Bookcase Bizarro: MG/YA Book Reviews, January 2024

MG/YA Book Reviews by a MG/YA Writer

Table of Contents

Middle Grade Review

The Doug and Sheila Browne Book Review

Welcome to the January edition of Bookcase Bizarro!

This past month has been… adventurous.

I completed my business plan and now have a clear focus and goals, a budget and a marketing plan. I’ve drafted my reader magnet (a short novella set in the same world as Shadow Apprentice) and am working through the first set of revisions (plot points), with more rounds for pacing and character development checks to come. I also designed a Wattpad launch schedule for Shadow Apprentice (hint: it will go live at the end of March, 2024) and a Wattpad Author Page.

I spent an inordinate amount of time designing a single call-to-action landing page I plan to include in the back matter of my eBooks for newsletter sign-ups. I designed the page through my email service provider. I’d wanted this to be a page on my website, but my current theme doesn’t allow me to design the page how I want. (It won’t support a WooCommerce store either, but that’s a subject for another newsletter.)

Anyway, back to that landing page…

Shortly before this newsletter went to press, I discovered that all the sign-up forms on my website had vanished! All. Of. Them. Worse, I had no way of knowing how long they’d been gone for. The technicians at my email service provider told me I’d have to disable some crucial plugins on my website in order to get the forms to work again. Yeah…no. I tossed out their sign-up forms instead. I pasted a URL to a button that directs subscribers to a newsletter sign-up on the landing page and added a graphic headliner that I designed in Canva to make it look fancy. Since the landing page is hosted elsewhere, I don’t have to worry about WordPress plugins breaking it.

Like I said, it’s been an adventurous month.

On to the reviews…

This month, we flee an urban apocalypse and set up a secret survival camp on a nearby island, and evade a cadre of aristocratic magicians who want to capture us and bind our magic or imprison us inside a witches’ asylum.

So hang up your sleds and skates, pull up a chair and join us for a cozy, fireside chat about (what else) books!

A quick note to new readers: books that are available from the Toronto Public Library are marked #TPL, because books don’t have to be new or owned in order to be loved.

Middle Grade Review

Fourth Dimension (Rule of Three, #4), by Eric Walters. (Penguin, 2018)

Emma and Ethan move with their mother to a condo in the city when their parents get divorced. Ethan doesn’t mind their new home, but 15-year-old Emma hates it, and complains to her mother, Ellen, brother and anyone else who will listen. It’s bad enough that they are forced to live in a city without the rolling blackouts they must endure as workers rush to complete the neighbouring units. The summer camping trip Ellen has planned is just the latest in a string of bad ideas, as far as Emma is concerned.

When a power outage hits their building, Emma dismisses it as just another blackout caused by the workers, but soon they discover the outage extends to the entire city and seems to affect anything with a microchip. A long line of dead cars clogs the road outside their building and their own car won’t start. They unstrap their canoe from the car’s roof and repack their camping supplies to fit inside. If they can’t drive away from the city, then Ellen reasons they can canoe over to the Toronto Islands and camp until things return to normal. Suddenly, the family camping trip seems more like a necessity than a vacation.

They set up camp on a hidden beach, observing the city from a safe distance over the following days. With their tent for shelter, all their camping gear and the entire lake to supply them with fresh water and fish, Emma and her family feel relatively safe until other people begin to arrive. As the chaos in the city grows, so does the danger to Emma and her family. They must seek out new alliances to defend themselves from their fellow citizens, who are desperate enough to steal… or kill.

Knowing that Eric Walters’ Rule of Three series is a progressive trilogy, I also read The Rule of Three, the first book in the series. You know what? It didn’t matter. The Fourth Dimension is very much a standalone novel. It’s set in the same apocalyptic time as the rest of the series, but with a completely different cast of characters. Some readers have complained that this fourth book doesn’t really fit with the others. They’re right, it doesn’t. However, for my money, Fourth Dimension is a much stronger book than The Rule of Three.

Walters writes fast-paced action adventures without a lot of introspection or descriptive fillers. Description is mostly active, conveyed through his characters’ actions. Unlike many writers of action-adventure, he also has the uncanny ability to create an immersive atmosphere in just a few short sentences. The book is set on the Toronto Islands, a beloved park for many Torontonians that also includes a small community of homes. The park and village are eerily recognizable, even buried under a blanket of danger and menace. Beaches, asphalt walks, the Ward Island homes and the amusement park with its four-person bicycle cars and swan boats: I could see and touch them all without ever getting bogged down in heavy description. I didn’t experience this same richness reading Walters’ first book, The Rule of Three. There is a more deeply layered family story here too, with sibling rivalry to complicate matters and a military mother who will kill to protect her family, and teaches her daughter to do the same.

When Emma shoots someone for the first time, it is a powerful and morally fraught moment that echoes through two communities with diametrically opposed views to violence: the peace-loving community of artists, activists and gardeners on Ward’s Island and a military base that has established itself at the Island airport. The Ward’s Island residents firmly oppose violence of any kind, while Emma, Ellen and the other officers recognize the necessity of violence to defend themselves and their resources against roving gangs of bandits. The limits of the Ward’s Islanders’ pacifism are tested when a violent paramilitary group called The Division kills some community members during a raid. A military response is not the answer to every problem. The soldiers at the base lack crucial food production skills, something that the Ward’s Islanders excel at. Eventually, both sides are willing to put aside their ideological differences to learn from each other while violence remains an ever-present companion. It’s to Walters credit he doesn’t shy away from the difficult moral decisions people often make during disasters. He lets his character’s actions stand beside all the uncomfortable questions they inevitably provoke.

