Book one (Weetzie Bat) was a modern fairy tale, book two (Witch Baby) was more akin to the Grimm tales. This tale (book three) still has that surreal fantasy-feel, but it heads straight for the Aesop’s fables section. Magic just seems to find Cherokee Bat. Maybe it’s because of how hard her mother Weetzie worked […]
Category: YA books
Witch Baby by Francesca Lia Block
March 9, 2012Witch Baby is likely my favorite of Block’s books. (I say likely because I haven’t read them all…yet.) Less hipster/fairy tale than Weetzie Bat, it centers on the black sheep of the family, Lily aka Witch Baby. A dark-fae child born at a dark time Witch Baby is obsessed with the tragedies of life. In […]
Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block
February 29, 2012I remember when my Theater Arts teacher recommended Weetzie Bat (side note, he also recommended Poppy Z. Brite to me, both of whom significantly shaped my fiction and writing tastes). I remember thinking what a weird title and giggling. But then he let me borrow it. What a weird tale. Weetzie Bat is a teen/young […]
Night World #8: Witchlight by L.J. Smith
February 23, 2012Keller is a werepanther born in half form who never really knew a loving family. She was rescued by Circle Daybreak and their cause. Now as teen she’s thrown herself into trying to be the perfect Circle Daybreak field agent. She has little room for anything else, which is probably why she’s rather annoyed that […]
Night World #7: Black Dawn by L.J. Smith
February 21, 2012Smith tries to keep her Night World books interesting, despite the presence of the soulmate principle as a major plot point in each one. In Black Dawn things get shaky (for me). Maggie, an ordinary-type teen who adores her older brother, knows something’s wrong when her brother goes missing with only his girlfriend’s word detailing […]
Review: Katana by Cole Gibsen
February 15, 2012Flux, 2012 ISBN: 0738730408 Available: Print and multiformat digital Billed as Kill Bill meets Buffy Katana is the story of an ordinary skater teen with a gay BFF who, after being attacked in a mall parking lot one night, discovers she’s the reincarnation of a 500 year old samurai (yes, there are famous female samurai). […]
Night World #6: Soulmate by L.J. Smith
February 3, 2012By six books in readers should be familiar with the Night World M.O. by now. In the stifling, anachronistic world of vampires, witches and shape shifters old powers are rising and the monsters are finding new ties to the world of the mortals. Soulmate takes a slightly different path and ups the power level. Theirry has been […]
Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback by Steven A Roman
February 1, 2012StarWarp Concepts, 2011 ISBN: 978-0-9841741-0-2 Available: Paperback Pandora Zwieback is a perfectly normal goth/punk teenage schizophrenic. Since she was six years old, therapists have been telling her two things: “Take your pills”, and “There’s no such thing as monsters.” Then one day, a thrilling series of intertwining events leads her to save the life of a gorgeous boy, […]
Ann Aguirre’s Outpost
January 31, 2012Ann Aguirre (author of the YA dystopia, Enclave) has put up the first chapter of the second book in the trilogy, Outpost. You can read it here. (It comes out some time this fall.) Tweet
Night World #5: The Chosen by L.J. Smith
January 27, 2012So far I think I’ve been enjoying rereading the Night World series more than I enjoyed reading them as a teen. What were enjoyable stories before are now much more because I can pick out how layered the stories are. I think though, #5 The Chosen is the exception. I remember this being my favorite […]