A Review of Black Heart by Holly Black

Have you read Black's books, White Cat and Red Glove? No? Then stop reading this review and go do that.

Ready now? Of course, you had to read the other two books first, not just to avoid the perils of spoilers, but because this trilogy builds beautifully, and diving into the last book unprepared simply does not do Cassel Sharpe's overall story arc justice.

Okay. In Holly Black's alternate reality, certain people are curse workers—and naturally, they take on the role of crime families. Different curse workers have different gifts, such as changing people's memories, making people do what they want, and flat-out killing people. Everyone wears gloves, both as a fashion statement and because curses require skin-to-skin contact. Probably the best detail of all is that curse working affects the workers physically. For example, killing someone with a curse might mean losing a finger, as in the case of Cassel's death worker grandfather.

At first, Cassel doesn't even think he's a curse worker, though other people in his family are. That's before he finds out he has turned the love of his life, Lila, into a cat. Or that his ruthless older brothers have been using his special gifts and wiping his memory. Turns out Cassel is that rare thing, a transformation worker. He can turn something or someone into something else—completely and permanently, if he wants. Cassel frees Lila and she falls in love with him, but he discovers that her love has been manufactured by his mother. Then Cassel's older brother is killed, and he has to decide whether to work with the mob or the FBI.

As Book 3 begins, Lila is still avoiding Cassel because she learned the truth about her supposed feelings for him. Cassel and his brother Barron are now working for the FBI—sort of. Cassel doesn't really trust anyone. And now Governor Patton, who was magically conned by Cassel's mother, is trying to lock up all the curse workers. On the school side of things, Cassel's best friend Sam is having trouble with his girlfriend Daneca, who suspects the truth about Cassel. A girl named Mina asks Cassel for help, but Cassel smells a rat. Then there's Cassel's devious mother, who is being held hostage by Lila's mob boss father until Cassel can find a missing piece of valuable jewelry. The Feds want Cassel's help, too, but is that all they want? And can Lila forgive him before he gets himself killed?

Black Heart is a darkly rollicking page-turner for readers of urban fantasy and paranormal romance. The author has a way with words, and the touches of humor serve to counterbalance the essential darkness of the plot. Here's a look at Cassel in his boarding school dorm room with Sam. Cassel has just come back from a fight with a guy who dropped his gun:

I shoulder my way into the closet and step up onto a sagging box. Then, reaching under my jacket, I pull out the gun, and tape it with a roll of duct tape high on the back wall, above my clothes. I arrange a jumble of old books on the shelf just below it to block it from view.

"You've got to be kidding me," Sam says.

He clearly watched the whole thing. I didn't even hear him get up. I must be losing my touch.

"It's not mine," I say. "I didn't know what to do with it."

"How about getting rid of it?" he says, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "That's a gun. A gun, Cassel. A guuuuuuuun."

"Yeah." I climb down, hopping off the box and landing with a thud. "I know. I will. I just didn't have time. Tomorrow, I promise."

"How much time does it take to throw a gun in a dumpster?"

"I really wish you would stop saying the word 'gun,'" I say, flopping down onto my own bed and reaching for my laptop.

I like the way Cassel is very much a teenage boy, smart and clueless at the same time. He gets in trouble, bumbles a bit, somehow survives, and manages to figure out what he really wants in life. Holly Black has a great ear for humans, especially those of the teenage variety. Cassel is an imperfect hero, but that makes reading his story all the more enjoyable.

Note for Worried Parents: This trilogy is for teens and includes violence, sex, and criminal behavior. All three topics are presented appropriately enough in context, but the books are probably best suited for high school students. Then again, if you've been letting your 10-year-old read The Hunger Games, go right ahead.

A Review of The Iron Thorn by Caitlin Kittredge

This author isn't the first adult writer to cross over to YA, but so far she's one of the best. Steampunk, urban fantasy, alternate history, dystopian fiction, romance, gothic novel, you name it: The Iron Thorn combines the best of all these subgenres, throwing in one of those genetic ticking clocks plus an actual ticking clock that's the nerve center of an entire house made of magic-infused gears. Which is to say, if you liked Fever Crumb, Leviathan, Lament, and Twilight, you should take a look at Kittredge's new YA offering.

As the jacket flap puts it, "Aoife's family is unique in the worst way." Her mother has gone crazy and is in an insane asylum, while her beloved older brother lost his mind, too, nearly killing Aoife before running away.

Aoife lives in the dark city of Lovecraft, where she studies in the strict school of engineers, applying reason and science to practical problems as the city's great Engine beats like a malevolent heart beneath it all. Her fellow student and best friend, Cal, stands by her, but even he is uneasy when it appears that Aoife herself will lose her mind when she turns sixteen. The city authorities, as represented by the Proctors, also have their eye on the girl, which is a very bad thing.

Then Aoife gets a cryptic message from her brother Conrad and sets off to find him, presumably at their father's home in a village to the north. Crossing the city, let alone the countryside, is a dreadful prospect, considering the threat of death or capture from monsters like the nightjars and government spies in the form of clockwork ravens. Fortunately, Aoife and Cal find a scruffy guide named Dean, who has secrets of his own. He knows a guy with an airship, and it appears he won't sell them out to the monsters that live in the sewer system, so off they go.

The little company eventually reach the house where Aoife's father lived, only there's no sign of him or of Conrad. Of course, Aoife has never met the man. And his house turns out to be very strange indeed. That's even before Aoife has her first encounter with the fairy realm, whose denizens—most notably a fey named Tremaine—may prove to be the greatest threat of all. But Aoife, despite her growing attraction to Dean and her loyalty to Cal, will do anything to get her brother back. Anything.