Emma seems a lot younger than her fifteen years. I suspect Walters found himself caught between a rock and a hard place. First, the story demands a kind of agency and independence from Emma that would likely be unachievable for someone younger, apocalypse or not. Emma makes friends with a boy named Willow, who lives on Ward’s Island, and the two of them come up with an idea that allows the villagers to defend themselves from would-be invaders. It’s a solid teen move that would not be convincing coming from a 12 or 13-year-old Emma and Willow. Since there is no romance between them, the book’s intended audience leans more toward tween than YA. So, a conundrum.

I loved the details of the various survival routines implemented by Ellen. These realistically changed over time as the threats closed in around her family, the island community, and the military base. Walters really thought out the details of this apocalypse. The canoe trips between the high-rise condo and the family camping spot on the island were pure magic. I could almost feel the combination of sun and panic heating my skin and hear the lake water crashing against the sides of the canoe.

A fast-paced action adventure story with depth for tween readers. Highly recommended. (#TPL)

The Doug and Sheila Browne Book Review

Each month, I pick an upper MG or YA book to review in honour of my parents, Doug and Sheila Browne, who always made sure that I had challenging books to reach for on my shelf — books to grow into.

This month, I’ve chosen a crossover SFF title for older YA readers. One of the biggest joys of my reading life occurred at age 15, when I discovered ‘adult’ SFF. Suddenly, I could read in two directions, backward and forward at the same time.

Witchmark (The Kingston Cycle #1), by C.L. Polk. (Tor, 2018)

Miles Singer was born an aristocrat and a witch, but he keeps his identity secret. Nobody knows he is really a member of one of the most important magical, aristocratic families in Aeland, and if Miles has his way, nobody ever will.

Freshly returned from a war between Aeland and neighbouring Laneer, Miles now works as a doctor in a chronically under-funded hospital, where he cares for soldiers returning from the battlefields. Nearly all of them suffer from an affliction that causes them to kill their families before committing suicide. As Miles explores the causes of this illness, he uses his magical gift of healing (thinly disguised as hypnosis) to relieve his patients’ symptoms. If discovered, he’ll either be committed to a witches’ asylum (since only aristocrats may practice magic) or else his family will drag him back to a life of bound servitude. He’ll be enslaved to his sister Grace, a storm-singer and one of an elite cadre responsible for controlling the weather and protecting Aeland from powerful storms. Miles will become little more than a human battery for Grace, who will drain his power repeatedly to protect Aeland. His independent life will be over, along with his medical career.

When Miles uses his healing gift to save a fatally poisoned man, the man outs him before he dies by calling him ‘starred one’—a witch. Tristan Hunter, who brought the injured man to the hospital, witnesses the exchange. Tristan has his own reasons for persuading Miles to drop his carefully constructed facade and join him in investigating the death of Miles’s patient. To do so, Miles must risk his anonymity and freedom, which are the very things he must protect, especially as his feelings for Tristan grow and the truth they uncover threatens to tear them apart forever.

Interestingly, this book received almost as many 3-star reviews on Goodreads as 5-star reviews. Many reviewers complained that the world building was inconsistent and underdeveloped. I must have been reading a different book because not only was the gaslamp fantasy vibe right on the mark, but magic is integral to how Kingston works on a political, economic, and social level. Magic is not a benign force, not in the way it is wielded or the price Kingston’s citizens pay for it. Miles’ healing gift stands out in stark contrast to the cruelty exhibited by the aristocratic magicians. Class privilege, war and the ugly legacy of slavery are all addressed, and each one has magical roots.

I had a few quibbles. First, Miles took too long to uncover the mystery of the returning veterans’ post-traumatic stress. Polk missed an opportunity to link her exploration of wartime PTSD with the trauma Miles has suffered at the hands of his own dysfunctional family. Doing so would have given Miles an added emotional depth and provided extra insight into his family and their effect on him — a major part of the storyline. As it is, he comes across as a bit of a doormat, which is not entirely convincing, given that he’s broken away from his family and gone into hiding in order to live life on his own terms.

Now and then, a powerful secondary character emerges for writers in the pages of their books and Robin, a nurse who works at the same hospital as Miles, is very much one of those. Yet, her involvement in the plot remains superficial. What a shame! Since Robin is not one of the elite, she could have added a valuable perspective on all the political machinations going on in Kingston. I suspect that Miles would have solved the mystery much sooner if she had been involved. I can only hope that she will figure more prominently in the later books or perhaps even get a book of her own (hint, hint).

The m/m romance definitely leans more towards the cozy side, so readers who are looking for more explicit fare (like Rebecca Yarros’ Empyrean series) won’t find it here. There is an absolutely riveting chase scene through the streets of Kingston… on bicycles.

A cozy romance wrapped up in an edgy gas lamp mystery. Ages 15+. Recommended. (#TPL)

Thanks for being a Bookcase Bizarro reader! I’ll be back next month with more author news, and more MG and YA book reviews. See you then!

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