Christina Reads YA

June Book Haul

2017-07-13T12:15:00.000-07:00

Hey, everyone! Here today to share what I read & received in June.

1. Because You Love to Hate Me edited by Ameriie (for more details, see other posts: discussing villains, chatting with Ameriie, the pre-order promo, back cover reveal & anthology pairing, front cover reveal, original book blog post announcing the anthology, original EW cover reveal post (read Ameriie's introduction)).

2. Jane, Unlimited by Kristin Cashore

3. All the Crooked Saints by Maggie Stiefvater

June Book Haul

A friend who went to BEA sent me Jane, Unlimited and All the Crooked Saints because she knows how much I love Kristin Cashore & Maggie Stiefvater. (THANKS CAROLINA!!!).

Jane, Unlimited is unlike anything else out there in YA right now. It is an incredible genre bender. It does also have signature Kristin Cashore aspects: the MC exploring her sexuality and coming into her own without the guidance of a parent figure; the multi-layered plot; the large character cast; the research that shows in the little details of actions that are described (e.g., umbrella making), etc. Also, the ambition. It has all the ambition of a Cashore book. If you liked Bitterblue, I think you will like Jane, Unlimited.

You might not know too much of what it's about, based off the summary, but basically there's a main narrative for like 80 pages or so, and then the main character has to make a choice about which of the characters she chooses to talk/attend to, and that choice shapes the rest of the narrative to follow. So there are five narratives branching from that choice, and that's what allows the narrative to be such an incredible gender bender. But because you get the initial narrative, it works; even though there are horror, sci-fi, fantasy elements, it all comes together to tell the story of Jane, in different circumstances. The narratives are all arranged too so that they build on top of each other; you know the reasons for why a character acts a certain way in a different narrative, even if that's not *this* narrative's focus. In other words, you get all the character depths: their motivations, desires, etc. It's such a clever way of plotting the narrative. In some ways, it feels less character-oriented than the Graceling Realm books, but it's not. Jane, Unlimited is a multilayered, genre-bending beauty, showing one girl's growth across a variety of scenarios that only make us love her even more.

I have yet to read All the Crooked Saints, but I'm so excited for it. You want mood, atmosphere, and character-focused fantasy, you go to Maggie Stiefvater. Yes, please.

AND BECAUSE YOU LOVE TO HATE ME!!! The YA villain-themed anthology, in which booktubers provide prompts for author stories and write commentaries on those stories, has been finally released into the world. If any of you have copies or see it in bookstores please send me a pic. Tweet, email, etc. The book launch yesterday with Ameriie, Andrew Smith, Soman Chainani, Cindy Pon, Nicola Yoon, Sarah Enni, Christine Riccio, and me was so, so great. I loved meeting folks, and I loved seeing the enthusiasm!! Check out my tweet here with everyone reporting on their favorite villains. (YA Maleficent retelling anyone???!).

Have any of you read any of these books? Are you looking forward to any of them? What did you get in June or July or what are you planning to buy/borrow/etc.? Let's chat!

Do you live in Southern California?

2017-07-10T16:43:00.001-07:00

If you live in Southern California, come check out the book launch for Because You Love to Hate Me (for more details, see other posts: discussing villains, chatting with Ameriie, the pre-order promo, back cover reveal & anthology pairing, front cover reveal, original book blog post announcing the anthology, original EW cover reveal post (read Ameriie's introduction)).

Editor & author Ameriie is moderating a panel on the young adult villain-themed anthology, with Christine Riccio, Cindy Pon, Sarah Enni, Andrew Smith, and me as the panelists! It will be held at The Grove Barnes & Noble at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, July 12. Come one and all as we discuss villains and those pesky little black hearts of theirs.

P.S. - On Thursday, July 13th, I'll also be participating in a google hangout with Ameriie and others to discuss the anthology. Tune in to Books Beauty Ameriie at 1 p.m. PST, 4 p.m. EST.

P.P.S. - Stay tuned for the Because You Love to Hate Me blog tour--

July 11: The Candid Cover—Susan Dennard & Sasha Alsberg
July 12: Once Upon a Twilight—Andrew Smith
*July 13: Bumbles and Fairy-Tales—Ameriie & Tina Burke (yours, truly!)
July 14: Lost in Literature— April Genevieve Tucholke
July 17: Nicole’s Novel Reads—Soman Chainani & Samantha Lane
July 18: curlyhairbibliophile—Victoria Schwab & Jesse George
July 19: Page Turners Blog—Sarah Enni & Sophia Lee
July 20: A Page with a View—Cindy Pon & Benjamin Alderson
July 21: Novel Novice—Adam Silvera & Catriona Feeney
July 24: Peace Love Books—Samantha Shannon & Regan Perusse
July 25: The Plot Bunny—Zoë Herdt & Marissa Meyer story excerpt
July 26: The Eater of Books!—Reneé Ahdieh & Christine Riccio
July 27: Read.Sleep.Repeat—Nicola Yoon & Steph Sinclair/Kat Kennedy

Let's Discuss Villains

2017-06-14T06:26:00.002-07:00

Heyhey, today I'm discussing villains with y'all. If you haven't already seen various announcements, as a part of Because You Love to Hate Me, Bloomsbury is starting twitter chats about villains on Mondays from now through July 24th. I've responded to the couple of tweets that have gone out thus far, and figured that today I'd expand on my 140 character answers.

