[sample sip.] Johnson, E.K.: A Thousand Nights

sample sip. is a tagline for the knee jerk, i can't wait until the release day thoughts i have right after finishing an arc. it is not a full or final review. nothing is full or final here. except for my patience with myself.

A Thousand Nights
Hitting Shelves: October 6, 2015
Disney*Hyperion

Lo-Melkhiin killed three hundred girls before he came to her village, looking for a wife. When she sees the dust cloud on the horizon, she knows he has arrived. She knows he will want the loveliest girl: her sister. She vows she will not let her be next.

And so she is taken in her sister's place, and she believes death will soon follow. Lo-Melkhiin's court is a dangerous palace filled with pretty things: intricate statues with wretched eyes, exquisite threads to weave the most beautiful garments. She sees everything as if for the last time.But the first sun rises and sets, and she is not dead. Night after night, Lo-Melkhiin comes to her and listens to the stories she tells, and day after day she is awoken by the sunrise. Exploring the palace, she begins to unlock years of fear that have tormented and silenced a kingdom. Lo-Melkhiin was not always a cruel ruler. Something went wrong.

Far away, in their village, her sister is mourning. Through her pain, she calls upon the desert winds, conjuring a subtle unseen magic, and something besides death stirs the air.

Back at the palace, the words she speaks to Lo-Melkhiin every night are given a strange life of their own. Little things, at first: a dress from home, a vision of her sister. With each tale she spins, her power grows. Soon she dreams of bigger, more terrible magic: power enough to save a king, if she can put an end to the rule of a monster.

 
Goodness.

The utter wealth of this book.

I am at a loss right now for the right words to string together – which is just as well, as I don’t trust myself right now not to spoil everything.

And that is a beautiful thing in itself. This is A Thousand Nights, after all: the timeless classic, the story of the girl who won back her life with carefully woven stories and well-placed cliffhangers. It might seem as though, after years of retelling and renditions, there’s nothing left to spoil.

But you haven’t read this particular story yet.

Here’s what I am allowing myself to tell you:

1. A Thousand Nights is gorgeous. I am not Middle Eastern, but I have shared a meal with Middle Eastern friends, and I could clearly picture the plates, the food, the meats and breads and the pinched morsels between oily fingers. I could smell the spices wafting off the pages, see the goat herds and the humble tents and the bright threads used in a bride’s wedding gown. The language is very carefully chosen and it paints a broad, vibrant world.

2. A Thousand Nights is not about the stories. It is about the woman who uses her wits, so brilliantly, to see the light of day. It is about the woman who forges alliances with those who are worried to let her into their hearts, because they are so aware of the fact that in the morning, she may be another forgotten name as their ruler sets out in quest of a new bride. It is about the woman who is wise, and determined – to set her world to rights, to be strong, and to see the next day with her own eyes.

3. A Thousand Nights is about the women. It is about the women who love devotedly, who sacrifice and lay siege and worship for the sake of each other. It is about sisters and sister-wives and mothers and daughters. It is about protecting young girls and learning at the knees of older women. If there is anything I will likely wax poetic about, beyond the language, it is the women of this world. It is the type of representation and love we should expect from every young adult novel, and exactly what we deserve.  

4. A Thousand Nights is not only woven brilliantly - it is woven with respect.  A world that is coded brown, and blatantly so, is full of characters who hold their agency firmly. They live, they marry, and they converse without a black cloud of potential stereotypes being unleashed over their heads. It’s unspoiled, because it’s done with care.

5. A Thousand Nights lingers even after you've turned the last page. For much of the reading experience, it may even seem like a quiet title. So much rests in the world-building and the relationships and little acts of magic that are steps forward to larger scenes and crucial defiance. And that is what firmly roots it into your mind. Every little moment is a marvel that leads to a grander denouement. 

If you listen long enough to the whispers, you will hear the truth.

Until then, I will tell you this: the world is made safe by a woman. 

E.K. Johnson has firmly settled herself into my list of favorite authors. I cannot wait to see what new stories she will spin, and I cannot wait for you to read this and be able to discuss it with me.

   
Full review (and gushing, and an inevitable discourse on why it's so important to write diversity right) to come. 

