Children’s Books: The Last of the Spirits by Chris Priestley

You remember that scene in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol where Scrooge asks about two children, a boy and a girl, huddling under the robes of the Ghost of Christmas Present? The Ghost tells him that the children are Ignorance and Want.

In The Last of the Spirits (Bloomsbury) they are real children, street kids who, in fact, sneaked into Scrooge’s home while he was off with the spirits and took refuge in his dining room, which is at least a little warmer than the streets. The story is told from the viewpoint of the boy, Sam and his sister Lizzie. They once had a home and parents, but their father died in debt and their mother soon after.

Sam is angry with the world, especially one Ebenezer Scrooge, who had snubbed them when they pleaded for a little money. So that night, when they are trying to sleep in the graveyard and run into the ghost of Jacob Marley, on his way to save Scrooge’s soul, they follow, with Sam thinking that a piece of lead piping applied to the old miser’s head might improve him greatly and get them some of the money he refused them the first time.

Sam, too, it seems, needs and benefits from visits from the three spirits...

This is a nice take on the original novella, with Scrooge’s story happening on the side, with the children watching and listening to bits and Sam being a little irritated with the Ghost of Christmas Present for using them as props in the show he is staging for Scrooge. It probably means more if you are familiar with the original story, but can be read by itself and, who knows, might encourage children to look for the original story once they’re old enough to follow it. ◊


Sue Bursztynski lives in Australia, where she works as a teacher-librarian. She has written several books for children and young adults, including Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly and, most recently, the YA novel Wolfborn. Her blog The Great Raven can be found at http://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.

Young Adult Fiction: The Caller by Juliet Marillier

Summer Gathering, when the rebels of Shadowfell are planning to challenge the evil King Keldec, is approaching rapidly. Caller Neryn, with whom we have made a long journey, still has two Guardians to go before her training is complete. But the White Lady, Guardian of air, is not in the best state. The Master of Shadows(fire) is a trickster who may or may not advise her on how to protect the rebels’ Good Folk allies from cold iron, which makes them sick and can kill them. Worse, Keldec now has his own Caller, who is less scrupulous about what he does to the Good Folk he calls. Neryn’s beloved Flint, the rebels’ double agent, known to his comrades as Owen Swift-Sword, is fed up with his life at court and what he's forced to do as an Enforcer, but has no choice. Can he trust his closest friends in the Enforcers or not? 

The story in Raven Flight (Knopf) has been built up over the last two books in this series. Here it comes to a dramatic climax. Neryn has to make some decisions she doesn’t necessarily like. At the same time, she meets people from the other side whom she can like and respect and even finds herself, at one point, pitying the king and wondering what he might have been like under other circumstances. 

You do tend to forget the heroine is only 16, especially in a world where that’s an age where you might easily be married, but I think that any teens who have read the other two books will be happy with this one. 

Don’t read this without having read the first two books, but if you haven’t, I do recommend this series. ◊

Sue Bursztynski lives in Australia, where she works as a teacher-librarian. She has written several books for children and young adults, including Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly and the YA novel Wolfborn. Her blog The Great Raven can be found at http://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.

Young Adult Fiction: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Cath Avery has just started university, living on campus. Her twin sister, Wren, has decided that after a lifetime of doing everything together, they will not be sharing a room; she’s keen to meet new people and have new experiences.

One thing they have always done together is write fan fiction (or fanfiction, as it’s called in this novel). Not just fanfiction, but slash fiction, the kind that has gay relationships between the two leading male characters. 

Cath is working on her magnum opus, Carry On Simon, a novel set in the World of Mages, a world not entirely unlike that of a certain boy wizard in our own universe (and actually, Harry Potter exists in the Fangirl universe too). It has to be finished before the final novel comes out in a few months, or it will be forever AU (alternative universe to all you mundanes out there). Cath has signed up for a unit in Fiction Writing, though, and has a ten thousand word major project to write as well, and the ideas just aren’t coming. Meanwhile, there’s all this stuff going on in Real Life: Nick the gorgeous guy in her writing class who writes everything in second person present tense and won’t let go of his notebook, even when they’re writing together. Reagan, her roommate, who smokes and goes out a lot, but who drags Cath out of her hiding place to take part in campus life. Levi, her boyfriend (or is he?) who has a sunny nature and suffers reading issues. Cath and Wren’s father, a loopy advertising man who eats frozen meals when he’s eating at all and needs to be checked up on. Stuff, you know?

First, a confession: I wanted to review Fangirl (MacMillan) because I know about fan fiction. I even know about slash fiction, though I don’t read it. But I did write fan fiction for many years, at least 150 stories, set in the universes of Star Trek, Blake’s 7, Robin Of Sherwood, Dr Who (one or two).  I stopped writing it when I ran out of ideas and then people started paying me to write. I won the Mary Grant Bruce Award for children’s fiction, using a story based on an idea I’d originally had for a fan story, though I ended up writing the non-fan version first.

But like Cath, I found that when you’re writing in someone else’s universe, it’s very hard to think of anything else, or to get ideas for anything else. I don’t regret the experience. It taught me a lot of writing skills, including characterization, development, short story writing, even how to write book reviews. There wasn’t an entire Internet fandom in those days, but there was plenty of feedback of a kind you don’t get in other kinds of writing. You could start a writers’ group, but that can be ineffective. But eventually, I had to focus on other writing, that might actually pay. I still read fan fic, though, and am amazed at how big it has become since the Internet came along.

