Jet Black and the Ninja Wind by Leza Lowitz and Shogo Oketani

On one level,  Jet Black is an adventure and action tale starring a 17-year-old precocious kunoichi, or female ninja, who sets out on a mission to her ancestral home in Japan's Oe Mountains to fulfill her dying mother's last wish.  Jet doesn't fully understand what she is supposed to do when she arrives in the village to meet her maternal grandfather, but she quickly learns that she is the target of a violent gang who will stop at nothing to kidnap her.  The early part of the book is a fast-paced account of Jet's, her grandfather's and cousin's fight to escape the gang, and contact her uncle Soji in Tokyo.  There are several stirring action sequences that display Jet's ninja fighting talents and those of her cousin, Hiro.  We learn that simple coins can be turned into deadly missiles and Ninja can move with the wind and blend with their surroundings to escape detection.

The book is more than just the adventure, however.  It is also a mystery couched in Japanese history, as Jet and her allies try to figure out what she knows about the Kuroi family's "treasure" that she, as the only surviving  Kuroi female, is duty-bound to protect and preserve.  Through her cousin, Jet learns about her tribe, the Emeshi, who  lived in the north in the Oe Mountains long before the emperor's forces invaded.  As Jet follows the path laid out for her by her elders and struggles to keep herself and Hiro safe, she  also learns more about herself and what powers she possesses.  While some may find the pacing of this part of the book trying, the glimpses into Japanese culture and myth are well-researched and informative.

Jet is a complex and compelling character.  While most of the supporting characters, Hiro, Soji and J-Bird (her mother's partner), serve mainly as vehicles to further the historical narrative, the  competing senses of danger and attraction that Jet feels towards Takumi, the ninja that hunts her,  create a welcome complication.  Overall, this is a satisfying read.  Recommended.

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

Flight Behavior contains many overarching themes: the challenges of poverty in the rural South, global warming and its many implications,  and the constraints and supports of social and faith-based networks in small communities.  The hope and despair that fight for predominance in all of these elements come together in the person of Dellarobia Turnbow.  Kingsolver has created a character who is genuine, one who struggles with the demands of being a young mother with two young children, who is trapped in a loveless marriage with a good man who has succumbed to the limited future his poverty and education have laid out for him and who spends his ample free time on the couch, channel surfing.  In the beginning of the novel Dellarobia is essentially a stereotype of women in the poor South--she married too young, is unskilled and undereducated, and is resigned to a life of dollar stores and dependency. Desperate for any sort of escape, Dellarobia is on her way to a tryst in the woods behind her home when she comes upon a miraculous site that stops her in her tracks. As Dellarobia and her community seek to understand the vision and its meaning, they must also deal with an influx of tourists, the media, opportunists, environmentalists, and a dedicated group of scientists.  Kingsolver has affection for and trust in Dellarobia and all of the characters.  The small-minded and bitter are balanced by those driven to find the truth and do the right thing, and all are capable of growth.  Flight Behavior is a wonderful book, containing a strong female lead, insights into the world of science and particular ecosystems, and a plea for the planet.

Black Hole Sun by David Macinnis Gill

Durango has given his word that he will protect the miners of Outpost Fisher Four against the increasingly destructive raids of the Draeus--part-human carnivores who go wild at even the thought of blood and who demand the miners’ children (to eat) in return for “peace.”  Durango is a dalit, a disgraced regulator highly trained in warfare and duty.  Traditionally a regulator commits suicide when his commander or leader dies, but Durango’s father, former head of the planetary (Mars) government, ordered his son to live and to claim his rightful place as ruler of the planet. Durango and his small band have become mercenaries--this time on a mission to fight a ruthless opponent in defense of a subterranean culture that has its own sinister secrets. At his side is the feisty and seemingly unattainable Vienne--who wields her armalite with deadly accuracy and who is sworn to protect and serve her chief, which doesn’t mean she has to respect or even like him.  Durango also conducts constant and witty “thought-conversations” with Mimi, his symbiotic nano brain implant, who serves as a scout, advisor, and monitor of his armor's electronics.  

