An Outsider No Matter Where He Goes: The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells

This book came to me unexpectedly thanks to a friend's recommendation and the fact that I love things that are free. Whenever I hear about a book recommendation from someone that is free for my Kindle, I will get it just because I love having books--the six overflowing bookcases in my apartment will attest to this as well--but I was pleasantly surprised at what a good fantasy novel The Cloud Roads turned out to be.

Moon, the story's main character, is alone in the world. He was orphaned as a child, and though the many cities and towns he has traveled to throughout his life are populated by intelligent species of humanoids that look somewhat like him, he has never found a place where he belongs, and he has no idea where or even what race of people he comes from. The reason why he doesn't fit in is because he can shift from looking like a 'groundling' into a large, dangerous-looking flying creature, and the problem with that is that the world is plagued by a race of violent, warlike creatures called the Fell and, though he is not one of them, his flying form looks remarkably similar to that of the Fell. When the story starts, Moon has been living with a settlement of peaceful groundlings for several years and finally starting to feel like he belongs there, but one night, someone sees him shift into his flying form, believes he is a Fell, and the entire village turns against him. They drug him and stake him out to be eaten by wild creatures, but he is rescued by a flying monster that he soon discovers is another one of his people--a Raksura.

This Raksura is named Stone, and he is the consort to the queen of a colony of Raksura who are in desperate trouble. A complete explanation of their physical and social heirarchy is best left to a reading of the book, but, to put it simply, they have both fertile and infertile males and females and their biology determines their place within the colony. Stone's colony is in trouble because it has been unable to produce consorts, the only type of Raksuran who can mate with Raksuran queens, and Moon just happens to be one of those, so Stone convinces Moon to come back to his colony, where he will finally be among his own people again.

Of course, Moon's problems don't end there. The colony's population problems stem from trouble with the Fell, he is not easily accepted into their home, and he has to find a way to save the colony even though many of its people, including its queen, hate him for being an outsider who is ignorant of their ways. All of this conflict creates an excellent story that made the book hard to put down. I am not well-versed in all of the different styles of fantasy, so this was a new and intriguing read for me in more ways than one, and I plan on looking for more books by this author and in this fantasy style in the future.

This book also got me thinking about a trope in fantasy and science fiction that was recently brought to my attention--that of telling the story from the point of view of the naive outsider. It is such a common and necessary trope when introducing readers to a world outside of their sphere of knowledge that it can easily go unnoticed. In this story, the trope was more obvious than most, but only because Moon's outsider status was a stigma both in the world where he didn't belong and in the world where he did. The style has its strengths and weaknesses--it makes a strange world populated by non-humans much more accessible and easier to visualize and accept without being pulled out of the story by long descriptions, but it also means that some of the character's personal story can be sacrificed for the sake of his new experiences-- but recognizing this storytelling style and being able to analyze its strengths and weaknesses within one book whose plot was tailor-made for it has already opened my eyes to its possibilities in my own writing, which is what I am striving for first and foremost in reading books with a critical eye.

Though The Cloud Roads is no longer being offered for free as an Amazon Kindle download, I still recommend that you get your hands on it and read it, especially if you love fantasy and good stories about outsiders finding a place to call home. Enjoy!

The Cloud Roads, by Martha Wells

This Very Timely Read Was An Accident: The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood

When I started reading The Handmaid's Tale, I expected to be writing this review as a comparison between fiction and literature. The similarities between the dystopian young adult novels that I've been devouring over the last few years, such as the Hunger Games trilogy, and dystopian literature like The Handmaid's Tale (as well as my favorite dystopian novel, Brave New World) are more numerous than you might imagine, but the differences are also vast and would make for a very interesting discussion. However, current events have interceded and made this review a more timely one than I would have expected, so that is what this post will be about instead.

The Handmaid's Tale is the story of a future not that divergent from our recent past. The book was written in 1986, so it still reflects many of our society's modern fears--religious war, extremism, and environmental disaster. In the world of the novel, nuclear waste and other poisons have caused a severe drop in fertility, and a takeover by fundamentalist Christian extremists has turned a vast section of North America into a theocratic state in which women are no longer free and equal with men, among other horrors that, I confess, have haunted my nightmares well before I ever read this book. The story is told by a woman whom the reader only knows as Offred, though this is not her actual name. She is the Handmaid of a man (named Fred, hence Of Fred) who holds some high military position within the new government, and her job is to bear him a child, since his wife can no longer do so.

