Desert Dark by Sonja Stone

When I heard the book talk at KLA about this novel, I wasn’t particularly thrilled with it. I intended to read it because it’s a KBA nominee but it was towards the bottom of my list (right before The Sun is Also a Star, sorry girls). I don’t really care for realistic fiction and I must have missed the part where the presenter said this was a spy novel.

Guys – THIS IS A SPY NOVEL!! Spy novels are, like, the only realistic fiction outside of historical fiction that I actually like. I’ll read other realistic fiction (like List of Cages by Robin Roe), but I may like those books, but they’re never books I just love. Spy novels are an exception to the rule.

So, as I said, this book is nominated for a Kentucky Bluegrass Award which is why it was even on my radar as something to purchase for the library and also something I should read. It came out in April of 2016, so before my time as a librarian and really before I started reading YA. A sequel, Dark Divide, is set to come out in July 2018, but there’s not even a summary available to read yet so I have nothing to tell you other than this book left just enough opening for a sequel, but didn’t make it completely necessary. I’m not sure if the author intends it to be  duology, trilogy, or full series, either. I guess time will tell.

So… the book. It takes place in present day and the main character, Nadia has experienced a horrible break-up, public humiliation, and simultaneously lost her boyfriend and best friend. She’s deep in the self-pity and slightly angry part of post-dumping that most of us adults will remember from high school. Ugh, I feel your pain, girl.

She comes home from school to find her dad home from work early – odd – and a strange man in their kitchen. This man turns out to be a recruiter for a school so elite that you can’t even apply for it. They find you based on your GPA, answers on standardized tests, extracurricular activities, etc. His name is Marcus Sloane and he invites Nadia to attend this elite Desert Mountain Academy, but she has to let him know by the next day. Nadia is desperate to get away from the high school drama she finds herself in (and the fact that she doesn’t feel like she fits in at all) and begs her parents to let her go. Initially, her mother says “No,” but eventually, Nadia is allowed to attend.

Upon arrival, Nadia learns that this specialized school is a training academy for the CIA BlackOps division and she can’t tell her parents what it is she is doing and learning. Subjects include Diplomacy, Jujitsu, Arabic, and Political Science, just to name a few. Students are grouped into teams of four juniors with a senior as their team leader. Nadia is anxious to meet her team.

Libby is Nadia’s roommate and member of her team. Her previous roommate, Drew, was killed in a car crash, so they say, just a few days ago and Nadia is taking her place. Libby has a thick Southern accent and she hales from Georgia. She’s also a little bit OCD (for real, not in a joking way) but she’s kind. More importantly, she treats Nadia like one of the gang almost immediately. But, through chapters told from Libby’s point of view, the reader learns that there is a dark secret that Libby is hiding from her team.

Alan is another member of Nadia’s team and he immediately dislikes her – she’s behind and will drag the team down. She doesn’t have the physical endurance the rest of the team has and she is not as intelligent as they are. Of course, no one is as smart as Alan, in his opinion. He has a knack for languages and already speaks fluent Arabic and Spanish. Alan is awkward, rude, and completely incapable of lying. He sweats and breaks out into hives anytime he is required to lie and does his best to avoid conversations where he would need to lie. Also, he almost never uses contractions. Alan is aggressive and easily irritable and, like Libby, is hiding something. The reader learns that Alan has mysterious phone conversations with his grandfather, Sada, who encourages him to get closer to Nadia.

Damon is the fourth member of Nadia’s team and he’s Alan’s roommate.  Damon is pretty much the opposite of Alan. He’s handsome and all the girls love him. He has a way of making whoever he’s talking to feel like they are the only person in the room. Damon has a dark past – his father died of a heart attack and his little brother was killed in a car accident. Ever since, Damon, who blames himself, has learned to notice every single detail of whatever room he is in. But this dark past doesn’t seem to get in the way of Damon’s cheeriness. He smiles often and in general has a great time whether he is studying, working out, or eating with his team.

Nadia herself is a the only daughter of her parents. Her father is a criminology professor and her mother stays at home. They  have moved around a lot due to her father not being able to receive tenure at the universities where he has worked. She loves puzzles and learned at an early age how to decode cryptographs for fun. She is a typical teenage girl trying to find her place in the world and she struggles with not fitting in. She is strong, but lacks endurance. She is naturally suspicious of people.

Jack is the last member of the team and he is the leader. Jack is a senior and he is devoted to his school and his country. He has a tough relationship with his father and is much closer with his mother. His father is a doctor and believes there is no better profession. He is disappointed in Jack for not following in his foot steps. Jack leads his team through survival training and helps them arrange for tutors if necessary. Jack is clearly a great student and everyone loves him. Nadia falls for him almost instantly.

In one of Jack’s chapters, the reader learns he has been approached by the Dean of the school. Dean Wolfe tells Jack that Drew (Libby’s old roommate) wasn’t killed in a car accident, but she was murdered. There’s a double agent on campus and it might just be Nadia (the reader is never made to believe this story line, but knows all along that Nadia is innocent). Dean Wolfe asks Jack to get close to Nadia to find out the truth and if she is the traitor, to find out who her handler is.

