Lara Morgan’s Genesis, the first in her dystopian YA trilogy The Rosie Black Chronicles, was a blistering read. Its sequel certainly continues in a similar vein, albeit with even more grit and integrity. Morgan writes of a future where climate change has rendered vast tracts of the world uninhabitable, and where the haves and the have-nots are divided almost in a way reminiscent of Soylent Green/Make Room! Make Room! (and the food’s not much better, although admittedly a bit more vegetarian-friendly). It’s a class system so entrenched that it’s closer to a caste system than anything, and things aren’t made much better by the oppressive government, which recalls all of those feared entities of golden age dystopian literature.

But we don’t just get our Orwells and Zamyatins here: there’s plenty of cyberpunk-inspired goodness lurking at the corners of this gritty novel, and every now and then you find yourself bumping into a Philip K Dick or William Gibson trope. It’s angsty, it’s tough, and it’s worthy of Tank Girl. Truly, it’s a welcome departure from so much of the stuff that has a dystopian label slapped on it these days: there’s a wonderful awareness of the roots of the genre and all the issues and features that have been touched upon over the years. This isn’t simply an alternative reality with some completely unfathomable and indefensible “what if…just because” twist added to it; it’s organic and vivid, and you can imagine it growing out of the context of today.

Freshly returned from Mars and still shaken by the experience, Rosie Black is attempting to make a fresh start at the Orbitcorp Academy, where, despite being of the underclass, she shows immediate promise as a pilot. But this isn’t Ender’s Game, and Rosie’s challenges aren’t limited to the computer screen. Rather, she finds herself hunted by Helios, haunted by her fears for her troubled father, and increasingly cynical about the enigmatic Riley and her worryingly absent aunt Essie. Her trust in those around her is further weakened when she finds herself both under surveillance and constantly pursued; things become even more eerie when Riley forces a neuro implant upon her–something expedient, he assures her–and it begins to cause horrendous, debilitating migraines.

Rosie, Pip and new arrival Dalton Curtis seek safety amidst the Gondwana nation, where they continue their fight against Helios, and Rosie, stricken by the effects of her implant, begins to learn just how high the stakes really are…

Morgan does a dazzling job with the second installment in this trilogy, and although there are a few plot points and reveals that require some substantial suspension of disbelief, Morgan’s hyper-real ultra-urban setting allows this for the most part to work: the emphasis on the appalling living conditions and caste-like division of society positions the reader to be accepting of the worst and to treat everyone with suspicion. There’s certainly a prevailing sense of paranoia, and Morgan does an excellent job of exploiting this without alienating the reader or descending too deeply into the mire of dystopian grimness. The novel is dark, yes, but it’s human, too, and there are enough moments of levity and warmth (and the odd love triangle!) that you don’t come away feeling as though you’ve been tainted.

Perhaps my favourite element of this series is that Morgan draws her setting so richly and evocatively. Too often in Australian YA settings become ambiguous or elided, but in Rosie Black it’s oh-so-real. Perth is Perth, and there are familiar landmarks (or as least as much as can be expected five hundred years in the future and after significant climate change) and other elements that have you believing that you’re truly reading about Australia. There’s the harshness, the dryness, the unique scents and flavours: it’s all there. Morgan also allows the beautiful melting pot of the Australian situation infuse her work, and we see people of all different backgrounds–the main love interest, from what I can tell, is of Indigenous descent, which although it shouldn’t be, is worthy of note.

Equinox is a strong follow up to an excellent predecessor, and I’m looking forward to seeing where this series goes.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars (excellent)

With thanks to Walker Books Australia for the review copy

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See our reviews of other Lara Morgan books

Other books by Lara Morgan:

What would you do if your estranged, Hawaiian shirt-wearing, Powerball jackpot-winning father, the man who told you that you’d never see a cent of his $350 million dollars, the man who dumped your mother in front of a crowd of hundreds by tossing her a $20 million cheque and telling her to bugger off, suddenly invited you to dinner after four years of radio silence?

And not just any dinner. A dinner in Sweden. A dinner in Sweden where you’d have to convince a high-up diplomat that you were a NASA rocket scientist.

If you were Brandon, a thirty-ish no one with a severe allergy to coriander, with a fiance who spends her every waking moment matching tablecloths to serviettes and organising seating charts, with future in-laws straight out of the Triads (and one with Seinfeld-esqu man-hands no less), with a job pretending to sell ad space for a minor television network whose star show is the ultra-classy Honey Buns (marketed using a picture of said buns), and with a best friend whose most meaningful conversations revolved around toddler toilet training…well, you’d probably go for it.

Desperate from respite from Clarissa, the woman who became his fiance not through love but rather after a misunderstanding about an heirloom ring and some blokey (Brandon’s that is, not Clarissa’s) capitulation of singledom in exchange for the promise of kinky sex, and rather unnerved by the fact that there’s a vigilante Honey Buns bomber hanging around the joint, Brandon agrees to fly to Stockholm and test his knowledge of quantum mechanics (this knowledge, by the way, starts and ends at Stargate).

After a wonky start involving having to actually talk to his father, a boorish chap doing his best to burn through a sum of cash equivalent in size to the GDP of one of Australia’s larger states and who delights in testing the patience of the PC police, Brandon’s luck seems to turn around: he looks up from his pile of Swedish meatballs and surstromming to see a blonde beauty–the sweet Saga of the book’s title.

