More, belated

Two more for 50books_poc.

Kamila Shamsie, Broken Verses. I picked this up because of puritybrown’s enthusiastic review –- and am very glad I did. About a woman, Aasmaani, in Pakistan, whose mother was a radical activist, and is now missing; her mother's lover, the Poet, murdered; and how Aasmaani deals and fails to deal with these stories, especially when new information comes to light that challenges her beliefs about the past… It's well written, it's complex and different, and every character feels so clearly a part of their world and their community. I definitely want to read more books by her, although I also feel I should read more explicit Pakistani history first.

( Spoilers for ending. )

American-born Chinese – Gene Luen Yang. Overall, I liked this, and the art, but I found the Jin Wang American high school angst storyline the least appealing of the lot. Partly, this is because I feel like I’ve seen it too many times before, and it’s always a straight male teenage angst US high school thing within which all the women become weirdly two dimensional (arggh. Apart from being a comic) and shiny quest objects. Partly, though, it just felt less real – and less interesting – than the monkey king and Chin-Kee storylines – as if the author were relying on a cliché rather than transforming it.

I do like Wei-Chen's line about Jin's hair looking like a broccoli, though.

Assorted YA

The Runaways probably is more children's, although some of the subject matter is more YA. The other three are all 2009 launches (The Hunger Games came out in the US in 2008, but this is the UK launch), with fairly big promotional campaigns, and they're all series, which is a tendency I would, personally, like to discourage. I like The Demon's Lexicon best of the three, but even there it's going to be interesting to see if there's enough for a trilogy.

( RJ Anderson, Knife. )

( Suzanne Collins, Hunger games. )

( Sarah Rees Brennan, The demon’s lexicon. )

( Zilpha Keatley Snyder, The runaways. )