The story jumps around between Offred's present, where she describes her daily activities and the changes taking place in her life, and memories of her past, where she describes--in no particular order--from her personal perspective how the world changed from what I presume was the modern world of the early 1980s to the world that she knows now. The diversions to the past are never quite complete, and are sometimes delivered with maddening vagueness, but in the end the story of her life can be pieced together, and when you finally understand it all, it is almost horrifying that she seems to have adapted to her current situation with such ease. She was a smart, educated young woman, the daughter of a feminist, with a husband and a daughter, and she slowly saw her whole life taken away from her--first her job, then her ability to be an equal functioning member of society, then her husband and daughter, simply because she married a man who had been divorced. They tried to escape what was going to happen to them, but they failed, and now she is alone and doing her best to survive in a world that is as alien to her as it would be to us.

The thing I found the most fascinating about this book was trying to imagine being in Offred's place. Most dystopian fiction that I read takes place long after the events that turned the world on its head in the first place, so the characters generally accept that things, no matter how wrong they are, are that way for a reason. But Offred remembers how the world was before the theocracy that she is now forced to live in. She remembers going to school and having a job, when in the world now women aren't even allowed to read and their daughters will never learn to. She remembers going to feminist marches with her mother as a child, and now all they fought for has been stripped away. As a young woman living in our modern society, I don't think I would survive those kind of changes in my life. I would have fought it to my very last breath, and if I was forced into the situation in which Offred lives, I probably would go stark-raving mad.

The flipside of that fascination, though, was the disturbing realization that not only did I understand most of the biblical references that made up the language of the book's theocratic society (the Handmaids, for example, are a reference to the story of Abraham and his wife Sarah, who, when she discovered that she could not bear children, told her husband to lie with her handmaid so that he might have a son) but I also saw this dystopia as much less impossible than most of the worlds in other books that I read. There are still parts of the world in which women are not educated, or allowed to be independent entities from the men of their household, or are forced to cover themselves to keep from tempting men with their bodies, and these customs persist even among people who live in modern, liberal societies, and are forced upon women in more repressive countries even if they do not adhere to the same religious beliefs as those whose beliefs demand such things of women. Worse, there are conservative elements in our own country, possibly on this very day and at this very hour, discussing how to turn the clock back on a woman's right to control her own body and its ability to bear children. Though there is obviously a difference between denying the woman a right to decide whether or not she has a baby when she chooses to have sex to demanding that women have children for people who cannot have them, it is not a large one, especially since that is practically what anti-abortion activists who tell women to put their babies up for adoption are saying.

It is these sort of revelations that keep bringing me back to dystopian fiction, even though it is about as disturbing to read as it is enjoyable. There is merit in looking at the worst-case scenario, if for no other reason than that there is educational value in trying to imagine yourself in the same situation or a similar one. A part of me wishes that the book had been more informative about how the world came to be that way, about the people who let it happen and the people who fought back, because, at least from Offred's point of view, it all seemed to have happened too easily, which was the most terrifying thought to come out of the whole book. Every time a new election comes around and I see no real options for the progress or betterment of society, I content myself by saying, "Well, at least none of them will have enough power to make it any worse." But lately, as I watch what seems to be a systematic rolling back of women's rights within this country, I am beginning to wonder if I was wrong, and the biggest problem with that is that I'm not sure what can be done to make it right again.

The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood

A Fine Line Between Terrorist and Freedom-Fighter: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

(Author's Note: Spoilers... you know the drill... blah, blah, blah... just read the books already! Especially since this time there are actual spoilers for the actual ending of this book. - S)

It's hard for me to know exactly what to say about this book in comparison to the first two. It is not as good as the first two books--it lacks a straightforward plot, it spends a little too much time inside Katniss's head as she agonizes over her relationships, and it tries to cram too much into the final chapter of this story about what it takes to start and finish a revolution--but it still manages to pull you in with a fast-paced narrative, and after everything the first two books have spent building up, it's very hard to put this book down until you know how everything ends.

