A Snake Falls to Earth (Darcie Little Badger)

A Snake Falls to Earth
Darcie Little Badger
Levine Querido
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: When Nina was a young girl, her great-great-grandmother Rosita told her many stories of the old Lipan ways, from the times before the white people came and even before the two worlds - our own Earth and the Reflecting World of the spirits and shapeshifting animal people and old magic - were separated, but one has haunted her more than any other: the last tale she told, while lying in a hospital bed, speaking the lost language of their tribe. Nina is sure there's a hidden truth in that story, one tied to the Texas land where Grandma now lives (and which the old woman seems strangely reluctant to leave, even as drought and increasingly poor weather threaten the place). The land never seemed special beyond her family, though, until a new nosy neighbor turns up. By unraveling the story's secrets, maybe Nina can save the land, and her grandmother.
In the Reflecting World, the cottonmouth boy Oli has just been turned out from his mother's home, as all young cottonmouths are, to find his own way in the world - but he's having a very rough time of it. He even lost the last gift his mother gave him, a blanket woven with his family's special design. After stumbling upon the elusive path to anywhere-you-please (a path that may only appear once in a long lifetime), he finally manages to find a place to make his home, and even some new friends: a hawk, a pair of boisterous coyotes, and a small blue-throated toad who never speaks or takes a false human form, but is nevertheless a steadfast companion. When the toad falls ill, Oli determines to find the cause and hopefully a cure, even if it means traveling to the world of humans.
Nina and Oli live in literally separate worlds, but their paths are destined to cross. When they do, many questions may be answered... or everything could go terribly wrong...

REVIEW: I really enjoyed Elatsoe by the same author, so I figured I'd try this one. Like Elatsoe, A Snake Falls to Earth takes place in a modern Earth one step to the side of our own, an Earth where the reality of the Reflecting World and its former connection to our own is an accepted reality. People know of the existence of the animal people, but it's generally believed they haven't visited our world for many generations. The tale is also steeped in Native American lore and storytelling traditions. Nina aspires to be a storyteller like her favorite online celebrities, but thus far has never had the courage to share tales with the world, instead recording them in a private video diary. The puzzle of her great-great-grandmother's last story (and other oddities, such as her family's odd longevity and the strangely powerful pull of the ancestral land) drives her to dig deeper into Lipan lore and culture, which has sadly faded through the generations. Meanwhile, Oli makes his perilous way from childhood to adulthood in the Reflecting World, a place of both wonders and dangers, powerful originator spirits and dark monsters... but also with traces of modern Earth, in a market of smuggled real world goods (which do not last long in the reflected world, but which inspire various innovations such as the specatcles nearsighted Oli wears in his false human form, and contraptions like automobiles and steam-powered houseboats that a few animal people tinker with). He might have lived his life complacently beside his favorite basking rock and the bottomless lake, with no friends but the silent toad, but finds himself pulled into the antics of the coyotes, not to mention having to deal with fallout from his early fumbling efforts to find his own way (during which he made an enemy who has not forgotten him). The arcs of Nina and Oli are largely independent through a fair chunk of the book, only later crossing ways when Oli and his friends make the perilous crossing to our world. They manage to help each other, but their stories remain their own; neither is helpless without the other. There's humor and emotion and distinctive characters in both of their worlds, and nobody is particularly stupid for the sake of being stupid/drawing out the tale (though they sometimes need a bit of a push to get moving). Something about it felt a little incomplete by the end, though the book itself mentions how tales rarely have a simple, clean arc and ending, trailing off into other tales, much as life itself is more than a simple thread with a clearly defined point. Overall, I enjoyed the characters and the distinct Native American flavor, even if I didn't find myself enjoying it quite as much as Elatsoe.

You Might Also Enjoy:
The Leopard's Daughter (Lee Killough) - My Review
Elatsoe (Darcie Little Badger) - My Review
The Tiger and the Wolf (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review

Everless (Sara Holland)

Everless
The Everless series, Book 1
Sara Holland
HarperTeen
Fiction, YA Fantasy
*** (Okay)