Villains!! It's all about villains!

If you'd like to see my 140 character response to this, it's here.
If you'd like to quote tweet at Bloomsbury, here's their original tweet.

There are so many awesome Pinterest images for villains. Like genderbent Disney villains, Once Upon a Time fanboards, thoughts on creating good villains. If you want to spend ages thinking about villains or fangirling about them, Pinterest is your place.

I've chatted a lot with Ameriie on what makes a good villain, and we've tended to agree that villainy is often a matter of perspective. A villain is just a character who is in opposition to the hero. If you want a great villain, you want a great character. A great character comes from developing their goals, hopes, personalities, etc. But making sure that they still feel human to us, otherwise it's harder for us to identify with them.

Like, look. Voldemort is the villain of the Harry Potter series, but he's not a great villain. He's a symbolic villain and potentially a sociopath. (Sociopathic villains often come across as flat to me, though they're obviously real people too.). He is afraid of dying, we see bits and pieces of his life, he loves power, he has an essentially white supremacist type of viewpoint, and he's a tyrant. He does have hopes and goals, sure. But he has no humanity, which makes him fall flat for me as a great villain. He's a good antagonist to Harry's goals and a great counterpoint for all the thematic conceptions and symbols within HP. But character-wise, meh.

Umbridge, though. Umbridge is a GREAT villain. Because we get to see her hopes and goals, and even though she's a terrible human and treats others terribly, she feels human and realistic. The quirks that she has are what Voldemort doesn't. It's a lot of the same characterization about power and dying and loneliness and being a tyrant and so on, but she's got that annoying little hem hem, and her cats, and her pink outfits, and her style of teaching. The humanizing details make her more like a real character, which makes her a better villain.

If you'd like to see my 140 character response to this, it's here.
If you'd like to quote tweet at Bloomsbury, here's their original tweet.

This question is hard. As I was discussing with a friend, sometimes it feels like "a great villain" is conflated with a villain that you can crush on, in YA. When I tried thinking of various villains, I realized that the majority that I liked turned out not to be villainous at all. They were romantic interests who were originally viewed as being villainous and then had good intentions. Some villains - of books that I loved - were flat, and some, even if they were good villains, are sooooo not worthy of crushes. (Fun fact: I originally misread this tweet prompt as 'favorite villains' and tweeted that Dracula was one of my villain crushes. Lol, no thank you, I'd like to not be eaten to death.)

With that in mind, I chose three villain types:

1.) The Darkling from the Shadow and Bone trilogy:

I like The Darkling because we don't even know the tip of the iceberg, with all that he's done. When exactly was he born? What did it take for him to want more? What started him on this path?

I like The Darkling because we get this sense that he's teetering between good and bad, and there's some hope for redemption. That potential to switch sides always makes for tense situations and great character conflict, IMO.

I like The Darkling because he's not a real romantic interest. For a villain crush, you have to actually recognize that it wouldn't be a great thing to crush on the villain in real life. At least for me, anyway. Because if I actually imagine myself with someone as arrogant, occasionally condescending, and powerful as The Darkling, I think I'd be pretty unhappy. (I mean, like Howl from Howl's Moving Castle. He's adorable to read about, but dear god I do not want a boyfriend to cast green slime on the house because he's in a mood.) BUT as a fantasy, sure.

2.) The gods in the Inheritance trilogy:

Omg, I was looking up blog posts where I'd talked about The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and WHAT THEY DON'T EXIST, how!! Because I'd filmed a "2016 favorites" video and then never edited it. A winter recap and never edited it. ARGH! Suffice it to say that I LOVE THAT BOOK AND THAT TRILOGY AND YOU SHOULD ALL READ IT. (If it weren't so off-topic, I'd be rambling about it! Ask me in the comments for more info!).

So the major crux of that series is that Gods are on this Earth-like planet and they are as emotional as humans. They're emotional humans with superpowers, essentially. So they're as flawed as us, and suffice it to say, they are definitely neither good nor bad. For instance, in book 1, you learn pretty quickly that to end the war between gods, some gods were enslaved and a ruling family was charged with keeping them in line. Now, their rule over these gods isn't perfect. So sometimes a god does something petty. Sometimes that means people have died. They are neither wholly good nor wholly bad - they are enslaved, they are angry, they have killed folks in their anger.

They're fascinating characters. Even the god who I thought I wouldn't like because of book 1 gets more developed in other books, and just go read these books pleasekthx.

3.) Any of Meredith Duran's villain/romantic interests:

Does a romantic interest count? Yes, well, she plays around with the idea of them acting as villains. Villain is constantly repeated in description of many of the male characters. They're often put in opposition to the heroines, so their goals conflict and they are the "villain" of the book until that conflict resolves. I once gave recs on nerdy romantic interests. There I wrote: "Meredith Duran is one of my favorite romance novel authors. Seriously read any book by her (I might actually write a post to that effect)... Her characterization and writing are amazing, and everything is rendered so much more tense, steamy, etc through her great character dynamics." Yes. She's one of my favorite authors because of her characters. She is the definition of villain crushes. She writes adult historical romance, so I'll have to find someone like her in YA or adult SFF.

Pretty much all of my villain crushes blur the line between good and bad, and redemption. That's my thing. My jam.

Do you know anyone who fits that bill??!

What do you think makes for a great villain and who are your villain crushes? Let's discuss!