I would be remiss to end this without thanking my lovely friend Julie, who, when she heard I hadn't been able to snag one on the first day of BEA, finished her own copy and gave it to me. Thank you so much, Julie!
 

[sample sip.] Nijkamp, Marieke: This Is Where It Ends

sample sip. is a tagline for the knee jerk, i can't wait until the release day thoughts i have right after finishing an arc. it is not a full or final review. nothing is full or final here. except for my patience with myself.

Hitting Shelves: January 2016 (yes, i'm way ahead of the game with this one)
Sourcebooks Fire

10:00 a.m.
The principal of Opportunity, Alabama's high school finishes her speech, welcoming the entire student body to a new semester and encouraging them to excel and achieve.

10:02 a.m.
The students get up to leave the auditorium for their next class.

10:03
The auditorium doors won't open.

10:05
Someone starts shooting.

Told over the span of 54 harrowing minutes from four different perspectives, terror reigns as one student's calculated revenge turns into the ultimate game of survival.

Now, I admit to being a wee bit, shall we say, testy, when it comes to Tumblr tags.

Well, more like, commonly used Tumblr tags.

(Which to say, if you use the words, guys why aren't we talking about, or its twin, can we talk about, or THIS NEEDS MORE NOTES BOOST BOOST BOOST - I will reach for my teacup, take a soothing, silent sip with my eyes firmly clenched shut.

And scroll by.

No. I'm kidding. I just do that for the Benedict Cumberbatch posts now.

Goodness only knows that man doesn't need my boosting.)

But, my knee-jerk, first things first thought on closing This Is Where It Ends could be summed up in three words.

"I'm not okay."

And that, I think, is okay. Because this is a book that ends on a note that you should absolutely, 100% not be okay with.

This Is Where It Ends is deeply, darkly visceral and gripping. It takes you by the throat and tugs you downward into emotional compromise and utter panic. It all too realistically portrays every parent or guardian's nightmare and the event that every student cannot imagine occurring on their campus, to their friends, in their lifetime.

In the span of 54 minutes - just 54 - every student and faculty member present in the auditorium of Opportunity High School, Alabama, is fighting for their lives against one boy, one of their own. Only now, instead of being their brother or classmate or ex-boyfriend...

He's the boy with the gun.

I mean, the summary alone should tell you what's coming. I'm not sure how I still was so detached from what was coming at the very beginning, but Marieke makes sure to acclimate you to the assembled cast. They are ordinary, wonderfully diverse American teens. They are bored by the principal's default sermon to usher in the new semester, worried about younger siblings or fraying relationships or trouble at home.

They are all expecting to stand up, gather their belongings and file off to their relevant classrooms.

And that's what starts to drive this home, as things go from bad to...I don't know, is there something past utterly wrong and tormenting? What frightens us about a school shooting is that it can happen anywhere. On my campus, we talk in orientation about what we should do, where we should go, who we should listen to. We're introduced to the emergency phones, the fire escapes, the concept of being calm, quiet and orderly no matter what catastrophe has us in its clutches.

But there's a difference between hearing about that and being thrust headlong into it.

And, though everyone in This Is Where It Ends reacts differently, I had to tear up and press my fist to my mouth for all of them. Because you never know how you will react. You never know what action may be the last you take on - even if it's something that will make you a hero.

The narrative is beautiful, equalizing and real. I gave a particularly watery smile in a moment where Tomas and Fareed, best friends and brothers no matter what - in a situation where it truly, deeply counts and cuts into you - are doing their best to rescue their classmates, friends and siblings.

Even in that moment, waiting for some sort of outside help and trying to form a solid strategy, Tomas spares a thought for Fareed and how, with his Afghani heritage, accent and Muslim faith, he may seem a threat to the police officers rather than a hero:

Next thing, they'll mark him as a suspect. It wouldn't be the first time. Things happen in the school, and he gets questioned, even when it doesn't concern him at all. I hate it.

You know me. Even when my heart is in my throat and I'm turning pages as fast as I can without cutting myself, I've got that eye for Muslim representation.

