to follow without having read Ultraviolet first. In fact, I found some plot points difficult to follow because it had been so long since I had read Ultraviolet.)

They're both good books. But if you have any interest in reading either, start with Ultraviolet and don't even read the premise of Quicksilver - literally everything about it is a spoiler for Ultraviolet.

I am going to do two levels of spoiler cuts. The first level will be spoilery for Ultraviolet, the second for Quicksilver.

( giant Ultraviolet spoilers )

( giant Quicksilver spoilers )

Ultraviolet


Quicksilver

Come for the apocalypse.
Stay for cupcakes.
Die for love.

Solid, inventive, well-characterized YA science fiction. By “science fiction,” I mean “cool powers and alien invasion,” not “paper-thin dystopia in which the government’s main concern appears to be micro-managing the love triangles of teenagers.”

Madeleine, an aspiring artist, visits Sydney to paint her cousin Tyler’s portrait. Tyler is a famous cross-dressing actor, and probably my favorite character in the book despite his comparatively small part.

Her plans are stymied by an alien invasion. Starry towers rise up from the cities, and dust falls from the sky. Some people are given powers, others strange vulnerabilities, and still yet others are possessed by aliens. Stars shine from Madeleine’s skin, and she gets together with other teenagers to learn to use their powers and try to save the world.

The opening sequence, in which Madeleine tries to escape from a wrecked subway station, gets the book off to a great start. I stalled out for a while in a slow sequence in which the teenagers are interminably holed up in a hotel, but the story picks up enormously after that.

Host has a lot of respect for teenagers, and I liked the unabashedly heroic tone of the story. Rather than taking the apocalypse as an excuse for an orgy of rape and cannibalism, Host’s characters band together, form a community, explore their new relationships, take the time to make plans that make sense, and risk their lives for a cause they believe in. It’s engaging, uplifting, and, by the end, surprisingly moving.

This isn’t a flawless novel. Some events are confusing or poorly set-up, some of the dialogue is clunky, and I read the explanation of the alien invasion three times and I still don’t understand it. Too many characters are introduced in too-quick succession, and I didn’t realize that “Emily” and “Millie” were the same person with a nickname until I got to the cast of characters at the end. The sequence at the end with Gavin was really confusing, too. The book could have used one more rewrite.

However, so could at least half of the professionally edited YA novels I’ve read recently, many of which have glaring continuity errors, nonsensical motivations, ridiculous worldbuilding, unlikable characters, and, often, proofreading errors and poor formatting. In some cases, they are nothing but a string of action sequences strung together by plot holes.

And All the Stars isn’t Code Name Verity. But it’s imaginative, well-thought-out, and heartfelt. I will definitely read more of Host’s books.

Giant spoilers lurk below.

( Read more... )

And All the Stars. Only $4.99!

Host self-publishes because of the glacial pace of traditional publishing, which got one of her novels stuck in review for TEN YEARS.

But there may be other reasons as well, which have nothing to do with the quality of her writing. Again, I'm not saying that she's one of the absolute best YA writers out there. But based on this, she's certainly one of the better ones. And when I say "better ones," I mean "compared to all the YA novels I've been reading that come out from major publishers," not "compared to the slush pile."

Speaking only of American publishing, which is the only publishing I know anything about, I can see why this novel would be a hard sell. It is not set in America, it involves aliens, and the tone and style are different from most YA sf I've read recently. (And there are gay characters, though in the supporting cast.) For a first-time author, those could be insurmountable obstacles.

M. C. A. Hogarth has a thought-provoking article on those issues. Maybe the audience for books about middle-aged female Hispanic space Marines is small. Maybe the audience for psychic Australian teenagers fighting aliens is small. But I'm glad that e-publishing makes it possible now for those books to find their audience.

A sleepy California town is enclosed in a mysterious barrier at the same instant that, pop! Everyone over the age of 14 vanishes. And some kids get psychic powers. (Actually, some got their powers several months before the pop - no word yet on why.) And animals mutate.

Flying rattlesnakes! Talking coyotes! Kids running around with tentacle arms and telekinesis!

This would be utterly and completely up my alley... except for the non-existent characterization.

The characters are either good kids trying to do right, with maybe one or two other traits, like "leadership abilities" or "bulimic," or complete psychopaths, with maybe one or two other traits like "intelligent" or "seductive." Speaking of which, I don't love the stock character of the sociopathic manipulative seductress in general, but it is about 500% more skeevy when she's fourteen.

Cool mutant animals. Cool mutant powers. But, alas, I didn't care about any of it.