So I can relate to Cath and her fannish life. And it’s nice that the author doesn’t say, “Ha ha, this nerd needs to get a life and leave fandom!” Cath eventually finds that she can do both, and have a life with friends and a boyfriend and all. The author even mentions in the FAQ at the end that people are already writing Fangirl fan fiction and she is absolutely delighted about it -- and that she started writing this when she was reading stacks of Harry Potter fiction online. I liked the regular quotes both from the Simon Snow novels and Cath’s fan fiction, between the chapters. The whole book was gentle, charming, funny and sad, all at the same time.

I did think that there would be a campus fan club for such a popular book series -- actually, Cath’s university seems strangely lacking in clubs and societies, but it’s a real place, so maybe it doesn’t have them.

I enjoyed Fangirl and I think I can persuade some of my fan writing students to read it too. ◊

Sue Bursztynski lives in Australia, where she works as a teacher-librarian. She has written several books for children and young adults, including Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly and, most recently, the YA novel Wolfborn. Her blog, The Great Raven, can be found at http://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.

The Creature Department by Robert Paul Weston

In The Creature Department (Razorbill). Elliot von Doppler lives with his restaurant critic parents in the small town of Bickleburgh. They can’t cook themselves but expect him to give a review to all his meals. 

Not much happens apart from his having to review burnt toast, until he receives an invitation from his loopy uncle Archie, who works as an inventor for one of the world's biggest technology companies, DENKi-3000, oddly located in nothing-ever-happens Bickleburgh. He is to bring new girl and fellow science nerd Leslie Fang, whose mother drags her from town to town, leaving as she becomes bored, but now living with grandfather Famous Freddy above Famous Freddy’s Dim Sum Emporium, which does wonderful dumplings but has very few customers. It does, however, manage to survive because of regular orders from the mysterious R & D Department at DENKi-3000 -- the department led by Uncle Archie. 

Leslie and Elliot are about to discover just who is enjoying all that wonderful takeaway Chinese food...and that the company faces takeover by the evil Quazicom if there isn't a fabulous new product to show at the next shareholders' meeting.

Think Charlie And The Chocolate Factory with a huge variety of creatures instead of Oompa Loompas, with a just a touch of Odo Hirsch, and without Willy Wonka. Uncle Archie is a genius, but not quite in the same way. The creatures aren’t just minions, they participate in the design and creation of such things as TransMints (Get Your Freshness Direct From The Web). I also thought of Jim Henson’s muppets.

There’s a charming silliness about the whole novel (imagine getting away with being smuggled past security disguised as a giant pork dumpling! Not to mention the “expectavator,” an elevator staffed by a sort of worm who goes down by thinking about his divorce and up by making travelers feel hopeful) that children should enjoy.

There are some loose ends in the final scenes that make me wonder if a sequel is intended. We’ll have to see. The art was delightful, though I’d like to know who the illustrator was, if it wasn’t the cover artist. 

Just one thing: while I expect primary children to enjoy the story, there are some words rather too long or at least too hard for the average child and certainly too long for reluctant readers. Hopefully, this will change in any sequel that might be written. And I think there will be -- there is too much character and world building to leave it at one novel.

Meanwhile, recommended for mid/late primary school readers and early secondary. ◊

Sue Bursztynski lives in Australia, where she works as a teacher-librarian. She has written several books for children and young adults, including Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly and the YA novel Wolfborn. Her blog The Great Raven can be found at http://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.

Two Trickster Tales From Russia: The Audiobook

This is the audiobook version of the gorgeous children’s picture book published last year by Christmas Press, a new Australian small press launched by Sophie Masson, author of many children’s and YA novels, artist David Allan and designer Fiona McDonald.

Later this year, the press will publish more international folk tales by other Australian children's writers, which is something to look forward to. 

Meanwhile, if you enjoy your books in audiobook format, this is a delightful version of the print book, narrated by Xavier Masson-Leach, with incidental music and sound effects by Xavier and Bevis Masson-Leach.

In the first story, “Masha And The Bear,” the grumpy bear is given a strong Russian accent, while the characters in “The Rooster With The Golden Crest” speak like American hillbillies, with appropriate -- and charming -- music for both. The whole thing goes for about 14 minutes, but since children tend to have short attention spans anyway, it may be just the thing to play before bedtime. It reminds me a little of a version of Peter And The Wolf I reviewed for January Magazine some years ago.

You can get more information on ordering the audiobook here. See my review of the print version of this book here. ◊


Sue Bursztynski lives in Australia, where she works as a teacher-librarian. She has written several books for children and young adults, including Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly and the YA novel Wolfborn. Her blog The Great Raven can be found athttp://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.

Children’s Books: Two Trickster Tales From Russia by Sophie Masson, illustrated by David Allan

Some time ago, I was invited to join a crowd funding venture. Sophie Masson, author of some gorgeous young adult novels based on folk tales, had started a new venture with her friends, Christmas Press, which would publish traditional folk tales, starting with two from Russia. If we would donate towards this and for a set amount of money, we would receive a perk. In my case this perk took the form of a signed copy of the book.

