You should be reading series: Say HELLO to your newest fantasy obsession sweethearts, an awesome writer named Alaya Dawn Johnson is knocking at your door!!!
(Book and Author descriptions from Amazon.com
Who is Alaya Dawn Johnson? Alaya Johnson lives, writes, and cooks South Indian food in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2004 with a BA in East Asian Languages and Cultures, and has lived and traveled extensively in Japan. Her debut novel, the young adult fantasy Racing the Dark, was praised by School Library Journal and Publishers Weekly. Her novella Shard of Glass was reprinted in the anthology The Year’s Best Fantasy #6 and was singled out for good reviews by Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Her work has also appeared in The Year’s Best Science Fiction #11 and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror #18.
1. Racing The Dark: Spirit Binder Series
Like the other women of her island, Lana expected to become a diver, harvesting jewels from a native fish. But during her initiation dive, she finds a blood-red jewel that marks her as someone with power. Though she hides the jewel, the mark it represents will drive her away from her home island and into an apprenticeship with a one-armed witch. Alaya Dawn Johnson has created an unforgettable coming-of-age story set in a world where wielding the power of magic requires understanding the true meaning of sacrifice.
In The Burning City, Alaya Dawn Johnson continues the trilogy begun with her debut, Racing the Dark, delving deeper into the world of magic wielded by women who understand the dark trade-offs of power and sacrifice. Lana, the heroine, has become the black ange l —a harbinger of destruction unheard of in the islands for 500 years. Nui’ahi, the sleeping volcano of the great city Essel, has erupted. In the chaos, the city is reshaping itself and violence threatens from all corners. A rebel movement has formed in the destroyed heart of the city, determined to oust Kohaku, the mad Mo’i of Essel. Lana wants no part of the rebels’ cause — the death spirit still chases her, and the great witch Akua has kidnapped Lana’s mother. But the more Lana looks for her mother, the more she is drawn into the city’s political conflicts. As Kohaku descends deeper into madness, determined to subdue the city by any means necessary, his wife has run away to the fire temple, where she too is slowly converted to the rebel’s cause. When long-running tensions spill over into civil war, Lana must make her hardest decision yet: her mother’s life, or a city’s freedom?
3. Moonshine
Zephyr Hollis is an underfed, overzealous social activist who teaches night school to the underprivileged of the Lower East Side. Strapped for cash, Zephyr agrees to help a student, the mysterious Amir, who proposes she use her charity worker cover to bring down a notorious vampire mob boss. What he doesn’t tell her is why. Soon enough she’s tutoring a child criminal with an angelic voice, dodging vampires high on a new blood-based street drug, and trying to determine the real reason behind Amir’s request—not to mention attempting to resist his dark, inhuman charm.
4. Wicked City
In Wicked City, the page-turning follow up to Moonshine, it’s summer in the city and most vampires are drunk on the blood-based intoxicant Faust. The mayor has tied his political fortunes to legalizing the brew, but Zephyr Hollis has dedicated herself to the cause of Faust prohibition—at least when she isn’t knocking back sidecars in speakeasies.
But the game changes when dozens of vampires end up in the city morgue after drinking Faust. Are they succumbing to natural causes, or have they been deliberately poisoned? When an anonymous tip convinces the police of her guilt, Zephyr has to save her reputation, her freedom and possibly her life. Someone is after her blood—and this time it isn’t a vampire.In a New York City populated by flappers and vampires, debutantes and djinn, it’s best to watch your back. You never know what’s lurking in the shadows.The battle is on for a magic realm! Will you join the fearsome goblins or the dangerous elves? Can you escape all their tricks and traps and find your way home? Every TWISTED JOURNEYS® graphic novel lets YOU control the action by choosing which path to follow. Which twists and turns will your journey take?
Hundreds of years into the future, in a post-apocalyptic world, there’s a beautiful city in a steel-and-glass pyramid, perched on a Brazilian bay. It’s Palmares Tres, founded and run by women after men made a wreck of the world, and named for a famous 17th century city founded by escaped slaves. The city runs on a combination of futuristic technology and ancient, bloody ritual: Every five years, a Summer King is elected by the people and sacrificed at the end of the year. Alaya Dawn Johnson’s gorgeous young adult novel The Summer Prince follows two teenage Palmarinas, June Costa and her best friend, Gil, as they navigate the treacherous intersections between art, politics, technology and love. In this scene, June remembers being 8 years old and seeing her first Summer King die. The Summer Prince will be published March 1.