I found myself getting very reluctantly attached to all the teens, but Fareed in particular had me closing my eyes and telepathically wiring messages to Marieke's brain: Marieke, I love you. You wouldn't do this to me, right? ...Right?

(For all the scientifically minded, the fact that Marieke has shown no sign of receiving said messages concludes that we have yet to break the telepathic barrier.

Or maybe it's just me and you should get a better test subject.

Anyway - and avert your eyes, because this may or may not be a spoiler! - she didn't do it to me. She's evil. But not that evil.)

I think the thing that hit me the hardest about This Is Where It Ends is that skillful blend of tragedy and hope, darkness and light. Some of it felt a little strange to me - a first kiss in the middle of worrying over a wounded, potentially dying sibling, for instance - but I'm holding off on the judgey side because, again, who the heck knows what they'd do in a particular situation when they don't know what else is going to happen?

I certainly don't. And I have plenty of witnesses that can confirm that I don't claim to know everything. Okay? Okay.

But, overall...the ending. It just catches in your throat. Nothing is going to be okay. I started the preview off on that note. I'm telling you right now, guys. Nothing is going to be okay.

Newtown happened. The Aurora shooting happened. Columbine happened. Everyday, there's something vicious and violent that bites down into our world and rips families and friends and loved ones apart, leaving us to grieve with no proper answers and no promise that we'd ever feel whole or healed again.

It's not okay. It's never okay. But one way or another, we will never forget. And we will never lose hope.

"We will remember them tomorrow. We will remember them for all our tomorrows. And there will be many tomorrows; there will be thousands of them. So let's make them good ones. We are Opportunity, and we will not be afraid.

We are Opportunity, and we will live."

Full review to come. 

I will warn you, though, since Ashleigh Paige warned me...there will be tears. Lots of tears. Invest in a nice, sturdy, loving box of Kleenex. You'll thank me later.

[sample sip.] Ness, Patrick: The Rest of Us Just Live Here

sample sip. is a tagline for the knee-jerk, i can't wait until the release date thoughts i have right after finishing an arc. it's not a full or final review. nothing is full or final here. except for my patience with myself.

Hitting Shelves: August 27, 2015
Walker Books

What if you weren’t the Chosen One?

What if you’re not the one who’s so often the hero in YA fiction; who’s supposed to fight the zombies, or the soul-eating ghosts, or whatever this new thing is, with the blue lights and the death? What if you were like Mikey? Who just wants to graduate and go to prom and maybe finally work up the courage to ask Henna out before someone goes and blows up the high school. Again. Because sometimes there are problems bigger than this week’s end of the world and sometimes you just have to find the extraordinary in your ordinary life. Even if your best friend might just be the God of mountain lions...

Well. This was a wild ride from start to finish.

Before I start off with the rambling, I'm going to do something very unconventional. Not that anything I've written here has ever been conventional. I'm dedicating this post, like it's a finished manuscript or something I plan to publish.

I'm all full of feels right now, you see, and it feels appropriate.

In the middle of finals and BEA prep and goodness knows what else is currently slipping my mind, I owe my even taking a break and reading this title to my best friend Moira. She asked me if I'd heard of The Rest of Us Just Live Here, I admitted that I'd just been approved for an e-ARC, and for the first time since I first started attending BEA and actually called her at one point while waiting in line to meet Libba Bray, just to ground myself in the midst of all the...BEA-ness, she asked me if I could bring a copy back for her.

Just this ARC.

You guys, Moira is the Jared to my Mike. Or maybe, the Mel to my Mike would be more appropriate. She's like family, and she's better because I got to choose her. (Let's just ignore the fact there are fundamental differences between me and Mike, and Moira and Jared. You get the idea.) She's my voice of reason, the one who often uncurls me when I've become a fisted wad of anxiety. So, far be it from me to deny her a future possibility of an ARC for review when I had a copy on my Kindle.

So I started reading it right then and there.

And thus, it's all Moira's fault. Like most things are. Including this blog.

Now, first things first.

I am a ridiculously picky contemporary reader. I've talked about this in other posts and I think at least one guest post and to the air in front of me, but ever since I was actually a teen (like, circa 2007-ish), it's been really hard to whet my reading appetite with anything that wasn't fantasy or historical or involved dragons and heroines with shiny swords.