If Brandon’s the name, then escapism’s the game, and while Clarissa wears out her dainty fingers sending text message after text message demanding to know Brandon’s whereabouts, Brandon and Saga indulge in a three-day romp comprising shenanigans such as boating in a fountain and riding Segways through shopping centres (while wearing Sumo outfits no less). But when it’s time to return home, Brandon’s faced with the choice of breaking things off with Clarissa in favour of a fresh start with Saga, or simply continuing along as things are–and Brandon, being as defeatist and non-confrontational as it gets, opts for the latter. Of course, things have a way of becoming complicated, and Saga’s name is rather portentous…

My Sweet Saga is a frenetic, crazed, indulgent romp that recalls Chuck Palahniuk, Steve Hely, Lee Henshaw, and all those other kooky blokey types that make this genre–if none of these authors self-censored. Sills writes in an almost painfully honest manner, and at times this results in transcendant reading, and at others in the reader’s desire for him to make friends with the backspace button.

The prose is all spurts and madness: it feels as though it’s primed with stimulants, with weird anecdotes and odd descriptions riffing together and ricocheting off each other in ways that shouldn’t work, but for the most part do, although there is some unevenness in voice and tone from time to time, with angry ranty snark suddenly turning to maudlin melancholy with nary a conjunction in between.

The characters, though all completely, horribly bizarre are so far off the normal scale that it’s all too easy to believe that these sorts of people exist. The book is set in LA, after all. The exception to this is Brandon, a painful and pathetic character whose default setting is quiet resignation–something that marks him out in a book where everyone else is larger than life. For him to take a stand against anyone is utterly out of character, and as a result he is simply drop-kicked along until things spiral so far out of control that something has to give. It can be cringeworthy to watch at times, and one does feel slightly voyeuristic reading this.

Though virtually every subset of humanity gets a working over under Brandon’s critical eye, I did find myself disconcerted by the recurring misogyny that runs through the novel. I can’t think of one female character who is portrayed in a positive light, and the emphasis on women as money-grubbing, almost exclusively sexual beings is hard to ignore–though I set aside my qualms for most of the book, the scene with Brandon’s mother at the end was particularly problematic for me, particularly given how it is used in many ways to justify the actions of Brandon’s father.

In all, though, it’s promising debut novel, and Sill’s willingness to let it all hang out makes for some sometimes confronting, sometimes enlightening reading. I admit to the odd chortle at a particularly apt pop culture reference and at nodding along at some of the oh-so-true observations Brandon makes as he watches his life fall apart around him.

Some extra polishing could have been done in the proofing side of things, and the first two chapters are a bit of a muddle that need to be fought through before the book gets back on the straight and narrow (or as close as a book like this will ever get to being on the straight and narrow), but other than that and the slightly indulgent ending, it’s pretty solid stuff. Try it–but be warned that you’ll probably be offended.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars (very good)

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With thanks to Admiral J Press for the review copy

The cover of Favel Parrett’s debut is understated yet quietly eerie: there’s a sense of something canted and off-kilter, of loss and confusion. And it’s apt, for this laconic little read is in equal parts challengingly compelling and surprisingly sympathetic from start to finish.

Harry and Miles live with their widower father off the south-east coast of Tasmania in a town that time seems to have passed by. Their father is an abalone diver, a trade that is increasingly hard to succeed in due to overfishing and illegal poaching, and money is tight. Miles spends his days out on the boat with his father and the boorish Jeff, while Harry remains home alone, seeking out activities to fill his days. There is a third brother, too: Joe, who skipped town in order to escape the futureless life that would have been his had he stayed. Though this means that Miles and Harry are left in the hands of their negligent and oft-abusive father, neither judges him. As Miles observes, the boys who stay in town leave school at fifteen to work in the abalone canneries, becoming hard and worn before their time. There is nothing else. Or there is–as we see in the case of the one townsman who has escaped the cycle by embracing modernity rather than clutching to the insularity so key to this town’s identity–but doing so is in effect renouncing one’s place among one’s peers.

From the moment the novel opens there’s a sense of going under, and oh, how it tugs and pulls and terrifies. We look on as the boys play by the ocean, something that is as ominous as it is beautiful, and which can tear away everything from beneath you in a moment. And as the boys hunt for shark’s eggs and other portentous items, we know from the outset that this is exactly what will happen: as the boys’ pasts and presents slowly unfold, there’s the constant, all-pervading sense of being dragged into the very depths of loss and despair.

The boys’ father’s already volatile temperament is inflamed by the appearance of Fisheries representatives who want to close down his operations, and by Harry’s new friendship with a local hermit, a horrifically disfigured man, who, one suspects, may have a secondary identity that is key to the mystery surrounding the boys’ mother’s death. There’s a constant battle of pulling back and drawing in, almost like the crashing of the waves: the boys’ father has harsh, violent episodes that he tries to counteract with episodes of generosity, but the latter are so awkward and confused that his sons do not know how to respond. In one scene, when the father comes home with a package of fish and chips, Miles wonders whether the sole piece of grilled fish is for him, as his father knows that he prefers grilled–but surely, given the expense, it can’t be? he wonders.