This is another story that is action packed with a side of romance. The characters are all very intriguing and the reader is left guessing who the double agent is up until the end. I will admit, I had an idea of who it was about two-thirds of the way through the story, but I didn’t want to believe it, so I told myself it was some character I hadn’t met yet! As with most spy novels, there are many twists and turns as the story unfolds and we are left questioning who to trust.

This could be considered a coming-of-age story because Nadia definitely comes into her own. She learns who she could be, she finds her strength and intellect tested, she finds true friends and some enemies, and she finds some romance as well. But I think all YA books have some element of that because the main characters are all teenagers and that’s exactly what is means to be a teen.

Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton

 Oh my goodness. This book. Please if you have not read it, do not read this review/journal entry because there will be SPOILERS!

Rebel of the Sands is the first book in this series and is nominated for a Kentucky Bluegrass Award for 9th-12th grades. The book focuses on Amani who lives in a desert town in the middle of nowhere. It’s an impoverished place set in a parallel universe to ours, but it’s very much like the Middle East. Character descriptions are very Arabic as are many of the names and some of the customs (women are second class citizens with no rights to property or over their own lives). This is a magical realm, but one in which magic is all but dead and gone. First Beings like Djinni and Buraki and never sen anymore, though you can find peddlers selling “Djinni blood” with claims that it will cure all your ills.

Amani is living with her mother’s sister and her husband and his harem and many children. They are not wealthy, but own a general store, so they do alright. Amani’s mother was hanged for killing her father and so she must live with her aunt and uncle until she weds. One day, she overhears a horrid conversation between her aunt and uncle – they are arguing over how much longer Amani must stay there. It is clear that her aunt dislikes her and especially dislikes the way the uncle looks at Amani. The uncle says she must be married and if that doesn’t happen soon, he will marry her.

Amani is horrified and devises a plan to runaway. She sneaks out to the pistol pit in the next town over to compete for a large sum of money. This will buy her a train ticket to a large city where she believes her mother’s other sister to still live. Things don’t go according to plan though, and Amani barely escapes a riot that breaks out. She returns home in the early hours of the morning and sneaks back in before anyone awakes.

Later that day, a foreigner whom she met at the pistol pit shows up at her uncle’s store where she is working. He has been shot and needs a place to hide. Amani comes to his aid, removes the bullet and stitches the wound. He reveals his name is Jin and she asks to go with him when he flees. He refuses and amidst a distraction (the appearance of a buraki), he takes off without her.

Jin returns later in the day, presumably because he feels guilty for leaving her behind and they ride off on the now stolen buraki together.

The story doesn’t end here and I’m not going to give it ALL away. Jin and Amani travel through the desert on horseback, on train, and by foot before coming across the Rebel Prince. They join together with the Prince and his companions where Amani learns that she is not as ordinary as she believed herself to be. She also learned that magic is not as dead and gone as she thought it to be.

I will leave it there so I don’t spoil EVERYTHING for you, so please get this book and read it! Look for the second and third addition to this series, too!

This book is fantastic for YA readers and lovers of fantasy. The story will draw you in with intrigue and suspicion right from the start and it has great themes of social justice and political power. I love the way Hamilton writes a story about oppression and rebellion without it becoming trite or stale. And although the main character is female and the author focuses on the plight of women and girls in this world, male readers will connect with Jin, the Rebel Prince, and others throughout the story. It’s an action packed read with a dash of romance that will appeal to most readers. Teachers could also use elements of this book to discuss character creation and development (as I will be doing in my book club next month).

I will be spending three weeks discussing this book with my high school book club that I lead, so I will post my resources here when I have them.

 

 

The Reader by Traci Chee

The Reader is book one in the Sea of Ink and Gold Series and it has been nominated for a Kentucky Bluegrass Award in the 9th-12th grade level.

This book is similar to others that I’ve read but it is also very different from books I’ve read before. It’s a fantasy set in a dystopian world where there are no books. *GULP* No books??

There is no written word. Period. Signs use pictures to convey names of bars, shops, etc. Language is well used which sets this apart from The Giver or The List. Stories are told and they are often considered the most important part of who you are – the stories you leave behind. To the point where there’s a scene later in the book where a Captain of some notoriety enters a bar where people are pretending to be him and he gets rather angry because they are stealing his history.

Sefia is our main character and the book starts with her and her “aunt” Nin on the run. Sefia messed up and was caught stealing and the red coats which were already on their tail for another reason are really after them. Through the book, Sefia learns about herself, her parents, and the darker secrets of the world they inhabit.

I love this story’s emphasis on the power of the written word and the power of a reader to be able to travel to distant lands. I also love the way legends and stories are given a lot of weight. You are what you leave behind. Because there are no books, there are no ledgers of your property or your deeds, the things you do must be worthy of storytelling in order for anyone to remember you. There is no afterlife, you cease to exist and this is the only way to continue on after death.