The book is best characterized by its nonstop action--usually quite violent and bloody, as the regulators blast away with armalites, explosives and chain guns against an enemy that travels on power sleds and is armed with plasma projectiles and grenades. To be caught by a Drae means to be eaten alive. Mystery about what treasure the miners are hiding, hints of romance, and Durango’s sense of humor combined with crisp dialog add to the entertainment value of this tale set in a dystopian future on a environmentally traumatized planet.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post: a novel by Emily M. Danforth

Cameron Post is an orphan; her parents were killed in a car accident when she was 12.  When she heard the news, Cam was on a sleepover with her best friend, Irene.  Just the day before, the girls were in the barn at Irene's ranch, kissing, a memory that leaves Cam with an almost overwhelming sense of guilt.  The novel serves as Cameron's journal of discovery; through it she speaks of her struggles to come to terms with her sexuality and her unconventional values in the highly conservative atmosphere of Miles City, Montana, where to survive means to blend in.   The tension of suppressing her identity as a lesbian runs through the first half of the book.  Eventually, Cam develops an intimate relationship with a popular and beautiful cowgirl, only to have her trust and love betrayed in humiliating fashion. Her aunt sends her to God's Promise, a residential center for re-educating teens exhibiting deviant behavior.  There, Cam discovers friendship, support and the ability to deal with her parents' death.  The book delves into complex, sensitive subjects in the stunning yet at time suffocating atmosphere of rural Montana.   While occasionally unsettling, as the voice of the much wiser narrator at the end is the same one giving a realtime account of the sexual awakening of a 12-year-old, the novel is a worthwhile read.  Recommended

17 & Gone by Nova Ren Suma

Seventeen-year-old Lauren Woodman stops at a red light one day and sees an old flyer on a telephone pole asking for information about a missing 17-year old girl.  The assumption that Abigail Sinclair, the girl in question, is a runaway starts Lauren thinking about all the missing girls who are forgotten by their communities. Lauren begins to see visions of a former neighbor and babysitter who left home when she was 17 as well as glimpses of Abigail and her activities on the night she disappeared.   Ghostly images of the girls appear in her car, in her home and in her dreams.  Lauren starts to understand that there is something ominous about their individual stories;  clearly they did not all choose to leave home forever.  She knows she needs to do something to make the police and the girls' families more aware--to keep looking!

The suspense builds as Lauren puts herself in some pretty sketchy situations--visiting people related in one way or another to the missing girls and trespassing in a gloomy, isolated summer camp where Abby worked until, abruptly, she didn't.  Increasingly it becomes apparent that Lauren is obsessed and very troubled.  She breaks up with her boyfriend, shuts out her mother, avoids her former best friend, and starts skipping school. Lauren's voice as she tells her story is one of desperation--she knows she is losing the ability to distinguish between her visions and reality, but doesn't believe she can trust anyone to help her find out the truth about the girls who, through her, are crying for help.  As her relationships with her friends and family wither, her communications with the ghosts increase in frequency and power, telling Lauren what to do.  Lauren's struggles,  punctuated by the tragic stories of the missing teens, make this a definite page-turner.

Night Angel

The Way of the Shadows is the first of Brent Weeks' Night Angel trilogy.  This fantasy fiction series introduces the reader to two very strong, but diverse characters  Durzo and Azoth (later known as Kylar). One is a "wetboy", a well-known assassin; the other is an orphan who must steal money to pay dues to the guild rat and food to survive.  His only way out is to become Durzo's apprentice.  Together, they face heart-wrenching decisions and the cruelties of reality.  You are immediately invested in these two characters - their strengths, weaknesses and internal conflicts.  It is thought-provoking, a fast-read and very captivating.

Dodger by Terry Pratchett

Dodger is, of course, the Artful Dodger.  In this Victorian mystery, he is master of the sewers, and this propensity to pop up anywhere on London's streets puts him in the middle of a murderous attack on a young woman one dark and rainy night.  After driving off her assailants, Dodger then prepares to fight off two passers-by,  one of whom turns out to be Charles Dickens.  This is a great story of a young man struggling against all odds to save the girl from future harm while dodging powerful forces that seek to control the fate of nations.  Pratchett uses real characters, among them Benjamin Disraeli, a growing political player in London; Sir Robert Peel, head of London's police; wealthy, influential Angela Burdett-Coutts; and, of course, Dickens as newspaperman  His characters reveal much about life and language of the underclass, with accurate details on the diseases, filth, crime,  despair, and unexpected kindnesses that defined London's darker world.  At the same time, this is a tale of derring-do as Dodger proves himself to be nimble in both body and mind, and fully able to craft clever plots to foil his many enemies.  Lots of fun.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