But there are bright moments against the stormy, briny feel of the rest of the book. Just as Miles and Harry emerge relatively unscathed from a boating accident (one needs to learn how to ride the waves in order to survive, Miles muses), they are incredibly tenacious when it comes to managing the cards they have been dealt. Harry is a philanthropist by nature, giving and sharing at every opportunity (even Bertie Beetle showbags!), and Miles protects his younger brother as best as he can, turning even the most mundane–peeling potatoes using a blunt knife so that they are palatable to his brother–into something meaningful.

The beauty of the novel is as much in what’s not told as what is: Parrett paints her characters and her setting with the most taciturn of approaches, her authorial brush scarcely touching the page unless it has to. The result, which recalls Cate Kennedy and, yes, Tim Winton, is a series of vignettes that haunt and allude, with the effect simultaneously one of isolation and stillness; there is at all times a sense of a existence that is teetering on the brink and entirely at the mercy of the elements. There’s an inexorability to the conclusion, of course, but the journey is such that you’ll only let out your breath at the very last page.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars (superb)

With thanks to Hachette Australia for the review copy

Support Read in a Single Sitting by purchasing Past the Shallows from Booktopia

Let me preface this review by saying that I’m iffy on vampires for the most part and I’m not generally much of an erotica reader, although I’ve read my fair share of Kerrilyn Sparks and Nalini Singh. But having heard Gena Showalter’s name bandied about as one of the stars of the naughtier side of the romance genre, I thought I’d give this one a go. Unfortunately I can’t say I’ve been converted to the cause.

The cover is such that it was with misgivings that I picked up the book and started reading, and things didn’t improve much once within the covers. The story opens with a confused fairytale-esque vibe and continues in that tone until its awkwardly orchestrated happily ever after, and the plotting is essentially a mix of rape and torture scenes, sex scenes, and the occasional flight scene. And given the sloppy, repetitive prose, weak and broad-brush characterisation and fiendishly bad dialogue there’s not much else to redeem this one, I’m afraid.

We open with Jane Parker dreaming of the vampire lord Nicolai, while lamenting the various losses of her life: once a prodigy who has had astounding success in both academia and her career as a CIA operative (Jane also graduated school at fifteen and had about four PhDs by the time she reached her 18th birthday, by the way. And I’m pretty sure she’s fluent in 17 languages and can fight four types of martial arts.), Jane is recovering from a horrific car accident that should have left her paralysed. But Jane is, obviously, the kind of woman who laughs at the odds, and not only is she up and walking, but she’s running 5 miles a day six months later.

Jane ends up transported into the world of Delphina, where she finds herself inhabiting the body of the sadistic princess Odette (and I’m talking seriously sadistic–this lady makes the Marquis de Sade look like a kitten). Odette is the proud owner of the sex slave Nicolai, whom she has kept chained up for her own personal use and abuse for some few decades now. When Nicolai and Jane-Odette meet, however, sparks fly, and Nicolai is able to see that Jane is not the terrifying captor he is used to. The two attempt to flee, but are captured (at regular intervals) by various brutish types intent on raping, bloodying and generally mutilating. Each time the couple escapes, and some sexy stuff happens. Each sex scene escalates the emotional side of things, of course, and after a few efforts in the forest Jane is transformed into a vampire and marriage is on the cards. There’s a bit of weird back-and-forthing between our world and Delphina, but it all ends up, as expected, happily enough.

I have to say that I really struggled to finish this one, and were I not reading it for review purposes likely wouldn’t have got past the first few pages. There are so many limitations to the novel on so many different levels. The plot is terribly thin at the best of times, but where this can often be made up for with characterisation and evocative prose or setting, the same cannot be said here. The characters are extreme to the point of caricature: the baddies simply run about getting their rocks off by killing, maiming and raping, and Jane is so perfect in every way that there’s no delight to be had in reading about her at all.

For me, though, Nicolai was possibly the worst of the lot: while, yes, being chained up and tortured for years no doubt has an effect on the psyche, there’s nothing especially appealing about a romance hero who dismembers ogres (including tearing out their eyes and tongues) with disconcerting glee. Although, perhaps, what’s even less appealing is the fact that when Nicolai gets all bestial on us he regresses to speaking in some sort of Kipling-esque Tarzan speak. “Want you. Me want! Jane! Want Jane! Sex! Cock!” Each to their own when it comes to bedroom talk, but I have to say that this doesn’t quite to it for me…

The setting, too, in this one struggles to come alive, perhaps in part because Showalter keeps much of it centred around the castle from which Jane and Nicolai are attempting to escape. It’s hard to get a good sense of it (although perhaps that’s because the majority of the wordage in this slim volume is dedicated to the “ropes” of Nicolai’s stomach, his “laving” tongue and Jane’s “beading” nipples. These words, along with certain other cliches of the genre, are used so often that one could play a game of Bingo with them!). Jane’s backstory, too, feels very hasty, and seems to be worked in too late in the novel for it to work. It almost feels as though there needs to be a prequel volume for this one to work at all.

In all, I can’t recommend this one: the horrific sadism isn’t too my taste, and the characters are too weak and cliched to make much of. Prose-wise, this one could do with some serious cleaning up, with the (many) fight and sex scenes so similar that it’s almost as though they’ve been copied and pasted at regular interval.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars (serious flaws)

Your turn: what do you like to see in a hero?