This book is a thoroughly marvelous tale, one of my favorites so far in 2011. In fact, I felt that my experience of YA horror/steampunk/dystopian fantasy was refreshed by reading The Iron Thorn. I also appreciate how the main plot thread comes to a satisfying conclusion, even as new problems set us up for the next volume in this series. In addition, for those of you looking for romance, Aoife's interactions with Dean aren't cliché in the least; they're clever and bumpy and real (with Cal acting sweetly jealous, to boot).

I guess about the only thing that threw me off even a little would be the logistics of Aoife's role relative to the fey, especially her use of magic in the book's climax; however, close enough. The rest of the book more than makes up for a bit of trouble in that regard.

Here's part of Aoife's description of the marvelous clock in her father's mechanical house:

On the opposite side of the long narrow room was a leviathan clock—a full-bodied, intricate machine, much different than a pocket chronometer. As I watched, the hands swung in a parabolic arc, their wicked spiked finials grinding to a halt at twelve midnight. The chimes let out a discordant, muffled bong.
The hands swung again, and I stepped closer, watching them trail across the clock face like compass needles that had lost north, the unearthly ticking echoing loud enough to vibrate my skull. Each numeral was actually a tiny painting, wrought in delicate ink. A naked girl lying sleeping on a stone. A great goat with the body of a man sitting on a throne. A circle of figures in a dark forest who wore the sign of Hastur, the heretical Yellow King, whom cultists worshipped before the necrovirus. According to Professor Swan, and who knew where he got his stories from?
...Friendly as the library was, the clock was a monstrous thing, a machine of bloody teeth.

I know you're all wondering how to pronounce the main character's name, so I looked it up: that would be ee-fa.

Now, please get your shivers on and enter the alarming world of Aoife's Lovecraft!

Note for Worried Parents: This is a book for teens. The horror elements are pretty horrific, and there's some teen attraction with eventual kissing.

Update 8-17-11: Check out this interview with the author on The Enchanted Inkpot!

A Review of The Painted Boy by Charles de Lint

Charles de Lint is one of a number of adult fantasy writers who are now writing for teens. You should know that Canadian writer de Lint is a very big name in fantasy, having almost single-handedly invented the subgenre of urban fantasy with his Newford stories, in which the world of Faerie overlaps—ruthlessly, if not chillingly—with the humans in a modern city based on Ottawa. (Actually, if he's the father of urban fantasy, then Terri Windling would be the mother!) A talented Celtic folk musician, de Lint often incorporates music and musicians into his work.

I've found that De Lint's books and stories for adult fantasy readers are sometimes slow going, but they are also thoughtful and beautifully written. I liked his earlier YA novel, The Blue Girl. Two other YA novels, Little (Grrl) Lost and Dingo, were nice, but not quite as good. His new book, The Painted Boy, sends a Chinese American teen with a secret dragon heritage from Chicago to the Southwest. He winds up in an Arizona border town called Santo del Vado Viejo. As a member of the Yellow Dragon Clan, James Li has special powers, but his tough little grandmother didn't teach him how to use them. Instead she taught him focusing exercises which do not seem especially helpful to James when he begins to run into trouble.

James has barely hit town before he is shadowed by gangbangers, and he finds shelter at a small restaurant named La Maravilla with a little help from a girl named Rosalie. She turns out to be friends with a girl named Anna who's the lead singer in a band called Malo Malo—and James is attracted to Anna. But before he can settle in, getting a job at La Maravilla, he has to deal with the adult leader of the Presidio Kings, El Tigre. That huge dragon art on James's back isn't a tattoo at all; instead it reflects his nature as a son of the Yellow Dragon Clan, and his very presence in town is a challenge to El Tigre. James establishes a temporary truce with the man, but eventually things fall apart and James has to take action.

In the meantime, James is learning more about his dragon self. For example, he practices walking in the magical desert world that lies just next to his own, led by a giddy little shapeshifter who's a jackalope girl. He meets a rattlesnake woman with uncertain loyalties and another old woman who used to run the whole region until El Tigre came along and messed things up, among other supernatural people. So what is James's role in all this, and to what extent should he get involved?

I was pleased to note that almost the entire cast of this book is Latino or Asian, though de Lint doesn't make a fuss about that. It's just such a boon to librarians and parents looking for fantasy that shows a broader world! And even though some of the characters are gang members, many more are not. De Lint has a gift for creating likable teen characters, let alone colorful secondary characters. In addition, the desert setting is striking and well used, as is the music of Malo Malo, described here:

Hector began a scratching counter rhythm on his turntable, sounding like chickens pecking in a yard, then suddenly a spot came on to capture Ramon and Gilbert at the front of the stage, sharing a mic. They started with a flourish on their trumpets and played some jaunty mariachi tune until Gilbert backed away, switching to long, slow notes, while Ramon started rapping the story of how the band came together.
The spots weren't on Anna yet, but her guitar could be heard weaving a delicate harmony to Gilbert's trumpet. The band hit the chorus with everybody singing, then the music stopped for a moment before it
came roaring back in double time, the trumpets high and sharp. The spotlight touched Anna just as she broke into a killer guitar break that sounded like speed-metal flamenco.

Malo Malo's music, along with James and Anna as a couple, evoke the growing mix of cultures that is life in so many urban centers these days. Now, Chinese and Mexican may seem like an odd combination, but then, I live in L.A., and I used to work near a restaurant that featured both soul food and Chinese food.

Message-wise, The Painted Boy ends up being very anti-gang. But its preachy moments aren't especially distracting; you'll be too busy cheering for James to figure out how to use his powers so he can protect his new friends from the bad guys. This is basically his coming-of-age story. And if the narrative has an occasional slow spot, overall it flows just fine. Because after 60+ books and a whole lot of music and imagination, Charles de Lint really knows how to tell a tale.