This haunting tale centers around the childhood memories of a middle-aged man returning to his home in Sussex, England, to attend a funeral.  Driving aimlessly after the service, he ends up at an old farm where he used to visit the Hempstocks--a young girl, her mother and her grandmother, witches all, who were welcoming and supportive during a time of family struggles and strange happenings. Sitting by the small farmyard pond, he sinks into a reverie where he recalls a tenant's suicide, the appearance of a scheming and suspicious housekeeper, and an evil and destructive spirit that threatens to use him as a portal into his increasingly fragile world.  Only the Hempstocks, particularly young Lettie, can help him.  The author blends fantasy and myth with a story grounded in familiar tragedy--a family in financial difficulty, a father with a wandering eye, and a lonely, vulnerable boy who finds comfort in books. In these few (180) pages, one can find the power of friendship, sacrifice, and childhood resilience.

Butter By Erin Jade Lange

Butter has enormous musical talent; he plays the saxophone and loves jazz.  Sadly, he only plays alone, to forget he is an emotionally isolated and physically challenged teen.  For Butter weighs over 400 pounds and is convinced that no one can see beyond his dimensions to get to really know him.  Butter (you learn about his nickname in the book) escapes through his music and through the web, where he has a deepening relationship with Anna, one of the coolest girls in school. Fearful that revealing his true identity will scare away the girl of his dreams, Butter creates a new persona--that of a star athlete at a nearby private school.

While most of his classmates ignore him completely or look at him only with pity and a certain fascination, there are some who see opportunities to be cruel. After Butter discovers someone's online post that shows him eating, he impulsively decides to start his own website where he can control the comments while getting attention. Butterslastmeal.com is an immediate success, unfortunately, and all of a sudden he's in a corner.  If he doesn't eat himself to death, he is a failure.  If he does, well, he's dead.  Not much of a choice.

As the narrator, Butter reveals  both the depth of his torment and clues to the nice and funny person he can be.  The author uses Butter's experiences to raise issues of stereotyping, online relationships, and online bullying without being preachy.  Telling the story using a lot of dialog keeps things moving. Recommended.

Au Revior Crazy European Chick by Joe Schreiber

This book is the print version of an action-packed adventure video game or PG movie--short on character development and complex plot but strong in entertainment value and suitability for short attention spans.  As long as the reader can tolerate a large dose of gratuitous violence, that is. Personally, I enjoyed it.  The book opens with a scene in which Perry's date to the prom has just shot him. We then get the back story. Perry Stormaire is a high school senior on the verge of graduating. Following his father's wishes, he dropped competitive swimming and focused on debate club and working part-time at his father's law firm while studying hard to earn decent SAT scores and a 3.3+ GPA.  His efforts have earned him a place on Columbia University's wait list.  Not good enough, but if he can persuade his father's boss to write a letter of recommendation, he just might make it.  His father has one more demand --take the Lithuanian foreign exchange student staying at their house to the prom.  Gobi has been a difficult guest--a socially awkward and unattractive girl who accentuates her shortcomings with her wardrobe choices and her secretiveness.  Nonetheless, she has asked to go to the prom and wants Perry to be her date.  Of course, Gobi is not what she seems.  In reality, she is a gorgeous, highly trained assassin who plans to use prom night to track down and execute five people. As an unwilling accomplice, Perry must deal with a threatening pair of Russian mobsters, witness brutal murders, steal cars and survive high speed chases, all while becoming increasingly attracted to his killer date.  Fast paced, with occasional humor and hints of romance, Au Revoir is a good bet for a short break from media entertainment.