That said - The Rest of Us Just Live Here is the first book to have me hanging on every word since probably How to Say Goodbye in Robot.

(How to Say Goodbye in Robot is the holy grail of contemporary favorites for me. It hasn't been knocked off its pedestal yet).

You can probably already tell by the summary, but Patrick Ness is a pretty cool sort of author-guy and he decided that writing about the Chosen One(s) isn't as exciting as writing about all the people who have to deal with living in the same world as the Chosen One(s) and their invaluable quests/prophecies/what have you.

So, we're in a small town in the state of Washington, where there are vampires falling in love with humans and vice versa and kids being chosen to save their world and the school constantly being demolished by some catastrophe or other...

And we're following the lives of a group of friends who are discussing the new boy in class and their homework projects and graduation.

It's like being in Forks and not having it be all about Bella. (Seriously, this town reminds me a lot of Forks, which I'm not sure was meant on purpose or not.) Or, maybe, being at Hogwarts and not getting to hear about the Golden Trio except in snatches of rumor and third-person eyewitnesses - if Hogwarts were a high school where indie kids are the ones constantly having brushes with danger and everyone else tries to look out for themselves and worry about the important stuff like, you know, that big argument with a parent and anxiety over life as we know it and painful, deep, unrequited love.

As if that wasn't juicy enough in the best way, the chapter headings. I could write a whole, full review on the chapter headings. Just try me.

(I'm already sitting on my hands because I'm trying to remind myself that this is a placeholder review and a reminder to myself to actually review the whole thing when it releases for once, and I really want to because I was so fascinated with the possibility of discussing nitty-gritty details and I might even do a trial vlog for you guys, that's how hyped up I am.)

To me, the biggest selling points you can use on someone to recommend this book are the little "meanwhile, back in the fraught life of our current Chosen One" intervals you see in every chapter heading (it's the greatest thing), and the dialogue. Ness absolutely has his teen speak down and it's all very real and there's humor and there's also angst (though some angst was more hard-hitting to me than others, but remember that I'm not and have never been a teenage boy, so it might be very powerful for them) and as a result, some of the lines in this title are solid gold.

"Which Finn?" my sister says. "Aren't all the indie kids called Finn?"

"I think there are a couple Dylans," Henna says, "and a Nash."

"There are two Satchels, I know that," I say. "A boy Satchel and a girl Satchel."

(I'm sorry if no one else thinks that's worth a few karats. But I did. You can chalk it up to finals taxing my nerves, if you want.)

And, if all of that wasn't good enough, there's diversity. I guess some people would call it "casual diversity". I call it life. Henna's biracial. Jared's half-Jewish. There are enough people alluded to, here and there, for you to know that THIS IS REAL LIFE AND THERE ARE DIFFERENT, REAL PEOPLE HERE.

There are also discussions about eating disorders and OCD and anxiety and how it feels to constantly want reassurance and feel like a needy, greedy mess because of it. I totally felt that, and I'm saving the quote that made a lump rise in my throat for the actual review, because I'm going too far here already.

And, just so no one comes after me with the pitchforks once they get a copy of this and say, "You really oversold this one in that ARC sneak peek/reactionary "I just came home from university and sat down and wrote this in half an hour when I should have been studying" post of yours, Kaye!"...

You know what, guys? It's not positively perfect in every single way. I can admit that, and that might just be my bias as a picky reader. I'll have to talk with you about all of this and all the questions I still have and what I originally expected and how not getting all of it was absolutely okay at a later date, but I'm absolutely aware not everyone will like this.

But I think you'll find it a little hard not to.

At least a teensy bit.

(And if all of this coming from me doesn't make you at least curious?

Try reading it to the very end and seeing that nice, lovely blurb from that nice, lovely person known as Angie Manfredi. I cannot say how much I trust that lady enough. She's good people, and she's good people who knows her YA titles.

So, if you won't take it from me, take it from Angie. Who, you know, is a librarian and full-fledged professional while I'm still here procrastinating on papers and having passionate outbursts about post-colonial South Asia.)

Full review to come.