I also disliked the disjunct between the flat emotional tone (probably due to the paper-thin characterization) and the amount of horrific stuff happening to children, and by that I mean kids way younger than 14.

Spoiler for child harm.

( Read more... )

Also could have benefited from characters I cared about. And less retro gender roles. Girls run the daycare and infirmary, boys run law enforcement and government.

There are three girls with powers that could be used in a fight. Two are not introduced till near the end, and the third dies on the same page she's introduced. The main boys' powers are very strong telekinesis, super-strength, laser beams, teleportation, monster-type physical alterations accompanied by super-strength, and altering reality. The main girls' powers are healing, sensing how powerful other mutants are, and sensing how awesome the hero is.

I am not kidding about the last one. Astrid, the love interest, has the power to sense how awesome people are. She's not sure what this literally corresponds to, except that it doesn't seem to just be about who has the most bad-ass power. (The latter is a power another girl has.) But she assures the hero that her mutant power has detected that he is objectively the most important person she has ever met.

A really fun premise and some intriguing mysteries, but not enough to make me continue the series.

Gone

In an alternate future America, everyone is born with two souls in a single body. They are given two names, like the novel’s protagonists, Eva and Addie. But by about age five, one of the personalities fades away—effectively, it dies. The rare “hybrid” children, who grow older with both personalities intact, are considered a menace to society and are whisked away, never to be seen again. The “multiple personalities are banned and the government controls hybrids” premise is not given a detailed explanation, but the reason for the ban is at least given a justification with slightly more substance than the usual “because.”

Eva and Addie seemed on track to become hybrids when they were children. But, realizing that this would doom them, they instead pretended that Eva had faded and died. In fact, the novel is narrated by Eva, who is very much alive. However, she has lost the ability to move their shared body, and exists only as a secret presence, able to communicate with Addie, but with no one else.

This intriguing YA dystopia is both promising and disappointing. It is far better-written than average, has a genuinely clever premise, and avoids a number of stupid tropes which seem almost obligatory in YA dystopias. The unusual choice of narrator— Eva, who lives within Addie’s body— is quite compelling, and their shared existence and peculiar dilemma is handled with a touching emotional realism.

The first third or so of this novel, which simply explores Eva and Addie’s situation, is excellent. However, after that, they spend most of the rest of the novel locked up in a government facility with other hybrid kids. The story becomes much more conventional, moving from an intimate exploration of identity under strange circumstances to a typical “teenagers learn that their dystopia is a dystopia.” Zhang is excellent at little emotional moments, but not so good at action sequences; the book moves away from emotional moments and toward action sequences, to its detriment.

Her choice of plot doesn’t serve her premise as well as it could; it probably needed to be smaller and more character-focused, or else broader and more about social implications. The second two-thirds of the book rest in an in-between place, no longer intimate but without showing much more of the wider world. Also, considering that the entire premise is about two souls in one body, it would have been good if any of the hybrids beside Addie and Eva actually had two souls with noticeably different personalities.

That being said, Zhang is a talented writer, and the premise really is great. I would check out the second book to see if it focuses more on being a double soul, and less on "dystopian governments are bad."

What's Left of Me: The Hybrid Chronicles, Book One

Excellent sequel to an excellent first novel. The series is high fantasy set in a Spain-esque land. Carson takes a number of old elements— the princess, the destined savior, the magic rock, the arranged marriage— and puts new or at least interesting spins on them. Her worldbuilding is quite good, with lots of realistic detail, and she’s good at unexpected plot twists. Her books remind me of Tamora Pierce’s: interesting women, adventure, magic, politics, romance, and likable characters. I like the character relationships a lot, including the many non-romantic ones.

In The Crown of Embers, Elisa is now a ruler and hero. But ruling a kingdom comes with tons of complications. The first half has Elisa trying to learn how to rule while dodging repeated assassination attempts; in the second half, she goes on a quest to learn how to use her magic. There are startling revelations about the world. And that’s about all I can say about the plot without spoilers.

Caveats: I regret that there is much less luscious food description in this book. And also much more vomiting. There was very little emphasis on Elisa’s body image, which was such a huge part of the first book. I’m not sure I buy that she got over her issues quite that fast or completely. Finally, the frequency and near-success of the assassination attempts made her guards start seeming incompetent, and there was one where I’m still not sure how an entire squad of assassins-- not magical ninja assassins, just regular assassins-- got into the palace unnoticed. But those are minor quibbles in an overall very good book.

The first book stands on its own. The second book has a sort-of cliffhanger: the main story in that volume comes to a satisfying conclusion, but someone suddenly falls into jeopardy at the end. But it's more of a complete story with a giant dangling plot thread than half a book.

