Book Review: Steampunk!

This cover is even more impressive in person.

From Goodreads:

In the first major YA steampunk anthology, fourteen top storytellers push the genre's mix of sci-fi, fantasy, history, and adventure in fascinating new directions.

Imagine an alternate universe where romance and technology reign. Where tinkerers and dreamers craft and re-craft a world of automatons, clockworks, calculating machines, and other marvels that never were. Where scientists and schoolgirls, fair folk and Romans, intergalactic bandits, utopian revolutionaries, and intrepid orphans solve crimes, escape from monstrous predicaments, consult oracles, and hover over volcanoes in steam-powered airships. Here, fourteen masters of speculative fiction, including two graphic storytellers, embrace the genre's established themes and refashion them in surprising ways and settings as diverse as Appalachia, ancient Rome, future Australia, and alternate California. Visionaries Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant have invited all-new explorations and expansions, taking a genre already rich, strange, and inventive in the extreme and challenging contributors to remake it from the ground up. The result is an anthology that defies its genre even as it defines it.

I picked this baby up at the Baltimore Book Festival last September, during Libba Bray's book signing. I'm still fairly new to Steampunk as a genre and in some cases a lifestyle. However, it's an area that I've been finding increasingly comfortable, and when I saw this anthology, with so many authors I already love, I jumped on it. If you doubt the awesomeness, check out this list of authors who are in here:

M. T. Anderson
Elizabeth Knox
Ysabeau S. Wilce
Delia Sherman
Christopher Rowe
Garth Nix
Kathleen Jennings
Dylan Horrocks
Cory Doctorow
Cassandra Clare
Libba Bray
Holly Black
Shawn Cheng
Kelly Link

Lookit that list. Isn't it a nice list? That is one fine list.

The Good:

This is one of the best anthologies I have ever read. Out of 14 stories, almost every one is in the 4-to-5-star range. The big name authors don't disappoint. Libba Bray, Cory Doctorow, and M. T. Anderson probably have my favorite stories. However, some of the lesser know authors have their shining moments too, like Delia Sherman, Kathleen Jennings, and Elizabeth Knox. I won't say that everyone brought their A-game, but I never felt like anyone was coasting, happy to settle for a passing grade.

While I've been developing a growing love affair with steampunk lit, I love that this anthology is filled with authors who haven't written in this genre before. Or if they have, it hasn't been their first choice. Where so many steampunk writers seem to think of the world before the story, these are simply authors who have taken on the concept of steampunk - however they interpret that - and used it to accent a plot or a character. And for that, I feel that the impact and depth of the world is so much more potent, giving steampunk an emotional resonance that the casual steampunk reader may overlook.

The Bad:

The flaw of all anthologies applies here; simply, not all stories are created equal. Though they are few, a few of the stories just felt out of place with the rest of the collection. I won't name names, as I think some of them are still fine stories if not exactly right, but I think readers will be able to spot the odd man/men out.

The Rest:

The stories rise and fall in merit based largely on personal preference. I'm certain that a few will stand out to everyone, the rest will probably find their rating in the tastes of the readers and their vision of steampunk.

The vision of steampunk is a big part of what this collection captures. The stereotypical steampunk story is set in Victorian London and features women in corsets and men with fabulous coats and secret agendas. This is a very fun stereotype in the hands of the right writer. But the stories in this collection go well beyond the known and accepted boundaries of the genre, taking it from Ancient Rome to Australia and Appalachia and the future. I'm not going to say that Steampunk! breaks any new ground. However, it introduces young adult readers to a genre they may think only applies to nineteenth century England and shows them that it can be anywhere through the writing of authors they already know, love, and trust.

Final Thoughts:

I think fans of steampunk and readers who are new to the genre will find this a fantastic collection. I like to think of it as a gateway drug to the world of steampunk. It certainly helped me find my feet and dive in.
 
My Rating: 5/5 Mushrooms

Book Review: Beauty Queens

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's a new review post!

