Category: Spectacular Speculative Fiction

Sibs Kestral and Bowman have gotten themselves into some seriously hot water. Unhappy with the strict authoritarian rule of Aramanth, (a world that could be either parallel to ours, or somewhat futuristic, depending on your point of view) they refuse to play along with the system of tests that every citizen must take and pass to advance to into a higher level of society. Once their family is blacklisted, they are busted down to the lowest level, and Kestral is forced to go to a “special school” for “old children,” a fate she soon learns is worse than death. So she breaks out of her school prison and hits the road with Bowman and their friend Mumpo in search of the “tongue” of the Windsinger, an ancient instrument that could restore tolerance and freethinking to the people of Aramanth. On their way, they meet up with the kindly, dirty Mud People, the war-hungry Chakas and Barakas, and worst of all, the terrible Morah and its’ army of smiling, deadly Zars. Fast-paced action, cool characters and some pretty scary bad guys will make this English import popular with fans of The Giver and Harry Potter.

In the year 2094, exchange students don’t just come from other countries, they also rocket in from other planets. 16 year old Daria isn’t too happy about having to share her home with just such an alien student named Fen from the planet Chela. After all, as one of the youngest breeders of endangered species on planet Earth, she has enough work on her hands without having to introduce her new 7 foot tall, gray skinned housemate around. Luckily for her, Fen is really into helping out with the animals. In fact, he’s a little too into it. And when he flatly refuses to discuss the animal life on his own planet, Daria discovers why–Fen is part of a biological plot to repopulate his own planet with Earth-born species. Daria, torn between sympathy for a people who have no animal life of their own to love and a fierce protectivness over her wild charges, has to decide whether it would be better to help Fen or put a stop to his plans. Besides being a page turner, this novel is chock full of fascinating animal and environmental conservation facts. Both an educational (and I don’t mean in that dry textbook way) and completely entertaining read.

Imagine a future where the green house effect has finally kicked into high gear and the worst has happened: the polar ice caps have melted and the whole world is either underwater or nearly there. This is the only future Zoe has ever known, and she’s trying to navigate it the best she can. With just a leaky rowboat and limited supplies, she’s left the island she’s lived on most of her life to search for her parents, whom she was accidently separated from. Once out on her own, she is captured by a gang of wild teens from another sparsely inhabited bit of land. Their leader, a slippery character named Dooby, hides her boat and Zoe must strike a terrible bargain with him in order to get it back. But all’s not lost–Zoe still hasn’t lived by her wits for so long for nothing. She still has a few tricks up her sleeve and she is determined to find that elusive Mainland that exists somewhere out there on the water. An exciting futuristic adventure tale in the tradition of Lord of the Flies.

Whensday Bluehouse doesn’t have too much to be happy about. The futuristic world she lives in has constant acid rain, child slave labor, and a Nazi-like government group called the Syndicate that runs everything. She manages to escape the Pits, a quarry where kids work until they die, due to the kindness of an old coffin maker, who hides her in his Lifehole. When a lady from Top Town, the big city where the rich live sheltered from the rain, offers the coffin maker money if he will sell her Whensday, Whensday has no choice but to run away and try to find some kind of future in the bleak landscape of Bone Trees and Safe Jam. This book stuck in my throat and lodged in my heart. It’s depressing and exhilarating all at once, and not many books can make that claim. Read it and weep.

For those of you who slept in history class, the sirens were these Greek mythology babes who lured dudes to their deaths by singing so sweet that guys crashed their ships just to get closer to the music. Napoli has taken that myth, mixed it up with The Little Mermaid, and created a tale of true love that will break your heart. Sirena, our tender-hearted mermaid/siren decides that she would rather live alone than accidentally kill another man softly with her song. But fate steps in, as it often does in mythology, and a gorgeous guy ends up being stranded on Sirena’s deserted isle. Of course, our mermaid babe falls for him, but there’s a catch. If the two of them become lovers, Sirena will gain immortal status, but her poor boyfriend will remain the same. Does Sirena want to watch her true love grow old while she stays forever young? Tune into Napoli’s newest myth-mash and find out!