The Crown of Embers

( Read more... )

An anthology of dystopian YA short stories with a focus on diversity, ie, most of the protagonists are not white.

As a whole, this anthology is not much like most current YA dystopian novels, which are generally about naïve privileged white girls slowly coming to realize that their “the government controls everything” society actually sucks, while navigating a love triangle. The characters in this anthology are often aware from the get-go that everything sucks, and the central problem is generally not an over-controlling government, but a devastated environment, poverty, and the haves grinding the have-nots beneath their feet.

The result is more realistic and less paper-thin, but also quite depressing. Few of these teenagers are trying to save their world, but only to scratch out a few more days for themselves and their loved ones in a world which is clearly already doomed. With two possible exceptions, no one makes any difference at all to anyone beyond themselves or a handful of people in their immediate surroundings. (I say “possible” because there are two stories in which characters make an effort, but the story ends before we learn whether or not they succeed in terms of the larger picture.)

Sure, it wouldn’t be realistic for teenagers to save the world singlehandedly… but I don’t read science fiction for realism. Also, in real life people do make large changes collectively. A few more stories in which the protagonist is part of a larger effort to save or even improve the world would have been nice. (There is one story in which that's the case, Tempest Bradford's.)

I did really like some of the stories. But I would recommend reading a story or two here and there, as you feel like it. If you read the entire anthology from start to finish, the grimdark is overwhelming.

“The Last Day” by Ellen Oh. An alternate history of WWII set in Japan comes out… extremely similar to real history, so far as the main characters are concerned. Maybe the point was that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Otherwise, it’s a straightforward “war is bad and children suffer horribly” story, all the way down to its awesomely depressing conclusion. If you’re disturbed by graphic atom bomb scenes (I am) this might be one to skip. I would not have selected this as the story to open the anthology – it’s the darkest in the whole batch, and that's saying a lot.

“Freshee’s Frogurt” by Daniel H. Wilson. Oral history of robots run amuck, much along the lines of World War Z. A robot attacks two employees in a frozen yogurt shop, and there’s a bloody battle. That’s it. This was an excerpt from the novel Robopocalypse, which may explain how slight and unfinished it felt, but on the other hand it didn’t leave me wanting more. On the positive side, it’s only depressing in the sense that its space could have been given to a better story. In fact, it’s probably supposed to be funny in a hipster-ironic mode. (I did not find it funny.)

“Uncertainty Principle” by K. Tempest Bradford. A young girl notices reality shifting around her, but nobody else does. Over the years, the President changes, wars break out and are erased from time, and her best friend vanishes as if she had never existed. This extremely intense and existentially horrifying set-up turns into a more standard action-based science fiction story about halfway through. The whole thing is well-written but I liked the first half much more. It probably needed to be longer to give the second half the same emotional weight as the first. This one is more bittersweet than depressing.

“Pattern Recognition” by Ken Liu. Kids in an orphanage are told that they’ve been rescued from a hellish world outside, and are made to play video games all day. Very good prose; plausible but predictable story. There’s a really jarring, confusing transition right before the climax, possibly exacerbated by the poor formatting of the version I read (an e-book via Netgalley.) Moderately depressing.

“Gods of Dimming Light” by Greg van Eekhout. Alone among the stories, this is fantasy, not science fiction, and so reads more oddly than it probably would have in a more fantasy-geared anthology. In a doomed and dying world, a boy of Indonesian descent finds a connection to the other side of his heritage – his descent from Odin! The ancient Norse theme of the brave fight against inevitable doom meshes powerfully with the modern apocalyptic setting.

This was one of my favorites, mostly because of the ending. ( Read more... )

I didn't find this one depressing, but that was purely because the tone was heroic/tragic. Everyone's still doomed.

“Next Door” by Rahul Kanakia. The haves have gotten so plugged in to VR that they barely notice squatters living in their houses. A boy and his boyfriend search for a squat that isn’t bedbug-infested, and tangle with a family of haves that aren’t as out of touch as most. This story made me itch. Literally. It’s a black comedy and quite clever. And yes. Everyone is probably doomed. Including, quite possibly, ( Read more... )

“Good Girl” by Malinda Lo. Alone in the collection, this was an X has been banned and the government controls X story. (Interracial procreation is banned and the government controls marriage.) Ironically, it was my favorite of the original stories in the collection – sexy, well-written, well-paced, believable, and even with a somewhat hopeful ending. A biracial girl who can pass meets another biracial girl who’s living underground – literally and metaphorically. Lo is fantastic at depicting sexual attraction in a hot but non-cheesy way. The characterization is good, too. Great last line. I would read a whole book of this.