My sister went to collect it for me from the post office. As soon as I had opened the parcel to reveal Two Trickster Tales From Russia (Christmas Press) and begun to drool, she asked me if she could have it for Eden, my nephew’s four-year-old son. I had waited for this book and looked forward to it’s arrival and it was every bit as gorgeous as I had expected. But I thought of my crowded shelves and remembered that it was, after all, a children’s book and Eden was about the right age to be discovering folk tales. I sighed, read it and handed it over. Really, there are too many adults collecting picture books as works of art instead of reading them with the children in their lives. And the publishers know about this and make sure there are plenty of artistic picture books aimed more at adults than children.

This isn’t one of them, though it is beautiful. The author writes for children for a living and knows what she is doing.

The style of the pictures is inspired by old Russian children’s books and I can see this, but it also reminds me of the work of Victorian-era fairy tale artist Walter Crane, who illustrated such familiar tales as Red Riding Hood. Gorgeous!

The two stories included are “Masha And The Bear” and “The Rooster With The Golden Crest.” The first reminds me of another folk tale where the girl marries the Devil and tricks him into taking her home in a sack. The second, about a truly stupid chicken, is also familiar. Both have the repetition children love, and should be fun to read with the little ones.

Read, enjoy, but make sure the child in your life does too. ◊


Sue Bursztynski lives in Australia, where she works as a teacher-librarian. She has written several books for children and young adults, including Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly and the YA novel Wolfborn. Her blog The Great Raven can be found at http://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.

Children’s Books: Monster School: City of Monsters, Book 1 by D.C. Green. Melbourne

In Monster School (Ford Street), we meet Thomas, the Prince of Monstro City, heir to the throne since his father and brother were carried off by vampires. His mother has been lying comatose in hospital. And Thomas himself is virtually imprisoned with an ogre bodyguard called Erica, as, ruler of a dying species -- humans -- he is in constant danger of being assassinated by anything from Bloody Mary, who reaches out from the bathroom mirror, to vampire mosquitoes.

But there is something fishy in the state of Monstro City and it isn't necessarily the swamp monsters. Thomas goes undercover -- literally -- at the local monster high school to find out. There, he meets sweet mummy girl Scarab, a wisecracking giant spider called Bruce, maggot-riddled zombie Zorg, cynical goblin girl Greta and Stoker, a mohawked vampire who looks oddly familiar.

I should add that, despite the title, the novel takes off from here. The school is only there early in the book to introduce the characters and give some background to the universe. And the author does find ways to explain the world he has created, partly through the teachers and partly through a volume called The Monster Guide by one DC Greengoblin. Interestingly, the monster characters aren’t merely cutesy fantasy critters. The mummy is a genuine mummy, woken from death only four years ago. The zombie was once a human boy, as was the vampire. We learn that the monsters of various kinds always existed, they simply had to go underground during the human era. After a major flood, they returned.

When Thomas and his new friends find out what has really been going on and why the palace is broke, they go on a quest to save the kingdom. Starting with collecting back taxes from a dragon.

There is plenty of action, adventure and humor in Monster School, with excellent cartoon illustrations and cover by Danny Willis, who has done the art for some of Paul Collins’ books. There is also an oddly serious flavor to the later parts of the book and be warned, it ends on a cliffhanger, with a few pages of the second volume.

An entertaining book for good readers in late primary and early secondary school. ◊

Sue Bursztynski lives in Australia, where she works as a teacher-librarian. She has written several books for children and young adults, including Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly and the YA novel Wolfborn. Her blog The Great Raven can be found at http://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.

Young Adult Fiction: All Our Yesterdays By Cristin Terrill

Em is in a cell next to Finn, a boy she cares about, but hasn’t seen since they were locked up. The Doctor has been torturing them to get a vital piece of information. And in a hidden place in her cell, there’s a piece of paper from a future self (or is that past?): “You have to kill him.” 

The “him” is the boy she once loved, when she was Marina, rich and spoiled, living next door to an even wealthier family with two sons, the brilliant young politician-in-waiting and his shy, geeky but gorgeous younger brother. He invented a time machine and the only way to prevent dreadful things happening was to travel into the past with it and stop it being invented by killing him. Of course, this means that she and Finn, too, will cease to exist...

Time travel novels are great fun, even when they’re meant to be serious. You always wonder how the next author will deal with all the paradoxes time travel would cause. In All Our Yesterdays (Disney-Hyperion) you can tell that author Cristin Terill has thought carefully about it and worked on the consequences. In the context of this novel, at least, she convinces me. She has also played with all the cliched tropes -- you mustn’t meet your past or future self or the universe will explode or some such -- and poked her tongue out at them, in the middle of a dramatic scene. 

One cliche Terill does hang on to is the one where the heroine has a choice of two gorgeous boys, but in this case, the reader knows from the beginning which one she will end up with, just not how.

What I particularly liked, as a fan of old-style SF, is that the mad scientist of this genre is given a background, a reason for turning mad and a time when he was a teenage boy and had family and friends who loved him. It’s a nice touch.

If you’ve read all those enthusiastic blurbs saying that this is for fans of The Hunger Games, forget it; it’s not remotely like that book, and I have yet to find a book that is. Those blurbs just cash in on the fame of the other book and don’t do justice to either. It’s a bit like comparing every fat fantasy saga to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings when there’s nothing quite like it.

With that said, All Our Yesterdays is an enjoyable book and well worth reading. ◊

Sue Bursztynski lives in Australia, where she works as a teacher-librarian. She has written several books for children and young adults, including Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly and the YA novel Wolfborn. Her blog The Great Raven can be found at http://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.

