It's a little late in coming, but I felt like sharing a few of my favorites from last year.
I didn't read as many fairy tale books last year. I'll have to do better next year.
However, I did meet plenty of interesting characters. There were 8 different orphans, an amnesiac hero, a girl without a hand, and a boy without a hand, a girl with wolf ears, and another girl with cat whiskers. I read books with giant monsters, witches, vampires, werewolves, pirates, cyborgs, ghosts, evil stepmothers, and puppets. I attended a circus in the middle of the night, traveled to several parallel worlds, and saved the world several times over.
Phew. Onto the awards:
Winnner of the Longest Title:
Flora's Fury: How a Girl of Spirit and a Red Dog confounds her friends, astounds her enemies and learns the importance of Packing Light by Ysabeau Wilce
runner up: Kalpa Imperial: the Greatest Empire that Never Was by Angelica Gorodischer, translated by Ursula Le Guin
Somehow I always read a book with a long title, that I particularly enjoy. I never plan for it, I don't go out looking for books with long titles, it just happens.
Best Monster/Giant Hunter:
Barbara from I kill Giants by Joe Kelly and J.M. Ken Niimura
Runner up: Rossamond from Lamplighter (Book 2 of the Monster Blood Tattoo Series) by D. M. Cornish
Killing monsters is rather fairy-taleish. The graphic novel 'I kill Giants' has a classic, familiar fairy-tale feel to it, but still manages to be its own story too. This one also caught me off guard. A powerful tale of a fifth-grade girl who fights giants, from the bully Taylor, to the one living upstairs in her house. She's preparing for the "giant" coming any day now. She makes traps for it, she studies ancient texts about giants and the Titans so she will be ready to fight. Don't we all fight giants in some way?
Winner of the FlipFlop Award
Kylie Galen from the 'Shadow Falls Series' by C.C. Hunter
Seriously, girl pick one guy or the other. Either the hot werewolf or the gorgeous fey, you can't keep flipping back and forth between them. It's making me crazy. I am so over love-triangles. Give me a good solid romance between two people. That is hard enough.
Runner Up: Beatrice Shakespeare Smith from Eyes like Stars by Lisa Mantchev. Check her out at the Theatre Illuminate.
Favorite Twist in a Story . . . goes to Absolute Midnight by Clive Barker
Runner Up: Chime by Franny Billingsley
I try not to give away secrets here, at least not the really good ones. I hate to spoil good secrets. That's why I can't explain the reason for these winners. All I can tell you is these two stories have twists in them that really surprised me. Sometimes I can guess where a story is going, I can see a twist coming, but sometimes I'm wrong. Sometimes the story or a character does something completely unexpected.
Best Story within a Story: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
runner up: The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
Most Memorable Opening Line: Railsea by China Meville
"This is a tale of a bloodstained boy."
Winner of the most resourceful Orphan
Rossamund from The Foundling: Book 1 of the Monster Blood Tattoo Series by D. M. Cornish
Runner up: Sham from Railsea by China Meville
Orphans are everywhere, I realize it's convenient but even so there are always surrogate parents popping up somewhere in the story. We can't ever escape them. Some orphans manage better than others, some are more interesting than others. A lot happens to Rossumond, to start it off he was given a girl's name and to make it worse he lives in a world filled with monsters.
The world D.M. Cornish creates is fascinating, with its vinegar sea, fortified cities and towns, the people all dress in fancy tri-cone hats and wigs and frock coats. It's like a Charles Dicksen story set in a RPG fantasy world. The monsters are real and scary, yet it so much more complex than that. While Rossumond's journey takes him from the orphanage to the home of the Lamplighters, he learns how some humans can be cruel and mean, and that not all monsters are evil. Don't be too intimidated by the size of these books, because half of it is a dictionary/encyclopedia about the world Cornish has created. You don't need to study it, Cornish weaves in the details effortlessly, think of them as extras.
Third annual Worse Parents Award
Winner of the Worst Father of the year goes to . . . Hector Brown, also known as Prospero the Magician, from The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
runner up Bill Quakenbush from Absolute Midnight by Clive Barker
Just as orphans abound, so are parents that shouldn't be allowed to be parents. They're neglectful, abusive, cruel, and inescapable. The orphans have it easy, if you ask me. The ones who really have to struggle are the ones like Celia and Candy, with parents like Hector Brown and Bill Quakenbush. Having parents like these - that force you to learn magic so you can play a mysterious game, in Celia's case, or try to steal your magic with some weird soul-sucking machine, in Candy's instance - they make you wish you were an orphan.
Well, there you have it. I could probably assign an award or prize to every book I read last year, but I won't.
Here's my sorta review of Night Circus.