DESCRIPTION: If anyone has reason to hate the Gerling family that rules Sempera, it's Jules Ember. Once, she and her father lived in the royal city of Everless, where her father was a blacksmith who helped forge blood-iron coins: time, drawn from the blood of the Gerlings' subjects, condensed into metal form and paid to the royals to extend their own lives. She grew up playing with the princes Roan and Liam... until the terrible accident that sent Jules and her father fleeing from royal wrath. Only desperation would drive her back to Everless... and desperate things have become. Her father has already traded too much of his time to the tax collectors. With a royal wedding coming up, the palace is hiring whole fleets of servants - and surely, among such a number and after so many years away, nobody would recognize one lone, lowborn girl, come to earn the blood-iron coins to pay off family debts and maybe give her ailing father a few of his hard-earned years back. What's worse is how time sometimes wobbles in her presence, slowing or even stopping; such minor abilities have led many a hedge witch to be killed. It's a gamble, of course, but one she feels she has no choice but to take.
The moment she sets foot back in Everless, she realizes that the place she remembered from a child's perspective is nothing at all like the truth. Soon, she finds herself caught up in dangerous intrigues and deceptions and mysteries that may change everything she thought she knew about the palace, the Gerlings, the ageless Queen, the legendary Sorceress and Alchemist of ancient times who first bound time to metal and blood... and even herself.

REVIEW: The premise sounded interesting, a hint of vampirism (in spirit, at least, with a ruling class demanding blood from the peasantry to extend their lives and ensure their rule) wrapped around a fantasy world. There was definite promise in the setting, and the characters seemed serviceable, if not wholly original. But something about this story never came together for me, and I think much of that had to do with Jules. She's one of those too-common main characters who can't actually put any pieces together despite numerous blatant hints until someone else patiently explains it - more than once, because of course they're too shocked and/or in denial the first time or ten the information is revealed. In her defense, it doesn't help that nobody in Jules's life bothers telling her things that are vital to her existence and survival before she's alone and up to her scalp in danger precisely because nobody told her such things. The reader, therefore, is way ahead of the game and is forced to endure her stumbling and bumbling and denying and standing in shocked, silent disbelief and/or denial, coming to the exact wrong conclusion and doing the exact wrong thing at any given time. Much of her story is tied up in the tale of the Alchemist and the Sorceress, which forms the apparent backbone of Sempera's society, but I never felt the weight of the myths in the greater world, if that makes any sense. After far too much dithering and delaying and meandering, the story finally comes to a conclusion that reveals things that the reader likely figured out long before... a conclusion that doesn't actually resolve anything, instead setting up a second volume that I'd need to read if I cared enough to find out what happened. I couldn't help feeling that the whole arc could've been resolved in one book if Jules hadn't been deliberately kept in the dark or had been a little more self-aware. I mostly kept listening because I was too lazy to switch audiobooks at work. Again, there was lots of potential going into it, and it had moments and glimmers that held my interest and kept me hoping it would rise up to that potential. Ultimately, though, I just never connected with it and grew too irritated by the heroine to enjoy the story.

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Mystic (Jason Denzel) - My Review
The Queen of Blood (Sarah Beth Durst) - My Review
Raybearer (Jordan Ifueko) - My Review

When the Sky Fell on Splendor (Emily Henry)

When the Sky Fell on Splendor
Emily Henry
Razorbill
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
** (Bad)

DESCRIPTION: Five years ago, the small town of Splendor, Ohio was rocked by an explosion at the steel mill, and nothing has been the same since, even for those who didn't lose someone in the blast. Out of the ashes, a tentative new friendship was forged among six teens (and one aging dog), who call themselves the Ordinary. They spend their free time making mockumentary videos for the internet, which hasn't exactly garnered them the fame and fortune they might hope for but at least keeps them from feeling too smothered by small town life. If only they could capture something unique, something attention-getting... something real.
One night, shooting a faux "haunting" video at the abandoned Jenkins house, Frannie and her companions see what they take to be meteors streaking across the sky, until something crashes into the nearby power substation. They go to investigate - and somehow lose six hours of their life, with nothing but a vague memory of intense light and a sound that might be voices or music or something else altogether. What footage their camera managed to capture only deepens the mystery... and when strange things start occurring around them and around Splendor, they realize it's not just their imaginations. Something very extraordinary happened to the Ordinary that night, and if they can't figure out what soon, then they and the entire town might be in grave danger.