And I actually admire Suzanne Collins for not taking the easy way out when choosing an archetype for her freedom-fighter army. She could have made them as noble as their cause certainly is, which would have made the ending to this story much less emotionally jarring, but she chose to--in my opinion, at least--write a little closer to reality. Two ideas that I've thought about far too often over the last decade or so kept crossing my mind as I read this book: "There's a fine line between a freedom-fighter and a terrorist," and "War makes monsters of men." The tactics that the Capital used at the end of the first rebellion to prevent further uprisings--the enforced poverty, the isolation and separation of the Districts, the marginalization of a majority of the population, and especially the Hunger Games--were abominable, and there was no question that they needed to be brought down, but, unlike in the stories we are all told as children, one does not vanquish evil simply by being its opposite. Any war, even a just war for freedom, is a messy business that often requires the worst even of good people, and the killing of others, no matter how bad they are or how hard they were trying to kill you, changes a person, and Collins doesn't shy away from those harsh realities.

To call the ending of this story bittersweet would be a gross understatement, but I am still glad that it ends with the two people who most deserved peace and a future together finding it. By the end of the story, I can forgive Katniss her wishy-washy emotions and her selfish tendency to focus too much on what people think of her despite the fact that there was a war going on. She was a teenager, and some things about teenagers will always be the same, no matter how quickly their circumstances in life expect them to grow up. What matters in the end is that she is able to see things for what they really are, make the best choices available to her, and try to find some peace with herself once she has brought about a future in which she can have that peace.

The one thing that truly makes the entire story bearable and almost enjoyable to read over and over again, though, is that it brings Peeta a happy (sort of) ending too. Peeta is, without a doubt, my favorite character, because he is the only one of the main characters who is a truly good and decent person. From the very first time you meet him, you can see that he has a good heart, and he manages to keep it all the way through, even after being tortured and having his memories and his emotions twisted by President Snow. The fact that he survives and is able to make a life for himself, the girl he loves, and the family that they have together in the end brings a peace to the ending of this amazing yet troubling story that I hope can be found by all good men who find themselves scarred by events in their lives that are out of their control.

Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins

And Now, Something Original

So, since I've now posted two book reviews that some of you may not have been able to read, and since I am apparently one post behind on my one-post-per-week quota so far (not sure how that happened; must have been a busy weekend...), I present to you something original. I recently dug out an old attempt at an original story that I wrote in high school, and after re-reading it, I decided to take a stab at re-writing and trying to finish it. So here, for your reading pleasure, I present a rough draft introduction to the story's premise and a short scene between two of the characters from later in the story. Enjoy!

Once upon a time…

Every child has grown up hearing stories about Tai’a’Sharen, the Land of Magic. It was a beautiful country, divided into five kingdoms that represented the five elemental magics: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Spirit. Each kingdom was well-suited to the element it embodied and the magic wielded by its residents, and each was ruled by a royal line of kings and queens.

There was no war between the kingdoms; peace was kept by means of a yearly council between the kings and queens, held at the castle fortress that stood in the very center of the land. The fortress protected the Great Tree, which was the source of the country’s magic. The tree was enormous; its crown could be seen for miles in every direction, it dwarfed the castle built around its trunk, and it took a fast runner at least an hour to circle its base. The tree’s bark was a vibrant brown and soft to the touch and its leaves, which never fell unless called down by a magician for use in a spell, were shaped like five-pointed stars, as big as a man’s hand, and a vibrant emerald-green that pulsed and glowed with an inner light.

The tree was cared for by the oracles. There were still mysteries, even in Tai’a’Sharen, and the oracles were the greatest one of all. No one knew what they were or where they came from. They were spirits of a sort whose very presence replenished the Great Tree, though they could not interact with anything or anyone and were rarely even seen except when passing on a prophecy. Prophecies from the oracles were rare, but extremely important, and they shaped not only the future of the world of magic, but also shaped the mundane world as well.