What a fun book! In this collection of short stories, Yolen has twisted and tweaked our most beloved children’s classics into completely fractured fairy tales! Yolen’s writing answers questions like, “What if the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff was told from the bridge’s point of view?” and “What would happen if Wendy and all her girlfriends decided to unionize against Peter Pan and the rest of the Lost Boys?” Plus, there’s some great original stuff here, like an Appalachian vampire mama, and a New York Central Park of the future where teens morph from humans into animal predators and prey, with sometimes disastrous results. To quote Yolen, this collection is “coolish!”

You think you like to play games? You may find yourself retiring the old Monopoly Board forever after checking out this planetary read. Barney isn’t exactly looking forward to spending the summer at the beach with his boring parents, until he meets his neighbors, two guys and a girl who have this neat board game about aliens called Interstellar Pig. Flattered by their attention, Barney agrees to play the game where the object is to capture this grotesque game card that somewhat resembles a pig. Suddenly, summer is a blast. Barney feels like Luke Skywalker as he zaps around the gameboard universe, always in search of the elusive pink piggy. But his new friends are acting kinda freaky and suddenly, they’re taking this game way too seriously. What’s up? Barney’s beginning to suspect that this game may be more real than he could have ever imagined…take a flight with Barney through space and beyond in this fun, bigger than life adventure.

Imagine a world where there are NO ADULTS. Okay, sounds pretty cool at first. But what if this near-future world was also full of big, armor-covered monsters called Myrmidons, pterodactyl-type beasties called Wingers and evil sharp-toothed, greasy-furred weasels called Ferrets, and they all wanted teen-aged blood on their Cheerios for breakfast? Not so cool anymore, right? As a teen in this world, ya got two options — surrender to these monsters, hop on an operating table when you’re 14 and lose your brain (they transplant it into one of the above ghoulies and you become a monster-mash who goes around and tries to capture other escaped kids) OR fight and run like hell like the kids who are part of Shade’s group. Who’s Shade? Just a computerized version of a human being who tries to help the kids who have escaped the clutches of the genetic mistakes that are roaming the countryside. But is Shade a good guy or a villain? And what can the escaped teens do to make their world safe and right again? Crack open this book and I promise you won’t put it down until you’re finished.

Lyra is a chick from a world not unlike our own, but totally different in a few important ways. For instance, in Lyra’s world, your conscience and soul takes the form of a real, living thing, usually an animal — and it can assume any animal shape it chooses. And there are armed polar bears that talk, and good witches that are immortal and never get cold. But other than that, its pretty much the same. The problem here is that Lyra, who’s a pretty inquisitive kid, gets wind of a nasty little plot where scientists in the North Pole are doing experiments on kids and their soul embodiments, or deamons. The experiments have something to do with a mysterious substance called Dust (with a capital D!) that Lyra has heard about from her explorer uncle and she’s bound and determined to find out what’s going on. Before it’s all over, she and her own daemon, Pantalaimon come close to getting the ax. The book is so good, you won’t want it to end — and guess what, it doesn’t! The two sequels, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, continues Lyra’s adventure. Want to know what your daemon would be? Take the daemon quiz from the Golden Compass movie website and find out!

Super sensory detectives Eye, Ear and Arm (yep, you guessed it, one guy has sensitive hearing, one has fantastic sight and one has super long arms, all the result of a nuclear power accident.) are on the trail of three runaways in the Zimbabwe of 2194. But this is no regular assignment. Because these three kids are also the children of General Matiska, military genius of Zimbabwe. Always one step behind the quarry, these three detectives are anything but bumbling, but can they hope to match wits with the She-Elephant and the notorious Blue Monkey who are out to sacrifice the souls of the royal siblings? Action abounds in this technological tale that weaves futuristic fun with traditional folklore.

Vivian’s in love. But this is no normal teen crush. Because Vivian is sweet sixteen and never been anything but a werewolf and the object of her affection isn’t an accepted member of her pack but a normal human, or “meat-boy”. Poor Vivian misses Daddy, who was killed in a fire, causing her pack to hit the road. Now, in a new town, she thinks she may have found her soulmate in Aiden, a hunka hunka teen poet and all around Cu-Tee! But can werewolves and humans really overcome their differences? (It’s hard to love someone you want to eat) Fights, fangs and broken hearts will have you howling for more when you turn the last page of this fur-tastic novel. If you like this kind of “human-monster” type romance, check out Klause’s other supernatural thriller, The Silver Kiss.