REVIEW: The premise had promise, and it started out decent enough as it established its characters and the desperation of their existence in modern middle-of-nowhere Ohio. Narrator Frannie struggles to cope with the lingering scars of the steel mill blast, a blast that left her oldest brother Mark in a coma and forever changed her relationship with her brother Albert and father (not to mention the mother who left them when she couldn't cope). With the Ordinary, for all that none of them speak openly of their griefs and troubles, she at least knows she isn't alone in the world, even if she can't see much of a future for herself or more than one of her friends. Goofing around in internet videos is as close to cutting loose as she can manage - until the thing falls from the sky, of course, shattering even that fragile peace the teens have managed to cobble together between them.
And here is where things start to wobble, as Frannie is shown to be rather clueless and in denial about obvious things, not to mention how it becomes increasingly clear that she doesn't ever actually do anything (save suffer and generally be confused) without being pushed... and even then it takes multiple shoves. She even ends up with a hurt ankle, evidently because we haven't yet consigned that cliche to the garbage heap where it belongs. The rest of the Ordinary try, with varying degrees of success, to cope in their own ways, choosing everything from pretending nothing happened to deep dives into conspiracy theories to wondering how to take advantage of finally having something the world might notice on video, but it's a bit difficult to connect with them through the lens of Frannie.
There is some decent tension as their video goes viral and brings the wrong kind of attention, but at some point it starts feeling less like genuine danger and more like a cheap knock-off of The X-Files without the character chemistry or tight plotting... more like in the later seasons when it's clear the writers no longer have a clear and unified vision of what the Truth actually is and are just winging it from episode to episode. The teens degrade from reasonably believable characters caught in a situation far beyond their experience to people who would be outsmarted and outinvestigated by the Scooby Doo gang. And then, at the climax (which had gone from tense to almost laughably ridiculous already), there is a hard right turn that almost literally had me groaning and rolling my eyes in utter incredulity, completely shattering any lingering traces of my suspension of disbelief. I will not elaborate to avoid spoilers, but it completely changes the entire premise of the book from teen sci-fi thriller to something else entirely, making me feel cheated.
On top of that, the audiobook was irritating, as the narrator often dipped into mumbles and whispers that made me crank up the volume to hear over ambient noise at work, only to hurt my ears when returning to a normal voice. I don't like being in pain, but maybe that's just me. By the end, I just wished that whatever fell on Splendor had done a more thorough job and taken out the whole town.

You Might Also Enjoy:
The Invasion (K. A. Applegate) - My Review
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Roswell High: The Outsiders (Melinda Metz) - My Review

October Site Update

The month's reviews are now archived and cross-linked on the main Brightdreamer Books site.

Enjoy!

The Girl in Red (Christina Henry)

The Girl in Red
Christina Henry
Berkley
Fiction, Horror/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Her mother may have named her Cordelia, but everyone knows her as Red, and her whole life she's been a bit of a misfit in the family. When the first rumors of sickness reached the news, her mother, father, and brother dismissed it as a passing problem, but Red - always one to think ahead and consider worst-case scenarios, always reading scary stories and watching horror movies - took it deadly serious... so, when the Crisis hit full-force, she alone was anything like ready as civilization crumbled. Like the disease behind the pandemic itself, it may have started with an innocuous dry cough, but it ended in death for almost everyone, save those mysteriously immune.
Red's plan was for the family to set out on foot (because roads meant roadblocks and traffic jams) to head to Grandma's cabin in the woods. It's far enough from cities to be reasonably safe from infection and looters and the militias that rose in the power vacuum (not to mention the actual military, intent on rounding everyone up "for their own good" to be taken who knew where, to Red's suspicion), and is fairly self-sufficient to ride out the Crisis as long as possible. It won't be an easy hike, with Red's prosthetic leg and her mother's idea of a hike being walking across the college campus where she works to get a latte, but it seems like their best option. But one thing movies got right about plans in horror situations is that they never go right. Now it's just Red alone, struggling to survive long enough to reach Grandma's house, in a world full of a sickness that's taken a far deadlier turn than imagined and all-too-human wolves.

REVIEW: The Girl in Red, a dark story of apocalyptic survival, has obvious homages to the fairy tale "Little Red Riding Hood", but also draws on other horror stories and movies, particularly how a girl steeped in such tales tries to avoid becoming a cliche victim by doing the stupid thing - which looks so easy when one is sitting in the living room shouting at a character on a screen not to leave the essential item behind because they'll need it later, but much harder to do when it's reality writing the script. Red is a survivor and fighter from the start, but has to learn when to listen to her instincts and when she's spiraling into paranoia (not entirely unjustified, as things go from bad to worse to even worse than her own worst-case scenarios - which, given her love for horror movies, is very bad indeed). The story moves between her time as a solo traveler and what happened to her family, a tragedy that slowly unfolds in dark parallel to her current circumstances. If this is a fairy tale, it's definitely not the sanitized version many might be familiar with; I didn't label it "horror" for no reason (even though it doesn't seem to be categorized that way on Amazon). It starts moving quickly and keeps moving to the end, with Red discovering just how far she's willing to go to survive against the "wolves" of this new world. I had a few quibbles with a plot turn or two that ended up feeling like distractions or red herrings, and something about it feels like it should have a sequel or companion volume, but overall it's a solid, gutsy story that only rarely pulls its punches.

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