With thanks to Midas PR for the review copy

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With the bookish proposal earlier this year and my subsequent running of a wedding website, it looks as though love is well and truly in the air for me. In addition to all of this, I’ve had Texan cowboys and spunky firefights thrown my way (well, at least on paper), much to my poor nerdy fiance’s chagrin. Needless to say, the fiance was thoroughly perturbed once again when this anthology arrived on our doorstep: it contains four novellas all about fiesty young lasses falling for billionaire (or occasionally millionaire–pfft!) employers, all of whom, I have to say, would well and truly fail any sort of HR assessment regarding the appropriate treatment of staff. But oh, it’s saucy, and occasionally very witty, fun indeed.

The Petrov Affair

The anthology opens with The Petrov Affair, which isn’t as James Bond-esque as it sounds, but no matter. Madeline Forrester is an events co-ordinator working for high-end jewellery company Petrova, founded and owned by bad boy jeweller and designer Aleksei Petrov. Both, of course, have their requisite dark pasts: Madeline is still smarting from having her private affairs made public years ago, while Petrov is still mourning the lost of his deceased wife. And given that Madeline’s dark past involves an affair with her boss hitting the papers, going after the man at the apex of the company isn’t exactly her preferred way of going about things. But soon enough, Madeline’s efforts to climb to the top of the events division of the company end up with her being, er, on top in a rather different way indeed, and the two find themselves battling their demons (and the logistics of having sex on office tables).

The Petrov Affair is tidily mapped out, packing reams of oh-so-essential romantic tug-of-war into its short 170 pages, and it’s a snappy read overall. Granted, I do get squeamish whenever I’m faced with an alpha male character, and Aleksei Petrov is no exception, but Madeline is endowed with liberal amounts of sass, which helps to balance things a bit. I do wish that there had been some secondary characters in this one, though: as far as I recall, only Madeline and Aleksei have speaking roles, which makes for an insular-feeling narrative. I did find the conclusion to this one a little abrupt, and could have done with seeing the denouement drawn out a little more, but there are some nice elements here, such as Petrov’s design of a special bracelet to represent the past and future of his life. Yes, it’s sappy, but it works well within the wider context of the novel.

The Petrov Affair is available from Amazon as a standalone.

The Cinderella Bride

Hot on the heels of The Petrov Affair is The Cinderella Bride by Barbara Wallace. By “hot on the heels” I don’t just mean physical proximity, but also thematic similarity: we have another career-focused gal falling for her ultra-wealthy boss, although this time we’ve moved over into the hospitality industry. Emma O’Rourke is a PA who is determined to earn top marks on her annual appraisal, and puts her all into her job working for Kent family matriarch Mariah Kent–even going so far as to brave the elements to ensure that Mariah’s grandson Gideon attends an important family business meeting. Gideon, of course, is essentially estranged from his family, and has little intention of becoming a part of its hotelier hegemony; he’d rather focus his attentions on his own business instead.

Dark and gloomy pasts rear their heads again, with Emma’s pragmatic nature the result of being brought up by a flighty teenaged mother, and Gideon’s resentment of his family having deep roots indeed. This works to a degree, but as someone fairly new to the romance genre I’m always bewildered by the degree to which characters in these novels are utterly scarred by past relationships: the inclusion of the phrase “I don’t do relationships” seems to be mandatory. As a standalone I think this one would read more strongly as a novel, but following directly after The Petrov Affair there’s definitely a sense of similarity that I think weakens the impact of The Cinderella Bride. I did, however, thoroughly enjoy the character of Mariah, who with her soap opera addiction and bold and bossy approach adds plenty of levity to the angsting and digging up of skeletons.

The Cinderella Bride is also available from Amazon as a standalone.

Secret History of a Good Girl

The saucy factor ramps up a bit with Aimee Carson’s Secret History of a Good Girl, in which down-on-her-luck events planner Alyssa Hunt is determined to show just how good she is at her job by knocking the socks off hotel owner Paulo Domingues. (Of course, although Alyssa intends to do so in only a metaphorical sense, it doesn’t take long before all sorts of clothing starts flying) Domingues is intrigued by the southern lass, who has gall and confidence in spades, and sets her up with a trial run to prove her worth. And Alyssa does, but with a bit of sleight of hand that hints at, yes, you guessed it, a dark past. (Aside: fiance is by this point feeling very insecure about the fact that he is not a billionaire)

Carson’s debut, although following the by-now rather familiar theme of employee (or contractor) hooking up with the boss, has quite a different tone from the previous two in the volume, which is key at this point. Domingues certainly doesn’t hold back with the innuendo, and Alyssa certainly doesn’t care to be a long-suffering sexually frustrated girl. Plot-wise the novel is quite simple, with few other confounding factors, but Carson does a good job of utilising her secondary characters, making the story feel a lot more well-rounded than it might otherwise.

Secret History of a Good Girl is also available from Amazon as a standalone.

Secrets and Speed Dating

And now on to the final, and by far the strongest, in the collection: Secrets and Speed Dating by Leah Ashton. Ashton’s debut stands thoroughly apart from its predecessors in both tone and format, and from its opening lines gives plenty of whimsy and quirkiness. Where the previous three novels in the volume open in a fairly predictable manner–subordinate meeting wealthy boss–Ashton holds off on the meeting between her hero and heroine a little longer, which helps a good deal in building the setting and developing the character of her main POV character, Sophie Morgan.