(Click the link for a snippet of the novel)
#ya
Conceived in an effort to more judiciously represent ethnic and cultural diversity in YA fiction, this provocative collection, edited by SF author Buckell and literary agent Monti explores dystopian themes through multiple lenses. Instead of the usual white faces, the stories feature protagonists from a broader spectrum, all doing their best to survive in hostile or frightening settings. While there’s not a single misfire in this anthology, particular works stand out. Ellen Oh’s “The Last Day” takes place in a world torn apart by a decades-long war, while K. Tempest Bradford’s “The Uncertainty Principle” sees time travel constantly altering one girl’s surroundings. Malinda Lo’s “The Good Girl” is a prickly love story set against the desire for a better life, and Cindy Pon’s “Blue Skies” is almost painful in its longing for escape. Not only do these stories feature racially diverse casts, set all over the world or in space, some have gay and lesbian protagonists, giving readers plenty with which to identify. Happy endings are infrequent, but readers will eagerly immerse themselves in each vividly constructed world.
(Via like everyone on Twitter.)
a rec list of subjectively awesome under-appreciated YA bc all i get on tumblr is john green and thg and lately the mortal instruments and there is good YA i swear
- White Cat by Holly Black: modern day urban fantasy noir with a MOC what else do you need ETA: HOLLY BLACK IN GENERAL OK
- Liar by Justine Larbalestier: a beautiful mindfuck of truths you won’t believe by a bi WOC narrator
- The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater: for an understanding between souls who eat and breath man-eating horses of the sea some like to call romance (do not go in expecting the hunger games whatever the description reads)
- Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey: SUBVERTED PERSEPHONE - not explicitly but still. this book is entrenched in its New Zealand setting and built entirely on Maori myth
- Bartimaeus trilogy by Jonathan Stroud: it’s abt magicians and stuff and w/e ACKNOWLEDGEMENT THAT THAT THEIR POWERS COME FROM SLAVERY AND BARTIMAEUS XEMSELF JUST READ
- The Demon’s Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan: Supernatural set in the UK and this amoral pair of brothers get blackmailed by a pink-haired girl (who eventually becomes the heroine yay!) into helping her brother.
- Lips Touch: Three Times by Laini Taylor: a collection of short stories based on Western fairyfolk written to wring out tears of awe.
- Skin Hunger by Kathleen Duey: there are no words [tw: torture, abuse, it’s extremely disturbing so prepare for everything tbh]
- Star Crossed by Elizabeth C. Bunce: a YA ASOFAI where religious sects fight for the throne centered on a thief with blood on her hands and magic in her veins. (it’s also a perfect winter read.)
- Ash by Malinda Lo: a lesbian retelling of Cinderella and this is intensely biased as i have a crush on cinderella’s love interest
- Eon by Alison Goodman: i can’t say anything for its authenticity but its world is based on ancient China and is a good deal less offensive than other ancient china recs i’ve seen, so for a change of setting.
- Devil’s Kiss by Sarwat Chadda: also set in the UK, it stars a Middle-Eastern girl Templer Knight raised in the business.
- Rampant by Diana Peterfreund: killer unicorns and the cloister of huntresses who kill them. that is all
- Everything by Courtney Summers: her protagonists range from the terrible to the flawed and it’s a breath of fresh air in a genre where all main characters must be Good. [tw: for some transmisogyny in cracked up to be]
idk if she’s truly underappreciated on tumblr but i feel like no one reads her anyway and this is my list so- Everything by Melina Marchetta: it’s the soul nourishment you didn’t know you needed. i advise you buy half her books if buying bc you’ll be lost after the first one.
Proposed YA Hugo Award nixed. The future of fandom, everybody. »
My darlings, I just need you to remember
that self-publishing/”indie”, and especially vanity publishing, means there’s no
- quality control
- physical copies distributed widely to brick-and-mortar book stores or libraries
- extensive promotional campaigns involving subway ads, interviews in papers, etc.
- contracts for more books
Being more delibrate in my media choices
I’ve been tumbling primarily as a method of going “ooh shiny. Let me share.” I’ve decided to be more intentional about who & what I’m reblogging. Expect to see more dark skinned women, fatties, more gender variation, always more drag queens, and more superheroes who aren’t white.