Young Adult: Black Spring By Alison Croggon

I heard about Black Spring (Walker Books), a work of fantasy inspired by Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, at the Reading Matters Conference, where the author spoke, and decided to give it a go. I read Wuthering Heights for school and was curious to see what this author would make of it, so bought a copy.

First, the language: the author has done a very good job of getting that right. It reads pretty much like a 19th century book, to my eyes at least. The story is very similar to the original, with some changes. For example, Lina, the Cathy character, has no older brother and Damek, the Heathcliff of this novel, is related to the king and is imposed on the family. That makes a big difference to the storyline.

The technology is about the same, but the social structure is somewhat different. The north has its own royal family, which raises money by means of the Vendetta. Only those related to the ruler are exempt. If someone kills a person related to you, you must kill them and, in turn, be killed by someone in that family and, before you go off to commit your murder, you have to drop off some cash at the palace. Entire villages are wiped out because it's compulsory. If the royal coffers are low and nobody has a vendetta going, the king ensures one is started. Oh, and the victim not having a family doesn't prevent vendetta; in this case, the last family who hosted them must avenge the death.

Then there are the wizards, who don’t seem to do a lot apart from terrorizing villagers and issuing orders. On the other hand, if a girl is born with the violet eyes of a witch, she is killed. Presumably the wizards don’t want competition. Lina is a born witch, but the family move south for some years and then are allowed to move back without her destruction.

Interesting as all this is, I’m not sure that the Vendetta, at least, adds anything to the novel. If the author wanted to have a disaster in the village, a plague would surely have done the trick.

Despite all this, I’m sure Black Spring will have a lot of fans. It may do well for fantasy fans who aren’t ready to try the original. Those readers who, like me, have read the Bronte book, will have the fun of following the storyline and seeing how connected it is to the original. And I have to say that Lina is a somewhat more sympathetic character than Cathy: I have long thought that Cathy and Heathcliff are among fiction’s more obnoxious lovers, who thoroughly deserve each other. 

But as a YA novel, it really needs very good readers, the kind who could handle the original, and if they can handle Wuthering Heights, why not give them the original?

Still, it’s well worth a read and hopefully, anyone who discovers and enjoys Black Spring first will check out Wuthering Heights, and that can be no bad thing. ◊


Sue Bursztynski lives in Australia, where she works as a teacher-librarian. She has written several books for children and young adults, including Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly and, most recently, the YA novel Wolfborn. Her blog, The Great Raven, can be found at http://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.

Young Adult: Hostage Three By Nick Lake

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing: a girl on a yacht with her super-rich banker father; a chance for the family to heal after a turbulent time; the peaceful sea, the warm sun . . . But a nightmare is about to explode as a group of Somali pirates seizes the boat and its human cargo - and the family becomes a commodity in a highly sophisticated transaction. Hostage 1 is Dad - the most valuable. Amy is Hostage 3. As she builds a strange bond with one of her captors, it becomes brutally clear that the price of a life and its value are very different things . . .”

Hostage Three (Bloomsbury) definitely has a dramatic opening. Amy is standing on the ship, about to be shot. It’s one of those openings that draw the reader in immediately, before going back three months, before all this started. 

Amy has just completed school, but has been automatically failed due to misbehaviour. Her mother had committed suicide during a bout of depression and Amy blames herself for having missed the clues. Her banker father is absent a lot of the time on work-related trips and now he has married again; her misbehaviour is an attempt to grab his attention. But there isn’t an info dump or exposition; you get a little information here, then more in the course of the novel, just as much as you need at any one time, so that it builds up a substantial portrait before the end -- and the final pieces fall into place after the main drama is over. Nicely done!

Despite the dramatic opening, this is not a white-knuckle thriller. The family is always in danger, so the tension is there, but that’s not the main point of the story. The trip was intended to heal the trauma and, ironically, it does, but not in the way expected. There’s this attractive young pirate, you see, Farouz.  Farouz, however, has his own tragedy, part of the constant wars in his country. As the young couple share their troubles and their memories, both begin to heal, but the ending won’t be quite as simple as in the average YA novel. 

I found the organised nature of the piracy fascinating. The Somalis, Farouz explains to Amy, had been fishermen until their fishing grounds were wiped out. Piracy has become their new local industry. He himself is the son of teachers, but he needs the money from this to get his innocent brother out of prison, where he, too, is being held for ransom.  

It’s not what we think of when we hear the word “piracy.” There are wealthy sponsors of the raids. The spoils are shared out so much per crew member, so much for the sponsor, so much for the families of any pirates -- or, as they call themselves coast guards -- who die. Any pirate who does the wrong thing during the course of the hostage situation is fined; the hostages are important to their captors and they won’t harm them unnecessarily. 

I did wonder why the heroine had to be half-American. She and her family had been living in London for several years and it didn’t really add anything to the story, except it’s convenient for the purposes of a scene set in Mexico. It wasn’t vital, though. 

It took me a while to begin this book, which I probably wouldn’t have chosen if I hadn’t received it for review, but it’s a good, easy read and, once begun, it took me very little time to finish. 

If you want a novel that reads like an adventure, but has a little more depth, this is a good one to try.

Recommended for teens from about 14 and up. ◊

Sue Bursztynski lives in Australia, where she works as a teacher-librarian. She has written several books for children and young adults, including Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly and, most recently, the YA novel Wolfborn. Her blog, The Great Raven, can be found at http://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.