The Rook by Daniel O'Malley

Easily the most enjoyable read of the summer, this tale of treachery in Britain's Secret Service for supernatural threats centers on an agent who has quite literally lost her mind and must "catch up" to what's going on via a series of letters written by her brain's previous occupant before one of the organization's other agents kills her. Myfawny Thomas comes to learn that she is an upper-level bureaucrat within the governmental Chequy organization with a particular talent for neutralizing the nervous systems of anyone who threatens her. Her fellow agents include one who releases nerve gas through his skin, a contortionist, one who can liquify and reform metal with his bare hands, a vampire, and Gestalt--one mind that can move himself/herself among four bodies.  As she struggles to identify the traitor from the clues her former self has left her, Myfawny must also take on immediate threats from the Chequy's arch enemy, the Grifters, including a rapidly growing fungus with telepathic communication powers. Action scenes are written with panache as the heroine must figure out how to use her powers on the fly while conquering her gag reflex at the same time.

Myfawny is actually two distinct characters: the pre-amnesiac one is shy and submissive, but a tenacious investigator of the organization's financial history and current practices.  The  present amnesiac is  tough and assertive, with quite a temper and a dry sense of humor.  Myfawny's potential antagonists are less well-developed, but are given just enough background to make them interesting beyond their peculiar skill sets.  The Rook is an entertaining blend of roller coaster action, mystery, and the supernatural. O'Malley adds a totally new spin on the problems of memory loss.  Fun, fun, fun!!

Mila 2.0 by Debra Driza

Can an android evolve to become human?  That is the possibility that drives Mila and her mom to flee from the CIA/military lab that wants to exploit her capabilities or neutralize her.   The story begins with teenage Mila adjusting to life on a ranch in a small, midwestern town as she mourns the sudden death of her beloved dad and struggles with the increasing emotional distance from her veterinarian mother.  An accident that should have killed or at least paralyzed Mila leaves her merely shaken, and with an obviously broken prosthetic arm.   Forced to explain the injury, Mila's mother tells her daughter that MILA is shorthand for Mobile Intel Lifelike Android and that they--scientist and creation, are actually in hiding from the head of the lab that oversaw the project.  The reader learns all of this in Part One, a section plagued by fairly pedestrian writing, including predictable descriptions and cardboard secondary characters: Mila's friend Kaylee, heartthrob Hunter, and picture-perfect Mom.  The pace picks up, however, once Mila's strangeness is out in the open and her pursuers converge on the ranch.  Parts Two, Three and Four cover Mila's and her mom's flight from and confrontation with General Holland, who plans to test her effectiveness as a weapon and destroy her if she fails. There is plenty of action and suspense as Mila faces one crisis after another and tries to hold on to her hopes to become more human, while the skills she needs to survive are those of a machine. "With every punch, I became less of the girl Mom had risked everything to save and more of the monster Holland desperately hoped for." Mila's questioning what it means to be human adds depth to the story and the final action sequences in Part Four makes this a satisfying read.

Etiquette & Espionage

The first in a series, Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger is a great summer read, combining mystery and humor with a young ladies' finishing school in a Victorian steampunk setting.  The school in question is Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality.  With rare exceptions, acceptance to the school is based on legacy. The  students possess special qualities that with the proper training they will become effective assassins and intelligencers.  Sophronia is one of the exceptions; she is a covert recruit, recommended by a family friend, Mrs. Barnaclegoose, who has observed Sophrina's penchant for getting into trouble--climbing, riding, hanging out in the stable--all decidedly unladylike activities.  The mystery in this book relates to a missing piece of technology that will make telegraph communication through the aethersphere possible.  Sophronia enlists the help of three classmates; a handsome boiler room crewman; the school's vampire, Professor Braithwope; and her mechanimal, Bumbersnoot,  to help her locate the missing prototype. In the course of the book she barely escapes from a werewolf and flywaymen, and must contend with her arch-rival Monique. The book is all plot, running a bit thin on character development and atmosphere.  It's all pretty silly, but fun.