Project manager Sophie has just been jilted by her fiance, and in order to get her life back on track has prepared “The Sophie Project”, upon completion of which she’ll be on top of things once more. On the top of her list of things to do, however, is to find a faux boyfriend to be her plus one at a friend’s forthcoming wedding. After a dodgy stint at speed dating, she drowns her sorrows in a heady array of cocktails while spilling her woes–and the milestones of her project plan–to the bartender, Dan. Dan offers himself up as the faux boyfriend in question, and soon finds himself filling in personal dossiers and memorising Sophie’s favourite colours and ice-cream flavours in order to play the role to a T.

Of course, as Dan points out, not everything in life can go according to plan, and the two begin to fall for each other, with plenty of misadventures and silliness along the way. Every now and then Sophie’s obsessive following of the rules does become tiresome to the reader, but having worked with a team of production editors (hi, guys!), well, I can say firsthand that these people do exist.

Secrets and Speed Dating is certainly a charming read, and with its Perth setting and laconic Aussie humour, resonates with me as a reader. There’s certainly a sense of vagueness at times, though, as a concession to the international audience being targeted: place names are often ambiguous (yes, I’ve been to the restaurant not named in the book), and weird Americanisms such as “candy” crop up alongside the more Aussie “lolly”. Still, Ashton has taken some liberty with the plotting approach and voice of her novel, and this one really stands out as a result.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars (very good)

With thanks to Midas PR for the review copy

Support Read in a Single Sitting by purchasing Mills & Boon Loves from Book Depository or Booktopia or by using the Amazon links above.

Your turn: what’s your take on the employee falling for the big boss trope?

Lisi Harrison’s back with the third installment of her junk food-esque Monster High series, and it looks as though she’s finding her stride. Though there’s no denying that these books make Stephen King, the self-proclaimed “literary equivalent of a hamburger” look like the ten course degustation menu at Jacques Reymond, with matching wines, they’re the kind of guilty pleasure that you’ll indulge in after a tough day at work (and after which you promise yourself that you’ll atone for your bad behaviour with a run or a volume of French poetry).

When we last saw the Monster High crew they’d just been outed on TV by an unscrupulous documentary maker. Now the motley assortment of beasties is torn between fight or flight responses. The majority jetset off to various monster-friendly places such as Romania or Loch Ness, but a few stay behind to face the rather discordant music. Clawdeen Wolf and her lunatic (literally–as their oh-so-subtle names indicate, they’re werewolves) family are among those opt to stay behind, hiding out in the family inn. But although Clawdeen takes up a fair bit of page space describing her clothes, trimming her hair and waxing–werewolves are rather hirsute, as it turns out–and planning her “sassy” sixteenth birthday party, all the interesting stuff occurs when the POV switches over and out; namely to Melody Carver and Frankie Stein.

Melody, protagonist of the first in the series and monster rights activist, has recently found out that she’s perhaps a little more ghoulish than she thought: her voice has the kind of lure that in the epics of Homer sees ships dashed against rocks. Melody and her sister continue to campaign for monster rights, with Melody deciding to use her voice to cajole the monster detractors to side with her and her spooky friends instead. And what better place to make a stand than at Clawdeen’s party?

Meanwhile, Frankie Stein, though nudged back to mere supporting character status is struggling with the notion of agency. Having campaigned for non-normies to be able to live a public life without discrimination since she was, er, created, she’s ambivalent about the fact that the monster crew is achieving a degree of public acceptance, but that she has played no active role in bringing this about. Of course, one supposes that the only child of two mad scientists must feel like an underachiever no matter what happens in her life.

Where the first two books in the series felt as though they lacked direction, this third is a lot tidier. Admittedly, the opening scene, where Clawdeen and her family are running through the woods making the same jokes over and over is a bit bloated and confusing, but Harrison has quite a bit of back story to work in, and given the amount of POV characters these books utilise, doing so in a concise manner is surely a challenge. The gradual thematic shift away from simple popularity and fashion towards equality and activism is a plus, too, and makes for a much stronger read all around. Even the characters feel more solid, and there’s less competitive bitchiness and more working together towards a common goal–there’s more of a sense of the characters being legitimately connected rather than simply thrown into the book for the sake of a bit of snarky banter.

There are some aspects that detract a little from the reading experience, however. The flood of brand names and pop culture references is of biblical proportions, and I suspect that Noah himself would struggle to navigate these crowded Trademarked, Registered and Patent Pending waters. The fact that several chapters is devoted to a Lady Gaga concert is also a bit bewildering. Although I get that Harrison is making a play on Gaga’s whole “little monsters” and the beauty in difference thing, I suspect that this could have been done far more effectively and in a way that wouldn’t date the book in such an extraordinary manner. As it is, the branding and references serve to make these books feel utterly disposable. Finally, the slew of alternating points of view dilutes the plot a little, and although we’re told that Where There’s a Wolf There’s a Way is Clawdeen’s book, there’s actually very little sense of this, and Clawdeen’s role is mostly about preening and primping rather than moving the plot forward in any meaningful way.