SF/F: The Wild Girl by Kate Forsyth

Though best known for her children’s books, Kate Forsyth has now written two adult novels in a row on fairy tale themes. Bitter Greens (on this year’s Aurealis and Ditmars lists, the Australian awards for speculative fiction) was about the young woman who wrote a version of the Rapunzel story back in the 17th century, intertwined with the Rapunzel tale itself. That one was historical fantasy, The Wild Girl is straight historical fiction centered around those collectors of tales, the Brothers Grimm, as seen by the girl next door, Dortchen Wild, who would eventually marry one of them and told them about a quarter of the stories in their collection. But the fairy tales are there anyway, again intertwined with the main story, though not in exactly the same way as in Bitter Greens. There are quotes from the stories Dortchen Wild told Wilhelm Grimm, carefully connected with whatever is happening in that part of the novel.
Dortchen Wild, daughter of an apothecary and no mean herbalist herself, falls in love with Wilhelm Grimm when she is just 12 and he a few years older. He is the big brother of her best friend Lotte, kind and handsome and probably doesn’t know she exists, except as someone who knows many of the folk tales he and his brother Jakob are collecting.

But the years go by. Napoleon invades. The small German country of Hesse become the kingdom of Westphalia, ruled by Napoleon’s extravagant and heedless younger brother, Jerome. The Grimms and Dortchen’s family have a lot more to worry about than a romance that might or might not happen. And Dortchen has been abused horribly by her father, one of the nastier characters I have come across in fiction recently.

This is a wonderful piece of historical fiction. It is based on an idea expressed by Valerie Paradiz in Clever Maids: The Secret History Of The Grimm Fairy Tales, that the Grimm brothers got their stories, not from illiterate peasants and old grannies at the spinning wheel, but from middle class, educated young women of their acquaintance, starting with the girl next door.

As with all good historical fiction, history has been interpreted. There will always be some things we don’t or can’t know. When that happens, the author has to pull together the facts we do know and come to a conclusion. Forsyth has been done that very well. The author has taken only a few minor bits of license, which she mentions in her afterword, but she has done it intelligently, researching the period and the people thoroughly and making it all believable. It’s strange, reading The Wild Girl, to imagine that all this was going on while the Regency was happening in England and Jane Austen was writing gentle, witty romances.

I hadn’t realized that the first edition of the Grimm stories was a flop. Live and learn! Another thing: I always thought the Grimm stories were nastier and more violent than their counterparts in other countries, but this isn’t always the case. While reading The Wild Girl I was comparing Grimm stories with those of Perrault and others. “Sleeping Beauty” in Grimm ends with the princess and her prince wandering off happily into the sunset; the French Perrault story doesn’t and with the princess awakening. She has a monster for a mother-in-law: literally! One who tries to eat her and her children. “Aschenputtel” has some gruesome bits, but at least Grimm’s Cinderella isn’t a murderer like her Italian counterpart, Cenerentola, whom I discovered on  the Sur La Lune Fairy Tales web site. The story of “Little Red Riding Hood” is nastier in the French version.

Whether you love fairy tales or historical fiction or romance, there is something for you in The Wild Girl. ◊

Sue Bursztynski lives in Australia, where she works as a teacher-librarian. She has written several books for children and young adults, including Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly and, most recently, the YA novel Wolfborn. Her blog, The Great Raven, can be found at http://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.

Young Adult: Blood Storm by Rhiannon Hart

In Blood Storm (Random House Australia) Princess Zeraphina and Rodden, the King's right-hand man, are both “harmings,” a kind of vampire who isn’t actually undead, but does need blood; it doesn’t have to be human and they make the most of small creatures such as rabbits and squirrels. But now beggars and other unlikely-to-be missed folk have been found drained of blood in the streets. Sailors and their ships are going missing.

In Blood Song, the previous book, Rodden and Zeraphina made their way north to Lharmell, home of the vampires, and stopped a mass Turning, killing the leader of the harmings. Back then, the harmings weren't too bright, but now someone is actually planning. They have to be stopped, but Rodden's kingdom has been refusing to believe anything is wrong and Zeraphina's mother wants her to come home and get married. And they are both running short of yelbar, the stuff they need to tip their arrows if they're going to kill the horrors up north...

This novel is better than the first. The universe is more developed and we learn why the south part of the continent is colder than the north, and it isn't because Antarctica is nearby. We learn about Rodden's past, which isn't pretty.

Despite the pretty cover, Blood Storm is not a standard paranormal romance; it's an action adventure with romance in it, although Zeraphina's love for Rodden is an important part of her motivation. The heroine is not a Mary Sue, nor a Chosen One, and if she's good with a bow and arrow, she has earned it with a lot of practice; any other abilities she has are the result of being a harming, if a special harming who has experimented. She also has a brain she is willing to use. ◊

Sue Bursztynski lives in Australia, where she works as a teacher-librarian. She has written several books for children and young adults, including Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly and, most recently, the YA novel Wolfborn. Her blog, The Great Raven, can be found at http://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.

Children’s Books: In the Beech Forest by Gary Crew, illustrated by Den Scheer

In the Beech Forest (Ford Street) is not the kind of picture book you read to your five-year-old. It’s aimed at an older age group, around ten upwards. If you can bring yourself to part with the book, you can give it to your older child.

The storyline is simple: a boy leaves behind his computer games for a walk in the beech forest.