Because Tai’a’Sharen was connected to the world of men through hidden doorways, and the oracles’ prophecies usually involved the coming of Heroes to the Land of Magic: mortals who were touched by a great destiny, who entered the magical world to assist in its protection and preservation, then often returned to the mortal world to precipitate changes there as well. These mortals were revered by those in the magical world; their names and stories were carved into the stones of the fortress surrounding the Great Tree so they would never be forgotten.

Though there was peace and prosperity within Tai’a’Sharen, it was a tenuous stability, preserved only by constant vigilance along the country’s border. The roots of the Great Tree only spread so far, and beyond their reach lurked the Darkness. It was a daily struggle to prevent the denizens of the Darkness from crossing the border, gaining strength from the magical power that infused the land, and wrecking havoc or, worse, escaping to the mundane world to cause wars, disasters, disease, famine, and death. The magicians were vigilant, though, and had held off the swelling tide of shadow-folk amassing on their border for thousands of years, and stragglers that broke through and escaped into the mortal world were few and far between.

But then came the day of the Prophecy; the day the leaves of the Great Tree began to fall.

An emergency council was called. The shadow-folk had suddenly gained in strength and numbers, and all the power of the five kingdoms’ armies could barely hold them at bay. When the five kings and queens met at the fortress, they saw immediately one possible explanation for this change in their fortunes: the star-shaped leaves of the Great Tree were fluttering from is heights unbidden. The oracles were swarming the tree, their ghostly movements unusually hasty and full of fear, but they had no answers for the council, or any acknowledgement of their presence at all. As the kings and queens sat and discussed plans for increasing the strength of their armies, strategies for pushing back the shadow-folk, and treaties for coming to one another’s aid, a heavy sense of dread and futility hung in the air.

Suddenly, an oracle appeared in their midst, silencing them all as it hovered over the center of the council table. Then, it began to speak, its voice seeming to come from all around.

“The time has come at last; the future of all worlds hangs in the balance. The firstborn of royal blood must be sent to the world of men. Ignorant of their true selves, they will return when the time is right, bringing with them the heroes that will destroy all to save all. When the dream comes again, the one who is left behind will lead the way.” Then it vanished.

Silence filled the room as the kings and queens all looked at one another, fear and sorrow filling all their faces as the meaning of the oracle’s words sunk in. The king of the Earth Kingdom went very pale and his wife began to sob; their first child, a son, was almost two years old. The king and queen of the Water Kingdom also grieved—they had just given birth to a daughter—and the queen of the Fire Kingdom looked at her husband with sorrow and understanding, for though they had told no one yet, they had discovered just before departing their castle that she was pregnant for the first time. With twins. And she knew for a certainty that one of those children would be ‘the one who is left behind,’ because only one of them would be her firstborn.

Once the sacrifice the five families were being asked to make had sunk in, the Water king finally broke the silence. “So what are we to do now?”

“The children who have been born must be brought here so the oracles can send them to the mundane world,” the Spirit queen said, for she had the gift of understanding prophecy, “and we must continue to fight. For though no war will be won until our children and their heroes return, it can still be lost before that day comes if we do not keep the darkness at bay.”

“But what of those who have no children to lose?” the Earth king growled, glaring accusingly at the king and queen from the Spirit Kingdom, who had only just been married and raised to their position, and at the king and queen from the Air Kingdom, who were barely more than children themselves.

“We will all lose a child in the end,” the Fire queen spoke up, sparing her sister the pain of interpreting the most difficult part of the prophecy. “They will be lost to us before we have a chance to know them, but we will miss them all the same.” She suppressed her own grief as she put her arm around the Spirit queen’s shoulders to comfort her. “This will be a tremendous sacrifice for all of us, but it must be done if we are to save our world.”

“And we must not lose hope,” the Air queen spoke up in a sweet, sad voice, “for if the prophecy is true, we will see our children again… some day.” And they all took her words to heart, for they were a small, flickering flame of hope in the darkness that had fallen over their souls.

When they got to the small house where Maia and Kaelin lived, Maia was sitting by the front door, crying. Darren ran to her, Kari close on his heels.

“What’s the matter? What’s happened?”