The Age of Miracles

In The Age of Miracles, author Karen Thompson Walker takes on the logic problem that "If the sun has come up every day in known history until today, will it  rise tomorrow" and adds a twist.  The sun does continue to come up everyday, but now the days are getting longer as the earth's rotation slows.  What does this mean? What happens when a day/night cycle becomes so distorted that days and nights last 40 hours each?  Do people follow an artificial clock to maintain a 24-hour schedule or do they try to follow the circadian cycle of night and day no matter how long a day is?  How can these two very different choices affect society as a whole?  The narrator, a California teenager named Julia, who lives with her parents and two cats,  observes how life is changing, both for her personally and for her family and beyond. Responses to the official government announcement vary from panic and flight to resignation and calculation.  Within her own household there are extremes.  Julia's mother starts hoarding food while her father continues to go to work--or so she thinks.  Clearly there are tensions in her parents' marriage that are exacerbated by the crisis.  Julia also loses her best friend, when Hanna's Mormon family travels to Utah for the end of the world and leaves Julia to suffer  the cruelty often visited upon loners.  The novel juxtaposes the personal challenges that Julia faces as her parents fight and her grandfather disappears with the increasingly disrupted society forced into an artificial schedule that breaks down people mentally and physically.  She wants to find love and live the life of a normal teen, but cannot ignore the threats to her very existence, as plants and birds die and radiation from the sun becomes increasingly lethal.  Author Walker has written a thoughtful novel with an interesting premise. The narrative is full of descriptions of physical changes to the environment and humans, including  how strange it is to be awake and going to school in total darkness and then trying to sleep in full daylight.  Julia is a sympathetic character and one can't help but admire her resilience and faith that somehow mankind and science will find an answer. Recommended.

The Worst Hard Time

The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan, brings to life the tragedy of the Dust Bowl, the unending, severe drought and massive dust storms that magnified the already devastating impacts of the Great Depression.  Egan sets the stage by reviewing the governmental and economic policies and practices that encouraged  famers and ranchers to settle the land without considering the importance of prairie turf  and available water. When all of the buffalo grass was plowed under and replaced with non-native crops, the land was at the mercy of the lack of water and abundance of wind.  The rest, as they say, is history.

Through interviews and documents, Egan focuses on how climate, technology, and  poor governmental policy and planning destroyed the lives and livelihoods of families and their communities.  Numerous accounts tell of  developers' and realtors' promises of a rosy future that led instead to  hopelessness and despair as families fell deeper into debt,  first trying to sell crops in a depressed market and then trying to harvest any crops at all once the rains failed.  While some families were able to survive, others lost their farms to the banks and their loved ones, mainly children and old people, to dust pneumonia.  Egan describes dust storms that shattered windows, created huge drifts across roads, blinded people and cattle, and penetrated every crack and crevice of settlers' homes, leaving residents suffering with bronchitis, laryngitis, sinusitis, and pneumonia.

The author also discusses how the government and other agencies tried to respond to the crisis.  Red Cross centers sprang up in larger communities.  New Deal CCC workers planted trees in rows to try to curb wind damage.  Roosevelt authorized a study of what went wrong--was it climate change or a man-made disaster?  Should the government buy back land and replant with resilient grasses to hold the soil?   The book is a treasure chest of personal experiences and awe-inspiring statistics on what happened.  It reads like fiction and creates a vivid image of what a black blizzard was.  Highly recommended.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

This award-winning novel by Benjamin Alire Saenz is told through the eyes of a 15-year-old Mexican American living in El Paso, Texas.  Ari, short for Angel Aristotle Mendoza, relates two years of his life, beginning with his meeting Dante Quintana at the local swimming pool.  The boys are opposites--Dante is upbeat, extroverted, and intellectual. He wears his heart on his sleeve, kisses his parents, and can cry about an injured bird.  Ari is aloof and prone to anger as he struggles with communicating with his father, a Vietnam vet, and learning more about his brother, Bernardo, who is in prison. He keeps all of his emotions bottled up inside.  Both boys are lonely and feel isolated from their culture and are struggling to define who they are.  The novel is one of exploration of the teens' deepening relationship.  Two widely separated but significant events force them to evaluate their feelings about and trust in each other.  Saenz's novel is about trust, pain, commitment, communication, and honesty.  This is a slow-paced but ultimately satisfying exploration of friendship, love, and acceptance.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Jacob's eccentric grandfather dies a sudden and violent death.  His last words to Jacob are, "Go to the island . . . Find the bird, in the loop. On the other side of the old man's grave.  September third, 1940"  Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children centers around  Jacob Portman's search for answers to the clues Grandpa Portman has left him. These include the instructions he gave with his dying breaths and the wild stories and odd photographs of children who, like Abe Portman, were confined to an isolated home in Wales during WW II.    Struggling to cope with the loss of his beloved grandfather and experiencing increasingly frightening nightmares about monsters like the one he thought he saw near his grandfather's body,  16-year-old Jacob resolves to travel to Cairnholm, Wales,  to find the home and its headmistress, Miss Peregrine.