I’ve been diving face first into reading YA books that have POC main characters and/or major characters who are POC. The results are … mixed. Not because these stories can’t be awesome, but because more of us (POC) need to involved in the media created about us. Nothing about us without us.
It’s really clear when white authors put effort into making realistic POC characters or when they go “fuck it. Um. Lets have a hispanic girl in the series. She was involved in gangs, shot some people, and then a nice white judge sealed her record and let her go. Lets see she should have long braids, a tear drop tattoo and drop random spanish into conversations. Obviously she also a good dancer and will perform minor criminal activities the white chicks can’t.”
This leaves me wondering does she identify as Latina, Chicana, or something else? Could she be Mestizo? Are there tejanos in her family? What about Dominican, Columbian, etc ancestry. What cultures does this chick come form? Where does she live?
Most importantly, is the author really going to pretend a large public high school in LA will have exactly one student who is Latin@? OK then. (Daughters of the Moon, you are on notice)
Instead of that nonsense, I’m giving you <a href=”http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3463179-soul-enchilada”>Soul Enchilada by David Macinnis Gill</a> (link is to Good Reads) a YA novel whose lead is an afro-tejano young woman and her potential romance partner is a bruja in training. The story is solidly set in the land and culture of El Paso, TX.
There is snark, awesome cards, bantering, folk magic, the devil, Tejano culture, Coyote, and other delights like Supernatural INS (white vans and all). I loved this book and would gladly give this book to people. Also kudos to the white author David Macinnis Gill for writing a great story which included people from diverse ethnic backgrounds. It’s easier to whinge than to make change, and I’m glad you did.
“
The Chaos By Nalo Hopkinson (McElderry; ISBN: 9781416954880; April 2012)
Noted for her fantasy and science fiction for adults, Hopkinson jumps triumphantly to teen literature.
Scotch’s womanly build and mixed heritage (white Jamaican dad, black American mom) made her the target of small-town school bullies. Since moving to Toronto, she’s found friends and status. Now both are threatened by the mysterious sticky black spots on her skin (she hides them under her clothes but they’re growing). When a giant bubble appears at an open-mic event, Scotch dares her brother, Rich, to touch it. He disappears, a volcano rises from Lake Ontario and chaos ripples across city and world, transforming reality in ways bizarre and hilarious, benign and malignant. A lesbian folksinger with Tamil roots becomes a purple triangle with an elephant’s trunk; jelly beans grow teeth; buried streams resurface. Scotch searches for Rich across a surreal, sensual cityscape informed by Caribbean and Russian folklore. Although what they represent and where they come from are open to interpretation, the manifestations are real to everyone and must be dealt with. Hopkinson opens her YA debut conventionally but soon finds her own path, creating a unique vocabulary with which to explore and express personal identity in its myriad forms and fluidity. Anything but essentialist, she captures her characters in the act of becoming. Rich in voice, humor and dazzling imagery, studded with edgy ideas and wildly original, this multicultural mashup—like its heroine—defies category.
”
Reading In Color » 5 Historical Novels I Wish Someone Would Write »
MissA lists some underused but intriguing historical periods that would make great settings, from Azuchi-Momoyama period Japan to the Harlem Renaissance.
My picks:
- Al-Andalus, medieval Islamic Spain
- The Ming period Kaifeng Jewish community
- The Beaver Wars from a non-European perspective
- The settlement of Birobidzhan, a would-be Siberian socialist promised land set aside for Soviet Jews by Stalin. Really.
- And, for $1000, Alex, the Cambrian explosion, just because. I thought that’s what Steven Baxter’s Evolution was going to be like and felt very let down. So anthropocentric! :P
What time period would you like to see in fiction?
Cheryl's Mewsings » Worldcon, YA and Women »
My basic thesis was that while, in the wake of the success of The Hunger Games, women writers are producing a lot of SF for the YA market right now, this isn’t being recognized by the SF community at large…
She then goes on to consider various ways to change this. Do read the comments for criticism and more ideas.
Remind me to ramble later about how fandom is full of out-of-touch old fogeys and how they might be able to get more people under 50 to come to conventions.
Tesseracts 15, the latest instalment of the long-running Canadian sf anthology, is the first to be all specifically YA stories. (~Future of fandom~, eh, jhameia? :P) Cover art by Michael Oswald.