Extended exposure to this cover has lessened its' appeal dramatically. Cool concept, but....

From Goodreads:

The fifty contestants in the Miss Teen Dream pageant thought this was going to be a fun trip to the beach, where they could parade in their state-appropriate costumes and compete in front of the cameras. But sadly, their airplane had another idea crashing on a desert island and leaving the survivors stranded with little food, little water, and practically no eyeliner.

What's a beauty queen to do? Continue to practice for the talent portion of the program--or wrestle snakes to the ground? Get a perfect tan--or learn to run wild? And what should happen when the sexy pirates show up?

Welcome to the heart of non-exfoliated darkness. Your tour guide? None other than Libba Bray, the hilarious, sensational, Printz Award-winning author of A Great and Terrible Beauty and Going Bovine. The result is a novel that will make you laugh, make you think, and make you never see beauty the same way again.

The plot wasn't one that Libba bray came up with on her own. As she freely admits, David Levithan pitched it to her and she latched onto it like a leech to a medieval invalid. Okay, bad gross analogy, but not so wrong that I'm going to delete it. I'm not sure how much impact it has on the quality of an authors' work to be given an idea rather than creating it themselves. But when I compare this with her own original works, well....

Full disclosure: I feel weird writing this review, because Libba Bray has long been one of my favorite authors. I feel REALLY weird admitting that after getting about halfway through, I had no desire to finish it. I feel the MOST weird because I've met her a couple of times and she is one of the nicest, coolest people ever and deserves as much admiration as can be provided. But I can't deny that this is, without a doubt, my least favorite of Libba Bray's books. Let it never be said that I am not honest, even in the face of my idols.



My Issues:

There were a couple of problems with Beauty Queens, the first of which starting with the concept itself. It's funny. It's absurd. These are things Libba Bray is good at, as evidenced by Going Bovine. But it lacked the morbid and sobering heart of GB; the main character was dying and there was no cure. This isn't to say that Beauty Queens isn't morbid - it's a story about pageant contestants trapped on an island after their plane crashed and killed everyone else - , but that fact gets lost in the character drama. And oh, there is SO much character drama. Which brings me to my next point.

There is too much going on. The cast of characters is extensive and pretty much everyone gets their fifteen minutes of fame on the page wherein we see the situation through their eyes. It's too much. We lose track of who's who, and what are they doing, and why are they doing it. Nevermind that interspersed with the character evolutions and heroes journeys and all that, we are nigh bombarded with satire and soapboxy criticisms of consumer culture and gender stereotypes, the presentation of which was funny the first couple times and then got heavy handed and tedious. And we never really get involved in these characters. Halfway through the book, I still hadn't connected with any of the girls. This disconnect was not helped by the fact that it was written in third person narrative.

Third person narration should never, ever detract from a story. But given how Bray writes in first person, I couldn't help but observe that the grace and eloquence she exhibits in her previous novels is lacking in Beauty Queens. This is not to say that the writing is bad, but given the quality I'm used to from her, I can't help but feel she did herself a bit of a disservice writing in third and from so many perspectives.
 
Final Thoughts:

Beauty Queens is a good book (at least from what I read) and I did enjoy parts of what I read. It's very much like a zany adventure movie. People like zany adventure movies. I like zany adventure movies. But I read so that I can really and truly get inside the characters of a zany adventure movie, and on that score, I felt let down. 

Most likely I will pick up Beauty Queens again at a later date. I wonder if the taste phenomena had an effect on my perception of the novel. You know what I'm talking about: you order hot tea and the server brings out cola. Sure, you love cola, but you wanted and were expecting hot tea. You spit it out. There's probably more than a little bit of this going on with me. However, I doubt that my problems with her attempt at third person narration is going to go away. I love third person. Love it like truffles. Love it like brie and baguettes. And this, this was mild cheddar and Wheat Thins.

Libba Bray writes a good book no matter what. This is just a case of whether if would be a good book for me.

My Rating: 3/5 Mushrooms