She looked up and cried, “He’s doing it again!”

No further explanation was needed. Kari immediately turned and ran into the forest, heading for the quarry. She left Darren to take care of Maia; he knew her better, after all.

The old rock quarry had been hollowed out long ago to build a lord’s castle. Now, it was simply a giant crater. A fifty-foot drop from sheer cliffs ended in a crystal-clear lake built up from years of rainfall. As Kari neared it, she slowed. There he was again, just sitting on the edge, looking down. His curly black hair, ruffled by the wind, fell into his eyes, and his balance wavered as he reached one hand up to push it back. Kari made sure to make plenty of noise with her feet as she approached so as not to startle him.

“Hello, Kaelin,” she said as she sat down next to him on the steep cliff.

“Hello, Kari,” he said, never moving or looking up from the water below.

“What are you doing?”

“Sitting here. Thinking.”

“About jumping?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

Now, the real question. “Why?”

“Why what?” he asked innocently.

“You know what. You come here all the time, sit here almost every day. You’re terrifying Maia; she has no idea what’s going on inside your head. She’s afraid one day you just won’t come back, but she’s more afraid to try and stop you. Why do you do it?”

He finally turned his head to look at her, his grey eyes full of mild puzzlement. “I thought you’d know why. You must think about it yourself sometimes.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? I’d never want to jump.”

“You don’t belong here any more than I do. I knew it from the first time I saw you.”

That opened her eyes. How could he know? “What makes you say that?” she asked, trying to keep her voice level.

“I’m not sure. There was just… something the first time we met. I’ve always known I don’t really belong to this world, but you’re the only other person I’ve ever met that I was certain didn’t belong here either.”

Could he really know? Was he one of the ones she was searching for? She knew Danil was one, and his very life was in danger as a result. If Kaelin was one too… But what did his fascination with the quarry have to do with any of this?

“I don’t want to sound harsh or anything, but you’re evading my question. Why do you keep coming here?”

He looked back down into the quarry. “For as long as I can remember, I’ve been searching for the way back to… wherever it was that I came from. I don’t know where that is, but the first time I came across this quarry, I knew the answer was down there somewhere. I know the fall won’t kill me. I’d jump right now if it wasn’t for Maia. I can’t leave her behind. Wherever I belong, even if she doesn’t belong there too, I’m not going to go without her. I thought once that that meant that I’d never get to go home, but now… ever since I met you… I don’t want to jump any more. I came here today because things got really bad, but… I’m not going to jump as long as you promise to take us with you when you go.”

“Take you where?”

“To the place where this no longer frightens people.” He held his hands up. Blue lightning crackled along his fingertips.

*He is one of them!*

Kari rejoiced, not even bothering to hide her broad grin. She held out her hands to him, conjuring fire in her palms. “Don’t worry, cousin. I know the way home.”

And Just When You Thought Things Couldn't Get Any Worse...: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

(Author's Note: DO NOT read this review if you have not already read The Hunger Games, unless you don't mind being completely spoiled on the ending of that book. I also would suggest that you wait until you have read Catching Fire before reading this review, as there will be minor spoilers. - S)


Catching Fire opens with Katniss Everdeen doing her best to adjust to her new life as a victor in the Hunger Games. She has a new house, money enough to provide for her family, and her victory ensures that all of District 12 will be well-fed for an entire year. But, at the same time, she is frightened. She knows that her stunt at the end of the Games, though it allowed both her and Peeta to survive, has put her family and friends in danger, and that they are all being watched for signs of further rebellion. Though Katniss herself is uncertain exactly what made her do it--was it an act of love, like she is forced to make everyone else believe, or was it defiant rebellion, or was it simply survival?--she knows what she needs to make everyone think in order to survive, but she also knows--or at least learns over the course of her Victory Tour in the first third of the book--how others chose to see it. Seeing someone standing defiant, forcing the Capital to change the unchanging rules of the bloody contest that defines their power over the districts in order to keep from losing it as a symbol of that power, appears to be the last straw that a lot of desperate people needed, and despite all Katniss, Peeta, and the Capital tried to do to spin her act of defiance into something else, people have chosen to take it as they saw it, and not as the propaganda wants them to see it.