“A Pocket Full of Dharma” by Paolo Bacigalupi. A scarred, disabled, half-starved plague survivor leaves his village to become a beggar in a future Chinese city in the hope that things will be better there. Spoiler: they aren’t. Lots of colorful details of the setting, but I have a low gross-out threshold for descriptions of bodily fluids, and I ended up unable to finish this one.

“Blue Skies” by Cindy Pon. A have-not boy kidnaps a have girl in an environmentally devastated future Taiwan, in the hope of getting her wealthy family to pay a ransom. Very well-observed details, and a poignant relationship given just enough room to breathe. In another world, those two might have been lovers or friends… but this is not that world. The tone is more wistful than depressing, but the world as a whole is probably doomed.

“What Arms to Hold” by Rajan Khanna. Indian children are slave labor in a mine… and the details are even more grim than one would expect from that thumbnail description. Well-written and with a surprisingly hopeful ending, but most of the story is excruciatingly depressing. Appropriately so, given the subject matter. But still.

“Solitude” by Ursula K. Le Guin. A reprint from The Birthday of the World. A fantastic, non-grim story – there’s even some funny lines – about a future anthropologist who goes to a planet with her two young children to study the ways of a culture that seems to have no community. The mother and older son learn a lot about the culture; the young daughter becomes part of it. Can a culture really be based on solitude? A fascinating, moving, beautifully written, well-characterized work of anthropological science fiction.

I was puzzled at first as to why it was in this collection, as I would have never thought of that culture as a dystopia. Then I realized that while the daughter sees it as her home, and sees all the positive aspects (as well as the negative ones – she’s only naïve when she’s very young), the mother sees it as a dystopia. The idea that the same place can be utopia for one person and a dystopia for another is unique to this story, in this collection: it’s the only one set in a world that isn’t objectively, unequivocally horrible. No wonder it’s the only story that, while it has some sad and dark moments, isn’t depressing at all. No one is doomed! It was such a relief!

There are some excellent stories in the anthology, and not every single one is depressing. But the cumulative effect is awfully grim. This is purely my personal preference, and I do realize that dystopian sf is not a cheery genre, but I would love to see a diversity-focused YA anthology that’s a bit more fun.

Diverse Energies

You may recall a great deal of outrage several months ago over a horrible-sounding self-published YA novel, Save the Pearls, about a future in which black people (Coals) rule and white people (Pearls) are oppressed, and also must wear blackface in order to protect themselves from the now-deadly sun. (Blackface shown in a truly ill-conceived video promotion on the author’s website.) From what I gather, the black hero grows a tail at some point. And no, I’m not going to review it, not even to mock, except to say that I read the first two chapters free, and they were pretty hilariously bad. It’s self-published, so any attention is good attention. Let it die the death of obscurity.

However, it did remind me that the “racism flip” idea had been done before, and not just in slush piles. I wondered how a better writer might handle it.

In Noughts and Crosses, a YA novel by a black British author, white Noughts have been oppressed ever since black Crosses colonized the world. Nought Callum has always been best friends with Cross Sephy, the daughter of the wealthy family his mother works for. Though his mother is unjustly fired and the kids are forbidden from associating, they continue to secretly meet, and eventually begin a romance. But their innocence ends when Sephy coaches Callum into passing the tests to get into her Cross school, setting into motion a series of painful reminders of just how separate and unequal their lives really are.

The world is a very literal racism flip: everything is the same, except that the social positions of black and white people are reversed. (No other races are ever mentioned.) I would have preferred a real alternate history with cultural changes, but though simplistic, the raceflip does work to drive home its message: magazines only use dark-skinned models. Band-aids only come in brown. The history books never mention any white scientists or explorers or inventors.

For most of its length, it’s an anvillicious but fairly well-written problem novel (problem: racism is bad) about the travails of a teenage interracial couple. Their travails do get increasingly melodramatic as the story continues, and hey, it’s obviously retelling Romeo and Juliet, but I was still not expecting the accidentally hilarious swerve into jaw-dropping melodrama that occurs near the end.

( Spoilers make a terribly dramatic choice )

Moral: Don’t have unprotected sex with your kidnapper. It is possible to write a racism flip novel which is not itself racist. But it is very difficult to write one which doesn’t paint in very broad strokes of black and white.