“A beech forest,” his father told him. “Antarctic beech: ancient, primal. The oldest of trees.”

But as the artwork suggests, he doesn’t really leave the computer games behind. Among the gnarled roots of these ancient, primal trees a damsel confronts -- and defeats -- a monster that might be a part of the towering trees. By the end of his walk, the boy will have a more positive view of the forest and the earth of which we are all a part.

So, what happens when a well-known writer of dark YA tales combines with a young artist who completely understands his theme? You get a book that is beautiful to look at and teaches you something at the same time.

Den Scheer’s exquisite sepia-to-color pieces don’t simply illustrate the text, they interpret it. Computer game monsters that fight in the forest of the boy’s mind are nevertheless a part of the forest through which he is walking. The style suggests woodcuts. Each piece of text or art is framed in stone, with fossil leaves hinting at how very ancient the forest is. And this artist is 18. Lucky Ford Street to have become her first publisher!

If this book doesn’t end up on next year’s Children’s Book Council of Australia shortlist or the Crichton Awards for new artists, there is no justice! ◊

Sue Bursztynski lives in Australia, where she works as a teacher-librarian. She has written several books for children and young adults, including Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly and, most recently, the YA novel Wolfborn. Her blog, The Great Raven, can be found at http://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.

Young Adult: Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan

If, like me, you’ve grown up on Celtic folk tales, you’ll be familiar with the story of the human male who gets himself an otherworldly bride. With a few exceptions, it’s really only in modern YA paranormals that it’s the other way around.

Basically, there are two kinds: There’s the one where she’s the daughter of a king of the otherworld, whether it’s the sea or Faerie; and there’s the one where she’s a selkie (seal-maiden) whose skin is stolen while she’s dancing around in human form. There is always a condition -- the groom has to promise not to ask her certain questions, not to hit her without cause (Welsh -- The Physicians of Myddfai), not to see what she gets up to on Saturdays (Melusine, who is, in theory, the ancestress of the British royal family), or he has to keep her sealskin hidden because once she finds it, she’ll grab it and go home, even leaving her children by her land husband. Invariably, the husband breaks the contract, mostly by accident, and loses his wife and any wealth she brought with her.

Margo Lanagan’s Sea Hearts (Allen and Unwin) asks: Yes, but what happens generations later when there are descendants of those seal maidens in a small community where presumably the gene pool is pretty small?

In the 19th century, Miskaella Prout is a girl none of the limited supply of men on the island of Rollrock wants to marry. After being treated as a minor goddess by the old folk and like dirt by everyone else, she discovers that she can actually draw girls out of the seals, without having to wait for them to drop their skins and dance in the moonlight. And those girls are absolutely gorgeous and better still, they’ll pretty much do as they’re told and go with the man who’s there when they emerge. This is a way not only to make a living but also to get revenge on all those other girls who managed to catch husbands.

It succeeds beyond her wildest dreams and Miskaella is rich, while the men all owe her money for their Stepford wives.

But the island’s culture changes, once the only girls left in town are seals -- and unlike the Ira Levin robots, these women have emotions and can be unhappy.

Sea Hearts (to be published in the U.S. and UK as The Brides of Rollrock Island) is a series of connected novellas, told from the viewpoints of a number of characters, including Miskaella herself. Despite this, there is still a twist at the end, when you realize that Miskaella didn’t tell you quite everything.

The writing is beautiful, your heart aches for those selkie girls and you can even understand why Miskaella is so bitter. It’s a fascinating take on the old folk tales, a wonderful “what if ... ?”

Margo Lanagan is one of the best writers of literary spec fic around. Her writing is always beautiful and she creates characters you can care for -- even if, like Miskaella, they’re ruining everyone else’s lives.

Damn, I wish I’d written this one. ◊

Sue Bursztynski lives in Australia, where she works as a teacher-librarian. She has written several books for children and young adults, including Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly and, most recently, the YA novel Wolfborn. Her blog, The Great Raven, can be found at http://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.

Children’s Books: The Outcasts by John Flanagan

The Outcasts, which is book one of the Brotherband Chronicles, is a spinoff from John Flanagan’s Ranger’s Apprentice series, through which I’m currently making my delighted way.

I admit I had only read the first book in that series, The Ruins Of Gorlan, when I read this, and saw some resemblance to that book, although it’s set in another country, Skandia, the Norse analogue, rather than Araluen, which is clearly Britain.

Hal Mikkelson is the son of a Skandian warrior and his Araluen wife, who was brought to Skandia as a slave, then bought and freed. Hal’s widowed mother is now running a successful food shop.

Boys of Hal’s age are required to undertake training in the skills they will need as warriors -- fighting, ship-handling and so on. It involves being divided into teams called brotherbands, which live, train and work together in a sort of boot camp and compete for the prize at the end. The only problem is, brotherband teams are the same in Skandia as they are in the average school in our world: there are always the ones nobody wants on their side, who are left over when the choices have been made.

Hal is part of a group nobody else wants, for various reasons. There’s a boy who has a tendency to lose his temper, twins who are always fighting each other, a thief and other unpopular boys. But Hal has something the big lumbering types don’t have: a brain. He’s an inventor who has built a boat much more efficient than the traditional Skandian wolfship, among other things. His Heron team may have more of a chance than they think.