Catching Fire is a faster-paced book than The Hunger Games, covering more ground and giving more insight into the power behind the dictatorship that runs Panem, and revealing it all to you through Katniss's eyes and thoughts is a fascinating, if sometimes frustrating, window into her true transition from child to adult: seeing that actions have consequences, that they are not always what you would expect, and that the world is a much more complicated place than it appears. One lesson that both Katniss and the leaders of Panem should learn but really don't over the events of this book is that you cannot control what others chose to do as a result of your actions or your example. All Katniss wants to do is protect her family, her friends, and the two young men that she cares about and that care about her. She is willing to do anything and everything towards that goal, but she is destined to fail because she has no control over the fact that the people in the other districts have chosen to use her act of defiance in the arena as the spark that is lighting the fire of rebellion across the country. And, in truly despicable fashion, the country's leader, President Snow, chooses to make her feel responsible for everything that happens as a result.

Though this book is very much the middle book of a trilogy, dropping you into the action from the very beginning and ending with no satisfactory conclusion, it is well-paced and pulls you through the events with breathless alacrity. Everything for Katniss happens in a whirlwind, and she is fighting every step of the way just to keep her friends and family safe. You feel her helplessness and desperation acutely, you rage at the injustice of President Snow's continued punishments, and in the end your heart breaks with hers over what she loses even as you are picking up the next book in the hope that everything will turn out alright in the end.

Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins

"Hits My Brain Like Lightning": The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

If you haven't at least heard of this book some time in the last year, you have probably been living in a cave. The Hunger Games trilogy is one of the latest novel crazes to sweep the nation, and if you really haven't heard of it yet, I guarantee that you will once the motion picture being made of this first book comes out in a few months. It's not as big as, say, Harry Potter, but, to be fair, it is also a lot darker and a lot more harrowing. The first time I read it, I was surprised that it could be marketed as young adult fiction, but maybe that's only because, as a teenager, I was a lot more innocent and naive than most.

(Note to those interested in reading this book: there will be minor spoilers in this review. Nothing that should ruin the book for you or take away from the many twists and turns the plot takes, but if you want to go into it unknowing, I suggest you stop here and come back to this review once you've read the book for yourself. Thanks - S)

The Hunger Games is the first in a trilogy of dystopian fiction novels set in a ravaged, futuristic version of America known as Panem. The country has been divided into twelve districts, each specifically tasked with providing a certain good or service to the Capital, where the country's dictatorial leaders and wealthiest citizens live. Many years before, the districts tried to rebel against the Capital, led by a thirteenth district that was subsequently wiped off the map when the Capital put down the uprising. And now, as continued punishment for that rebellion, along with a number of other hardships, each of the twelve districts are forced, every year, to randomly choose one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the Hunger Games, a free-for-all battle to the death that takes place on live television, with everyone forced to watch and celebrate.

The main character in this story is a sixteen-year-old girl named Katniss Everdeen who ends up volunteering for the Hunger Games when her twelve-year-old sister Prim is chosen. The story is told in the first person, so you learn a lot about Katniss's personality from the very start, and you experience the horrors and tragedy of the world she lives in firsthand.

The story is made even more gripping and personal because Katniss's fellow tribute from her district, a baker's son named Peeta Mellark, is a person with whom she has a complicated history, most of it unknown even to her. I think, no matter how many times I read this book, the most heartbreaking part of it is the way that the love story unfolds between Katniss and Peeta. You see everything from Katniss's perspective, of course, but her description of Peeta's words and actions, divorced from her belief that everything he does is in furtherance of his own victory in the Hunger Games, are enough to tell anyone who's been in love before that he really does love her. He's been put in this horrible, impossible position that any person with a heart should want to do everything possible to save him from, and he's manipulated into using that love in furtherance of her survival when she doesn't return it.