More seriously, these oppression-reversal stories come out a lot better when the author belongs to the real-world oppressed group - the author is more sensitive to how oppression actually works, and can appreciate and explore the wish-fulfillment and "take that!" aspects. When written by the real-life oppressing group, they tend to be accidentally racist, sexist, etc.

Noughts & Crosses

Five queer kids save the world after an apocalypse!

With that premise, I expected to enjoy the book a lot more than I actually did. It’s largely a comedy, with the apocalypse caused by Muldoona, a Goddess lurking in her Fortress of Despair and eating peeled grapes. Humor is the most subjective of forms, and others might well find this book funnier than I did. I mostly found it totally unfunny.

The first chapter introduces Skilly, a bisexual 5000-year-old caveman in a 17-year-old body, due to having been given an Amulet of Immortality by his brother Urf.

It is a rule of fiction that protagonist cavepeople get names that sound like names, and non-protagonists get guttural grunts. See also The Clan of the Cave Bear: Protagonist: Ayla. Leading Man: Jondalar. Supporting Cast: Creb, Brun, Broud. In both books, this is explained within the text: Ayla and Jondalar are Cro-Magnons, who are more verbal, and Skilly was not his birth name. Still, the rule stands. Why don’t cavepeople ever get brief names that don’t sound like manly grunts, like Eee, Bip, or Baa?

I am always complaining that ancient immortals never sound, talk, or act like ancient immortals. But in a comedy, why not mine the fact that a main character is prehistoric for laughs? Though Skilly mentions ancient stuff sometimes, he otherwise seems like a modern 20-something.

The other main characters are Vikky and Ginger, a pair of indistinguishable shallow, snarky teenagers, Julia, a less shallow but still snarky teenager, and Marly, who is trans or genderqueer. Marly’s gender identity is not clear-cut, which I liked. Marly is in a locked-in juvenile facility for skipping school. It was explained that teenagers can be locked up for stuff which is not illegal for adults. This is true, but, as was typical of many plot points, an unlikely motivation or occurrence does not get any more plausible just because it’s given one line of justification. Some of this was clearly meant as a joke, but I generally didn't find it funny. In other cases, even satire needs to make sense on its own terms, and this book often didn't.

The apocalypse consists of magically-induced nuclear catastrophe, which kills hundreds of thousands of people and leads to Ginger and Julia getting stranded, along with other shallow American tourists, inside Anne Frank’s house. This is every bit as embarrassingly anvillicious as it sounds. Meanwhile, Marly is stranded in juvenile detention. The kids’ predicament has some nice narrative tension… until Gods give them all magical amulets that solve everything.

If this had been about straight kids, I would not have made it past chapter one. If I hadn’t been on an airplane, I would have given up right there. However, I made it to the end, and I’m kind of glad I did, because the WTF just kept coming. Starting with Marly, previously the most sympathetic character, in the space of a single conversation, becoming one of the least sympathetic characters I have ever encountered in anything.

( Read more... )

Not my cup of tea. But it might be yours! I have a low tolerance for hipster irony, and very particular tastes in comedy.

The End

This gave me hope that YA novels with actual worldbuilding, rather than idiotic high-concept premises, have not yet been banned, but might make a resurgence.

Girl of Fire and Thorns is set in a very nicely worked out high fantasy world with a Spanish-based culture and tons of atmospheric details. The food is particularly believable and mouthwatering, and even plays into the plot: the heroine is both a foodie and a compulsive eater. The novel plays with a number of standard fantasy and YA tropes - the Chosen One, the love triangle, the makeover, the well-meaning kidnapper, the faithful old nanny - and subverts all of them to at least some degree, though some more than others.

Princess Elisa was chosen by God and has a magic gem embedded in her navel. This means that she is destined to perform some act of great service. Unfortunately, no one knows what it's supposed to be. Apart from that, she lives in the shadow of her apparently perfect older sister, eats compulsively to feel better, and is depressed because she's fat. In chapter one, she's perfunctorily married off to a handsome young king... who is a widower with a young son. Elisa obediently goes off to his kingdom, where she promptly gets embroiled in the ongoing war.

That covers the first few chapters. I'll give my general reaction here, because a lot of what I have to say is spoilery. Though I had some reservations, this was overall good-to-excellent. The worldbuilding was excellent. The food porn was excellent. I liked Elisa and several of the supporting characters. I liked that Elisa had relationships with other women (that didn't involve fighting over guys), and that she had relationships that were more about character than about hitting plot points. Some of the subversive elements were spectacularly subversive. Generally, highly enjoyable.

Minor and thematic spoilers: ( Read more... )

Major spoilers: ( Read more... )

The Girl of Fire and Thorns