Like Ruins of Gorlan, this book has a hero who isn’t a tall, muscular warrior type, but has a friend who is. Like the Ranger’s apprentice Will, he has other skills he can use. And like the first Ranger’s Apprentice novel, it’s about the training and not a lot happens till near the end, but stick with it. It’s an introductory volume that concentrates on building up the characters and the background. Somehow, the book manages to end on a cliffhanger and I fully expect a much more action-packed sequel.

You just have to love the Skandians, despite their culture of “liberating” stuff from outside and then getting upset when someone steals from them. Their idea of battle tactics is, “Charge!” By the time of this novel, there’s an Araluen archer team in the town of Hallasheim, started at the end of the fourth RA novel, Oakleaf Bearers, when Will, his mentor Halt, Will's friends Horace and Evanlyn, helped push back Temujai (Mongol) invaders.

Things I really like about The Outcasts and the original series: the character development, the humor, the believable societies, the way it feels like history set in another world rather than standard fantasy. I love the world-building. I love the fact that even Flanagan’s heroes make mistakes, sometimes with hilarious results, such as the mayhem that results from Hal’s attempt to supply his mother with running water in the kitchen.

I do advise you to read the original series to get more of a feel for this universe, not to mention the great fun of the series. It’s well worth the effort. ◊


Sue Bursztynski lives in Australia, where she works as a teacher-librarian. She has written several books for children and young adults, including Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly and, most recently, the YA novel Wolfborn. Her blog, The Great Raven, can be found at http://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.

Young Adult: Angel Arias: The Night Creatures Book 2 by Marianne De Pierres

In Burn Bright, Retra, a girl from the Puritan-like Seal community in Grave, followed her runaway brother to the island of Ixion. On Ixion, where teenagers party throughout the night (there is no day) she discovered some terrifying truths about what happened to those teens once they got too old for Ixion. But Retra, now named Naif, was a lot stronger than she had thought. She has fought for her new friends, been rescued, with others, from the island by pirate Ruzalia, and taken to her own haven.

Thing is, not everything on that island is going well either. People who realise that their Ixion badges will turn off their lives after a while, blame Ruzalia. Some just want to go back to Ixion. When a group of them mutiny, Naif persuades Ruzalia to help her return to Grave, where Ripers, who run Ixion, have been seen talking with the local Elders. This is a little fishy, given that running away to Ixion was a sign of rebellion.

Naif and her friend Markes, the musician, have just two days to find out what’s going on for Ruzalia…

In Angel Arias (Random House Australia), the second book in the Night Creatures series, we see a little more about life in Grave, which then-Retra left at the start of Burn Bright. We learn about Markes’s background in the wealthier community outside the Seal compound -- a community no nicer than her own.

There’s non-stop adventure here -- and some things Naif wishes she hadn’t known. Those who enjoyed Burn Bright will get plenty out of this one as well, but be warned -- it ends on a cliffhanger. ◊

Sue Bursztynski lives in Australia, where she works as a teacher-librarian. She has written several books for children and young adults, including Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly and, most recently, the YA novel Wolfborn. Her blog, The Great Raven, can be found at http://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.

Young Adult: The Witch Hunter Chronicles: Army Of The Undead by Stewart Daly

The year is 1666. The hero: Jakob, a teenage member of the Hexenjager, a German military witch and demon hunter organization. Jakob has been a member for only about

a month when, one night in a cemetery, investigating something fishy involving exhumed bodies, he learns something the Witch Hunters weren’t expecting. Something a lot nastier than a bunch of warlocks or minor demons.

Try fallen angels, never sent to hell because they’d be an asset to Satan. They’re not, by any means, hot teenage boy angels with an angst issue. They’re more like something out of your worst nightmare. If they get hold of something called the Tablet of Breaking, the world will be wiped out.

A team has to find this relic before they do or the world goes down the gurgler. Guess who is assigned to be a part of it?

From here it’s non-stop action as Jakob, his friend Armand, teenage girl Francesca, a tomb robber who collects relics for the Vatican and a crack team of the Church’s best fighters head for the Dead Sea via Greece, fighting zombies, death traps and monsters all the way.

The story is a sort of Three Musketeers-meets-Matthew-Reilly with a touch of Indiana Jones. In this case, Indy is female. Francesca is the expert on whom the fighters rely to get them through all those traps she’s encountered often in her career.

The author is a history teacher who knows his 17 century history. There’s a handy set of historical notes at the end and a bibliography for those who want to read further. Weapons, locations, even the primitive submarine, are all a part of history as it was.

The Witch Hunter Chronicles: Army Of The Undead (Random House Australia) is great fun and while it will appeal especially to boys, girls should enjoy it as well. Francesca is one classy chick. Even among all the gore, the bloodshed, the lurching zombies and having a limited time to save the world, there’s plenty of humor. The main characters are flawed enough to be likeable.

The book is the second in a series, but you don’t have to have read the first one to follow this one. There are mentions of things that happened in the first book, but the story is stand-alone.

Recommended for boys and girls from about 13 upwards. ◊

Sue Bursztynski lives in Australia, where she works as a teacher-librarian. She has written several books for children and young adults, including Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly and, most recently, the YA novel Wolfborn. Her blog, The Great Raven, can be found at http://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.

Children's Books: Crow Country by Kate Constable

In Kate Constable’s Crow Country (Allen and Unwin), Sadie and her mother have moved from their lovely Melbourne home by the sea to Boort, her mother’s home town in regional Victoria, where there is a drought. Boort has a history, both for her mother and further back. The same families have lived in the town for the last century and more.