The love story aside, though, this book is an amazing yet difficult read. When explaining to someone today that I was so on edge because I was about to finish the book (for the second time, I might add), I said that the story "hits my brain like lightning." It's not just that I can't put it down; even though I know how the book ends, reading it sets my every nerve ending on fire. I have dreams about it, it distracts most of my waking thoughts, and once I am finished with it, all I can think of is racing through the other two books so I can get the whole story out of my system and get my brain back to normal. Even sitting here, writing this review, I am jittering with nerves just thinking about the plot and about what I know comes next.

This book is both a hard and an easy read, and I am willing to bet that it's not for everyone, but it will make you cry, make you angry, make you think, and make you believe in both the best and the worst of people. I could write an essay on my thoughts about any society that could allow something like the Hunger Games to even take place--and probably will at some point--but for now, I think I will just encourage you to read the book and join me in crossing my fingers and hoping that the movie will be just as good. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a sequel to go read...

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

Not Your Ordinary Magical Time-travel Story: The Freedom Maze, by Delia Sherman

The ability to imagine is a wonderful gift, especially for a child. It can take you to faraway lands, backward and forward in time, and to worlds where nothing is impossible. Every child, I am sure, has used the ability to imagine as an escape at some point in their lives, either just for fun or as a brief respite from a bad situation in their reality.

Sometimes, though, the ability to imagine yourself away from your life doesn't seem like enough. Any kid who has loved books like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe or Alice in Wonderland has likely at some time wished that they could really travel to that magical world, have all those wonderful adventures, and be home before anyone knew they were gone. This is definitely true for thirteen-year-old Sophie Martineau, who, at the start of The Freedom Maze, isn't having an easy time growing up in 1960s Louisiana. Her parents are divorced, her father's moved to New York, she's having to move to a new house and school and leave all her friends behind, and, because her mother now has to go to school and find a job, she is being sent to spend the summer with her grandmother and aunt on an old plantation down on the bayou.

Sophie feels out of place everywhere she goes. She is a bookworm and a late bloomer, she lost all her friends in the scandal that is being the child of divorced parents in the 1960s, her mother is constantly lecturing her on how to be a proper lady, and the house she is visiting and the people living there are all still mourning a way of life that was lost when the Civil War ended. She initially thinks she's going to hate spending the summer with her relatives, but she cultivates a positive relationship with her aunt, who allows her to go exploring all around the old plantation without lecturing her about acting like a lady, and while she's out exploring the old garden maze and the bayou, she hears a disembodied voice that talks to her and teases her and answers questions like the Cheshire Cat. Sophie is eager to believe in magic and fairytales, and she is desperate for an adventure like the kind she reads about in her favorite books, so after a big fight with her mother when she comes to visit, she asks the voice to send her back into the past to have a grand adventure. The voice obliges, and sends her back in time to the same plantation in 1860, where she gets mistaken for a slave.

Believing that she will find her adventure soon enough, Sophie accepts this as part of the trickster spirit's plan for her and does her best to adapt to her new life. Initially, when things get hard, she begs the voice to send her home, but when it tells her that he can't until her story is over, she begins to accept this as her life, even to the point of almost forgetting that she is from the future and has a home and family back there to return to. And yet, accepting slavery as her adventure turns out to be good for her. She makes friends, has her prejudices turned on their head, learns some hard truths about herself, and comes home a strong, confident young woman who is now willing and able to stand up to her mother and begin to make her own way in the world.

This book was a uniquely realistic take on the time-traveling adventure story. The writing style was straightforward and descriptive, but did a wonderful job of painting clear pictures of the setting--Louisiana in 1960 and in 1860--and of the characters. Parts of it near the beginning and in the middle seemed to drag on, and the ending comes abruptly and leaves a lot of stories unfinished, but the pacing does not detract from the overall story, especially when you are being pulled along initially by the desire to find out how she ends up back in time, and through the rest of the book by the desire to find out how she manages to get home again.

The Freedom Maze is both good fantasy and good historical fiction, as well as a great coming-of-age story for any pre-teen or young teenage girl. It is also a well-written window into a time, place, and social perspective that is all-too-often glossed over or ignored completely, especially in young-adult fiction, and would make a great conversation-starter with young people on the culture and attitudes in the United States that allowed slavery to last as long as it did and that allow racism to persist to this day.

The Freedom Maze, by Delia Sherman