Still, the book feels a lot more oriented than the first two in the series, and even given the supreme superficiality of the main characters (wearing flats is not a crime, people) it’s hard to argue that they’re not a whole lotta fun.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars (good)

With thanks to Hachette Australia for the review copy

See our other Lisi Harrison reviews

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Your turn: what’s your take on books loaded with pop culture references?

Other books by Lisi Harrison:

Forgive me, o blogosphere, for I have been a terrible book blogger. I’m utterly ashamed to admit that although Ananda Braxton-Smith’s Tantony landed on my doorstop some months ago, it has languished unread since then largely due to the fact that I’m a superficial person who judges books by their covers. Now I’m kicking myself for having lost several months in which I could have been recommending this and buying copies for everyone I know. Tantony is one of the most perfectly, painfully beautiful books I’ve read in a long time.

Boson Quirk is half of this world, half of another: he hears voices, dreams of being something else altogether. In many ways he is transcendant, but in others he is deeply, hauntingly human. The Quirks are already looked upon with wariness by the people of Carrick, who see demons and monsters lurking in every shadow, and fear the spread of such, and Boson’s ways are drawing their attention. Boson becomes further and further removed from reality until he is no longer just spiritually removed from the world, but physically as well, becoming subsumed by the very bog that seems to sustain him.

Fermion, Boson’s pragmatic twin sister, seeks answers in the mundane instead, searching amongst the townsfolk for a clue as to what might have happened to her brother. Here, too, superstition rears its head: she hears stories of shades and spirits and curses, and of the generation of “different” children who were exiled for their deformities–deformities that pointed to their moral irregularities. But when Fermion begins to hear voices, voices not unlike those that haunted her brother, she wonders whether she herself is different, and seeks out this lost generation hoping to settle her fears about her brother’s, and possibly her own, affliction as well.

What she finds there upends her moral compass and challenges her way of thinking. What marks someone as “normal” or “different”? Are those things she has long thought of as objective merely a matter of perspective? And where is Fermion positioned herself?

The novel explores these issues sympathetically but in no way tentatively: though Braxton-Smith’s prose is lush, plump and warm, it’s no buffer. Her facility with language results in a completely immersive experience: her sentences are evocative and eerie, and crawl across the page thickly and stirringly, much like the bog they describe. Her unsparing, unapologetic use of the Manx dialect creates a sense of alienation and fantasia, yet it’s familiar enough that her setting feels like a slightly canted version of our own experience. Competing cultural narratives do battle, and the reader is left to determine which is more valid than the other, and our sense of what is right and wrong is incessantly brought to task.

Reminiscent of Coetzee’s The Life and Times of Michael K, Tantony is an achingly sincere and hauntingly melancholy exploration of mental illness (or otherness) in the claustrophobic and judgemental environment created by superstition and fear. The setting is utterly believable, the characters true, and the prose is exquisite. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

With thanks to Black Dog Books (now part of Walker Books) for the review copy

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Other books by Ananda Braxton-Smith:

Given that those named Prudence are rarely so, that Joys are often despairing, and Charitys are often miserly, it’s no surprise that someone with the surname Eden is having rather a less-than-idyllic time of it. A month has passed since Violet Eden learned that she was a Grigori and thus tasked with keeping the world safe from the less-than-lovely fallen angels known as the exiles. Violet’s needed that month to recover from a whole lot of things–being seduced (or rather, let’s go with raped, since she was magicked into it) by the most heinous of exiles around and jumping off a cliff in self-sacrifice just to name a couple.

But though Violet would much rather spend her days working on her art homework and going for the occasional jog, being a Grigori doesn’t offer much downtime. Violet is incessantly in training to fight against the exiles, but though the physical aspect of this is daunting enough, it’s the psychological element that truly challenges her: though it’s fairly typical in a good-vs-evil novel to polish off the baddies without a thought, Violet struggles with the notion of killing anyone, and of what such an act not only says about her, but does to her.

Violet’s ambivalence becomes heightened when Phoenix, the exile who has done so much damage to her, returns, and Violet learns how inextricably her fate is linked to his–and how much power he has over her future. Violet and her Grigori partner Lincoln seek back-up in the form of a half-dozen or so Grigori warriors, and soon they’re on their way to Jordan in search of a Maguffin series of scriptures that could put Phoenix in his place at long last.

Enticed is a stronger novel than its predecessor Embrace in a number of ways, but a number of the same issues crop up in this one. The ambiguous setting, for one, is an issue–given that Shirvington is Sydney-based, I’ve been assuming that Violet is also, but there are a number of US-centric terms and references (school cafeterias, for one, which Aussie schools don’t tend to have) that make me unsure of this. Given that setting is so utterly key to a book’s realism, it’s a shame that the author/editor has chosen to keep it so understated here. Yes, Australian settings have a cultural cringe factor, but when they’re done well (here I reference Van Badham again), they really do work. Setting is so essential for things such as dialogue–lexical choice, cadence and so on–culture–ethnic mixes, how women are treated–and ultra-basic things such as what people wear and eat that it’s bewildering that someone would choose to McDonaldise it in such a way. Fortunately, when the characters zip over to Jordan, we end up with something a little more concrete to work with, and the book picks up extraordinarily from this point on.