I honestly CANNOT wait to read the next book in the series, The Speaker. And because this is a KBA nominee, I will eventually be presenting in to my high school book club. When I do, I will make any resources I create available here.

If you haven’t read the book, but plan to, I’d advise not reading past this point…

*Spoiler Alert*

Nin gets caught – not by a red coat, but by someone else entirely. Sefia knows this person by the smell they leave behind. I’m sure all you Supernatural fans are thinking of the sulfur left behind by a demon. Instead, there’s the odor of copper in the air when this woman is around. Sefia is afraid and so she doesn’t emerge from her hiding place to save or protect Nin (something she regrets for most of the book).

After Nin’s capture, Sefia spends the following year honing her skills as a hunter, a thief, a tracker, and a fugitive. She hardly sleeps and when she does, it’s high up in a tree in a hammock. Then, one day, she comes across the camp of “impressors” [Read: really really bad guys who kidnap young boys to train them to fight gladiator-style.] Sefia sets free the boy who’s been trapped in a crate and encourages him to run away. Except… he doesn’t. He tags along with Sefia, mimicking her movements, learning to feed himself, to hunt, to walk, to sleep, to bathe, and eventually… to trust.

This boy though, who is approximately the same age as Sefia, doesn’t speak. Not one word. He mimes and gestures and they come up with a sign language all their own to communicate. And since he cannot speak, he cannot give her his name, so she names him Archer because of his proficiency with a bow.

Long story short, we learn that Sefia’s parents (one died of illness, the other murdered) were once part of the Guard. Her father was the apprentice librarian and her mother was an Assassin. One of the best, as it were. They were part of a larger group of assassins, soldiers, librarians, and apprentices who kept The Book. They could read it, they could understand it, and through the written word, could control a magic that Sefia learns she also possesses. Sefia carries around The Book (unbeknownst to her) and teachers herself to read it and to make the markings (letters) that it contains. She slowly begins to harness her ability to see into the past and manipulate the present. She learns that killing is sometimes necessary, but never easy, and never a choice you can unmake. She also learns that the people who took Nin, killed her father, and are after her were also a part of the Guard and were best friends with her parents before they left with The Book.

This first installment in the series concludes with Sefia and Archer finding Nin, witnessing her murder, and uncovering some of what the future holds for them. They face a choice – do they succumb to fate? Or do they make their own path?

City of Spies by Nina Berry

I guess this is going to be part reading journal, part book review. And I ought to warn you, there’ll be spoilers.

I just finished reading City of Spies by Nina Berry and I both loved and hated it. It’s the sequel to The Notorious Pagan Jones which I adored. Both books are spy novels set in the early 1960s and star teenager Pagan Jones.

In this book, Devin Black asks newly emancipated Pagan if she will work for M16 and the CIA again. They – no he – needs her to verify the identity of Dr. Von Albrecht. They believe him to be a Nazi war criminal who once visited Pagan’s mother when Pagan was much younger. Pagan agrees, but to work for Devin, that means she must accept a movie script and work in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This would normally be fine, except the script is terrible, her co-star is a sexist pig, and her director is an old-fashioned hotshot who is also sexist.

Pagan and her friend Mercedes go to Buenos Aires and discover that the city is full of spies (hence the title) and that the local teens are all segregated into rivaling gangs. There’s the CIA, M16, the Stasi, and the Moussad. There’s a gang of German teens, Jewish teens, and indios (or native Argentinians). Pagan must uncover the true identity of Dr. Von Albrecht while maintaining her cover and keeping Mercedes from harm.

As usual, for Pagan, trouble finds her and although she manages to identify Von Albrecht as the man who visited her mother all those years ago, she also breaks the heart of his daughter, Emma, and endangers her dear friend Mercedes.

There’s a lot plot twists and turns – Pagan discovers she is being followed by Alaric Vogel, a character from the first book who is a new member of the East German Stasi. Pagan attempts to entice Devin Black, which was apparently unnecessary because he loved her all along. Once Von Albrecht is apprehended, Pagan learns that he will not be punished, but will instead be enlisted to work with the CIA building nuclear weapons, her conscience gets the better of her and she turns him over to the Moussad. Devin finds out that she has down this and he considers it a betrayal, not just of their country, but of him. He leaves her… which is why I hated the book. It was all going well until the last 10 pages!!

I have never understood why authors have to pull the rug out from under their characters at the last chapter. I’m sure Pagan and Devin will both be fine (especially since they are fictional), but it broke my heart to see them part ways so unceremoniously. I totally understand that Devin was angry and that Pagan had broken his trust… but things like that can be overcome. Love is enough to get couples through those kinds of betrayals. But apparently Devin didn’t think so and Pagan didn’t try to dissuade him from leaving her.

So it ends, with all the plot twists knotted up neatly and the two main characters unhappily apart. Overall, it was a good duology, the story was intriguing and held my interest (but I’m a glutton for spy novels and anything remotely related to the Holocaust). I would just have changed the ending.