Jacob's parents support his quest, largely thanks to the advice from his psychiatrist, Dr. Golen.  Only by following his grandfather's final wishes can he lay to rest his own demons--his grief and the nightmares.  In his narration of what happens on the island, Jacob appears as an ordinary teen possessing just enough curiosity and courage to explore the mystery that confronts him.  Finally locating the home where his grandfather grew up he sees, " . . . no refuge from monsters but a monster itself, staring down from its perch on the hill with vacant hunger."  Once he begins to explore this menacing structure, he is confronted with the possibility of alternate worlds and looming dangers.

The narrative is punctuated by the pictures of the unusual children from Grandfather Portman's past.  These actual photos add to the suspense as Jacob sinks deeper into experiencing the lives of these special  children of another era.  Miss Peregrine's Home is at once a mystery, a fantasy, and a coming-of-age story of a lonely young man who finds comfort and friendship in another world.  Highly recommended.

Alif the Unseen

Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson.  Alif's comfortable existence, living at home with his mother while spending his time coding protective software to keep his many anonymous, freedom or pornography-loving  hacker clients secure, comes to an abrupt end when his beloved Intisar becomes engaged to a wealthy prince.  Unfortunately, the lucky suitor is also the head of state cyber security forces, which are going to breach all of Alif's carefully coded defenses. What's worse, the Hand, as he is known, has also discovered Alif's latest programming triumph--a keystroke logging program, which has the potential to unmask and destroy all of Alif's unconventional clients as well as Alif himself.  As Alif's friend, Dina, puts it, "We live in a city run by an emir from one of the most inbred families on earth, where a few censors can throw someone in jail for writing things on the Internet and falling in love with the wrong person. . . It [Alif's life]went out of control a long time ago."  (122)

When she decided to leave him, Intisar sent Alif a package containing a book,  The Thousand and One Days.  This ancient tome, the secret book of the jinn, is believed to contain the key to creating a quantum-bit-powered supercomputer. With the help of Dina and a deadly jinn named Vikram, Alif struggles to keep the Hand from finding the book while he uses fleeting wifi connections to do some manic programming aimed at destroying the Hand's power.

The book is replete with  fascinating characters who offer different takes on Islam and spirituality, on tensions between the haves and have-nots in an unnamed Arab country, on the differences between Arabs and half-castes (Alif is half-Arab, half-Indian), and on two worlds--of the jinn and of the Internet,  that operate out of sight of ordinary lives.  Fascinating, fast paced and totally satisfying. Don't miss this one!!

The Katyn Order

The Katyn Order by Doublas W. Jacobson is a wild swing through the history of World War II as it plays out in the fall of Warsaw and the subsequent invasion by Russian troops.  The fate of Poland as a country lies in the balance.  A Soviet-controlled communist government is ready to take over and the only possible way to prevent this is to reveal to the world the Soviet order to murder over 27,000 Polish officers, revolutionaries and nationalists in the Katyn Forest in 1940.  The German army discovered evidence of the massacre in 1943 and the controversy about who was responsible began with accusations and counter accusations between them and the Russians.  Jacobson brings alive the unspeakably horrific and hopeless conditions of the Warsaw uprising, telling the story of a small group of dedicated Polish nationalists fighting with the Armia Krajowa  against vastly superior and ruthless German forces.  A small group of survivors is forced underground but they continue their resistance against the Red Army and security forces.  Adam Nowak is a Polish-speaking American trained as an assassin who the British Intelligence sends into Poland to work with the resistance movement. After the uprising fails,  his objective is to find a copy of Stalin's order to execute the Poles.  Trying to stop him is NKVD agent Tarnov, who has a personal interest in destroying any record of the massacre--he was responsible for carrying it out.  The story is filled with tales of violence, treachery and heroism.  It is also the story of a Polish resistance fighter who falls in love with Adam Nowak and struggles to both help him and stay alive in post-war Krakow.  Heavy, compelling stuff.