Shirvington’s pacing is excellent, and the novel feels a lot shorter than its 400-odd pages. But the plotting and characterisation do feel lazy at times, with many of the characters little more than archetypes. The characters often run the risk of feeling limitless, too: Steph, Violet’s best friend, is an uber-genius, and although I’m the first to admit that Stephs are pretty gifted overall, getting straight As in school doesn’t necessarily mean that hacking into the NAB, where A may stand for Australia, America, or Angola, depending on where this story is set, is a highly feasible achievement. Likewise, Spence is the goofy ruffian who makes his own rules, but to the extent that he becomes a plot agent, doing something utterly ridiculous or using his powers so that the narrative can move forward or something can be wrapped up or foiled.

Violet herself is at biggest risk of being infallible given that she’s the strongest, most powerful Grigori who’s ever existed, but Shirvington does try to temper this. Unfortunately she does so by allowing Violet to have physical strength, but very little emotional strength. Watching Violet struggle to get by without Lincoln is a little disconcerting, and seeing her losing herself in any potential relationship that comes her way is a little distasteful, and given the dominant nature of most of the men in the novel, warning bells do start to ring. Every time I hear the word soulmate I can’t help but shudder, as having a soulmate seems to mean becoming utterly subsumed by a relationship and being willing to sacrifice yourself for it.

In addition to this, there are a few elements that didn’t quite work for me. Violet’s in absentia father, for one, is hard to believe as a character: there’d better be a big reveal in the third book about his being in the leader of some evil angel collective or something to justify not just making Violet an orphan and being done with it. Nasty pasty Magda is also faintly ridiculous in her motives (do people really, honestly become jealous enough that they cold-bloodedly kill people to get them out of the way?), and some refining or excision could have been done there. Though Shirvington generally avoids being didactic, there is a lot of religiosity going on here, and more agnostic types may find it hard to swallow.

The transition between the first and second books is also awkward, with a garbled single paragraph used to recap the first book, and not especially successfully. Even having read the first book I took some time to get on top of things again. There are also persistent typographical errors throughout the book, with “viscous” villains, your/you’re confusion and missing punctuation some of the more obvious ones.

Despite my misgivings, Enticed is on the whole a solid read, and Shirvington’s excellent sense of pacing will keep readers turning the pages. I wouldn’t, however, recommend reading this one without reading Embrace first.

Your turn: what’s your take on soulmates in teen fiction?

 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars (good)

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With thanks to Hachette Australia for the review copy

See my reviews of Jessica Shirvington’s other books.

Also by Jessica Shirvington:

I know that one shouldn’t judge books by their covers, but I wasn’t especially enamoured of this one when I received it (funnily enough, I did buy Browne’s Shadow Web, below, a few years ago based purely on its cover, but haven’t yet read it). From the title to the staid fantasy art, it screams shallow George RR Martin knock-off, but truly, it’s something else entirely.

Wolf Blood may be a werewolf novel, but it’s one that’s a brave, welcome departure from the sexy beasts stuff lining the shelves at the moment. Set in first century AD, during the Roman conquest of Britain, it follows the dual perspectives of Trista, a warrior seeress who has recently escaped from slavery, and Morcant, a Roman (seemingly, at least) soldier who is quickly learning that his affinity with those of lupine kind is rather more than simply having a way with dogs. With Morcant a deserter and Trista and escapee, they’re unlikely to make any friends, and so they flee together. Along the way they learn volumes about their own identities–both in terms of their abilities and their personalities–and are faced at every turn with the question of whom to trust.

It’s a strong concept, and Browne’s take is appealingly fresh. Morcant’s wolf has none of the bestial appeal of the typical paranormal romance fare, but is instead far more in tune with the pagan customs native to Britain. Browne also uses Morcant’s changing state to examine his ambivalence regarding where he belongs–he may be a Roman soldier, but he has Celtic blood as well. Morcant at one point impregnates a wolf partner, and is torn between conflicting loyalties: he has newfound responsibilities to this wolf partner that he cannot simply ignore, but similarly Trista needs his help and attention. Likewise, Trista is conflicted, as her ability to glimpse the future is perceived by her to be an affliction at best: given what is to come of her fellow countrymen, she sees nothing but blood and turmoil, but telling those she cares about of their likely fate is no easy task, and may paint her in traitorous light.

Browne draws her characters warmly and convincingly, and their strength, Trista’s in particular, and the characters work as believable individuals. I found it a nice touch that although there is a degree of romantic tension, Trista and Morcant remain platonic companions who support each other through their deeds rather than through passion. There is no all-encompassing love, and Trista acknowledges the fickleness of the emotion when she is surprised to hear that a Celtic king she meets has a wife–Trista has for years harboured some sort of girlish dream that she herself might marry him.

The setting, too, intrigues, and there’s a richness here that indicates the strength of Browne’s knowledge of the era (or so I assume, being no scholar of this setting!). However, despite the convincing depictions, I struggled to visualise the setting or the characters, particularly during the first half of the book, and I have to admit that I wasn’t deeply involved as a reader until some 150 pages into it. Part of this I think is the first person approach: the prose is spare and blunt, and given how closely Browne works with her narrators, lacks the lyrical qualities and details that may be needed to help draw a reader into an unfamiliar setting. The words are hard on the page, but though they ring true, they don’t evoke.