The local artificial lake has dried up, leaving behind some old graves and indigenous relics. When Sadie is exploring the dried lake bed, with its small cemetery and a circle of stones set up by the indigenous people, she finds herself confronting Waa the Crow, the local totem bird. A past tragedy has influenced the present. Sadie must find the end to that story, which is dark to the Crow.

Time-slipping back to the 1930s, when her mother’s grandparents were running the local store, Sadie discovers the truth behind the tragedy. The key to the story’s end lies in the present -- and she will need help to find it.

Kate Constable is a master of the time-slip fantasy. Actually, she seems to do fantasy pretty well whatever it is. Whether it’s the present-day fantasy of this one and Cicada Summer or the Tamora Pierce-style world-building of the Chanters of Tremaris series, she creates a wonderful sense of the fantastical and characters you can care about.

In this case, we have not only the time-slip but the indigenous theme and the reminder that the racism of the past hasn’t gone away in our own time.

A touching story, beautifully-told. ◊

Sue Bursztynski lives in Australia, where she works as a teacher-librarian. She has written several books for children and young adults, including Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly and, most recently, the YA novel Wolfborn. Her blog, The Great Raven, can be found at http://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.

Children’s Books: Mole Hunt by Paul Collins

In Mole Hunt (Ford Street) the critter being referred to, Maximus Black by name, isn’t the blind, digging creature but the spy kind. Only in his teens, Maximus Black is a brilliant cadet in RIM, a galactic spy agency. That is, until he commits a murder or two and plays with some advanced technology as part of his plan to dominate the galaxy. But Maximus is not without opposition. Anneke Longshadow, another star recruit, whose guardian he’s wiped out, knows he has to be stopped before he finds some frightening information left over from the old Empire, information that will allow him access to battleships of a kind no one is able to do any more.

Mind you, the technology in the universe of this YA space opera is pretty advanced in its own right. Even death doesn’t have to be permanent if you know how to make the right arrangements.

There’s some fascinating world-building here. This universe has an elaborate system of law and order: or should that be disorder? While the heroes/anti-heroes are running around breaking into bases, exploding things, nearly killing each other, whatever world they’re on gets on with its own daily life, generally a pretty grubby one. Big corporations run things and send out assassins against each other. Even the CEO of one of them isn’t safe from the others. If the board don’t like what you’re doing, you can expect a lot worse than a large dismissal payout. If you’re an ordinary person on the street, you’re probably safe enough: unless Maximus Black gets to you.

The action, which alternates between the two main characters, is non-stop. Nobody seems to eat or sleep, except Anneke, and every time she stops for a rest, something disastrous happens. I can see this as a graphic novel, complete with explosions and crashes every other page. It reminds me, in some ways, of those Mad Magazine cartoons, “Spy vs Spy.”

Oddly enough, dreadful as Maximus is -- and at this stage, at least, he has no redeeming qualities whatsoever -- you still want to see him escape whatever fix he has gotten himself into. Anneke does manage to outwit him a number of times, but she isn’t actively trying to kill him.

For kids who like action, action, action. ◊

Sue Bursztynski lives in Australia, where she works as a teacher-librarian. She has written several books for children and young adults, including Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly and, most recently, the YA novel Wolfborn. Her blog, The Great Raven, can be found at http://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.

Young Adult: Haunting Violet by Alyxandra Harvey

Alyxandra Harvey is best known for her popular Drake Chronicles series, about the likeable family of vampires, the Drakes, with all those truly hot sons and an ass-kicking martial arts mother. They’re among the few vampire books I enjoy, mainly because they have a sense of humour and aren’t really about vampires biting people but about fights between various vampire clans, ranging from those who think humans are cattle to those who, like the Drakes, are happy to get their blood without harming anyone.

In Haunting Violet, Harvey moves from present-day rural America to Victorian England, when séances were a regular part of middle-class entertainment and there was an entire spiritualist movement.

Violet Willoughby’s mother is a phoney medium, making her living from convincing grieving families that she can communicate with the late Horace or Amelia. Violet has been helping out in the business since childhood, unhappy but knowing there isn’t a lot she can do about it. It’s a living -- and her domineering mother is scary! While at a house party where her mother is expecting a triumphant performance, Violet is horrified to find that there really are ghosts -- and she can see them. Even worse, the most persistent ghost is the murdered twin sister of one of the other guests. If Violet doesn’t find the murderer, the killer may strike again.

It’s either solve the mystery or end up an old woman with the carpet still dripping with the water in which the body was dumped -- that’s if she isn’t murdered herself!

Despite the gloomy cover, there is plenty of the over-the-top humour that makes the Drake Chronicles books such fun to read. The image of Violet turning up at a society ball in her soggy, muddy underwear after fleeing the murderer is unforgettable. The class structure of the time as seen through Violet’s eyes is bizarre but funny. It’s wise to set this in Victorian times, when it might be possible to get away with a murder of this kind. If it had happened in the present day, the forensics team and detectives would be all over the crime scene before coming to the conclusion that it was an accident -- especially with the victim having bruises at throat and wrists.

Definitely recommended! ◊

Sue Bursztynski lives in Australia, where she works as a teacher-librarian. She has written several books for children and young adults, including Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly and, most recently, the YA novel Wolfborn. Her blog, The Great Raven, can be found at http://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.