Another issue is that of the dual narrators. For me, Wolf’s Blood is primarily Trista’s story, and is told as such. For this reason, the occasional switching to Morcant’s point of view seemed superfluous, and given the similarity in the voices of both narrators, makes it difficult for the reader to glean what is going on and whose point of view we are currently reading. The book attempts to atone for this by explicitly marking each chapter with “Trista’s Story” or “Morcant’s Story”, but this seems unwieldy given that the majority of chapters are Trista’s.

Wolf’s Blood is solid and compelling, but something about the voice didn’t quite work for me. That said, I’m sure it will appeal to others, and I’m impressed enough that I certainly plan to finally get around to reading Shadow Web.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars (good)

With thanks to Bloomsbury Australia for the review copy

See our other NM Browne reviews

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Your turn: what’s your take on books with dual first person narrators?

Other books by N M Browne:

London Lane is the stuff of Hollywood movies: her memory works in a way worthy of Memento. But where Guy Pearce’s Leonard Shelby can only remember the snatches of time held in his short-term memory, London, with one exception, remembers nothing that has happened–but rather everything that will happen. Every night at 4:33, London’s memory resets, in doing so wiping from her mind all that has happened the previous day.

Needless to say, London’s ability to function is severely impaired by her condition, and like Leonard she relies on an intricate system of note-taking. Each night before she goes to sleep, London meticulously notes down everything she will need to get through the following day based on that day’s memories and her future memories of the coming day: whether to bring her PE outfit, whether she’ll be quizzed in class, and so on. This system, combined with the support of her mother and her best friend Jamie, who, other than a psychologist who is apparently no longer on the scene, allows London to get by without more than the occasional mishap.

But remembering the future doesn’t necessarily mean that London has any agency over it, and when new memories assert themselves, she takes them as canon. Until she meets a boy who she cannot remember seeing in her future. London’s immediate reaction is to avoid him: if he’s not present in her future, then why suffer through the song and dance of building a relationship? But the boy, Lucas, is intent on wooing London, and soon enough London finds that she is cautiously pencilling him into her notes.

There’s more, however, to Lucas’s place in London’s future memories than might initially be conceived, and together the two of them set about unravelling the mystery surrounding London’s only memory of her past: the kidnapping of her brother Jonas.

High-concept novels are prized in the current young adult climate, and Forgotten fits the mould perfectly: it pairs a quasi-paranormal psychological element that Oliver Sacks would happily leap upon with the sort of unusual narrative of mega-hits such as The Time Traveller’s Wife. However, although I appreciated the quiet narrative approach of Forgotten, it’s hard to extricate it from the many similarly themed novels I’ve read of late (What Alice Forgot and The Story of Forgetting just to name a few, and the result for me was a novel that didn’t quite feel as fresh as I might have liked. And when the gimmick that gives the book its appeal is removed, there is in reality a very slight plot to work with. To be honest, this didn’t especially concern me until towards the end of the novel, where the book shifts pace and tone quite dramatically: we move managing London’s daily concerns and general teenage angst to her efforts to solve the mystery of her brother’s kidnapping–and the reveal is a little hard to believe.

Where the book’s strengths lie, then, are in its more mainstream elements. London’s close relationship with her mother is beautifully depicted, as is that with her friend Jamie. London remarks at one point in the book that she is astonished by the fact that Jamie is taking a gamble by maintaining a friendship with London given that Jamie cannot see whether London will betray her in future. But London herself is equally reliant on the past actions and good will of both her mother and Jamie: either could betray her by tampering with her notes or misleading her about the past (although who knows, perhaps London may see such a thing coming). London’s notes are a proxy for her memory–”reading is remembering”, she says–and the fact that she is willing to share these so openly with these two women is quite moving (and perhaps a little naive, as things turn out).

Another of the most striking elements of the novel is around the notion of agency and around wanting to know (or change) what might be conceived of as one’s fate. For London, the future seems to be fixed in the same sort of determinate way as the past is to everyone else. For this reason there’s a sense of the inexorable about her actions, and a sort of risk-free existence: knowing what is to come, she is able to prepare for it as required. But while London sees this as something to be desired, for Jamie it is confining and short-sighted. When London indicates to Jamie that Jamie’s affair with a teacher can only end badly, Jamie begs her friend to let her see for herself how things will turn out. She doesn’t want to know her future as it may reduce the options open to her now at this point of time.

Of course, London’s changing conception of agency and its role in her existence is key in the development of her relationship with Lucas, and of course in the final act of the book. While the character growth involved in this intrigues, it also results in things becoming all too easily solved, and the quiet sense of loss and confusion Patrick has worked to hard to evoke dwindles away as the novel reaches its conclusion.

Forgotten is an admirable, ambitious debut, and there’s much here to like. Patrick writes frankly and warmly, and there’s an honesty here that encourages instant rapport. The characters are beautifully drawn and superbly ambiguous, but like a time travel narrative the conceit of future memory had me picking out loopholes and inconsistencies, and I found myself assessing the book rather than reading it. The ending, too, feels somewhat pat and weak, dragging down an otherwise excellent read.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars (very good)

With thanks to Hardie Grant Egmont for the review copy

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Your turn: what’s your take on books that involve amnesia or unusual types of recollection?