Authors Who Need More Love: Gail Carriger

I will go on about every book she's written until I am blue in the face because everyone should read these books they should have read them yesterday.

(Also, I'm only going to talk about the Parasol Protectorate books - I reread the Finishing School books more recently, so they'll get a separate review. Not sure if I'm going to do them individually or together yet, though.)

Photo cred: here

Do you like vampires, werewolves, Victorian romances, and alternate historical timelines? Then everything about this series is for you.

The protagonist is Alexia Tarabotti, a preternatural. Preternaturals are basically the opposite of supernaturals like vampires and werewolves - they have no soul, while supernaturals have an excess. (The excess of soul is what allows people to become supernatural in the first place.) Alexia can turn a vampire or werewolf human if they make skin-to-skin contact, though no one really understands how or why that occurs. Since she's a woman of decent social standing, the Bureau of Unnatural Registry mostly just wants to keep her out of the way of their day-to-day operations.

Which is all well and good until they remember that Alexia is awesome at not following instructions.

Alexia is also naturally curious and very well-read on current scientific theories, making her an almighty pest to Lord Conall Maccon, the head of BUR. (Can you tell where this is going?) They fight, banter, and bicker like an old married couple, yet somehow manage to have some spectacular miscommunications about their true feelings for each other. It also doesn't help that Lord Maccon's an Alpha werewolf, and thus has different protocols for courtship than Alexia is used to.

On top of all the romantic turmoil, Alexia's being followed around London by strange automatons that no one can seem to trace back to their owners. BUR can't send their usual agents to watch over her on the night of the full moon, naturally, so she goes to visit her vampire friend Lord Akeldama then. He's one of the oldest vampires around, so she figures it'll be a pretty safe visit.

Until the automatons strike, kidnapping both of them. When Alexia awakens, she's in an unfamiliar house full of mad scientists who'd like to use her preternatural abilities to terminate supernatural beings for good, starting with Lord Akeldama. Oh, and they've also kidnapped Conall and the rest of his pack, too. Alexia's options are limited, but with a little ingenuity, she manages to get to Conall and work together to save their loved ones.

And that's just book one.

Books two through five take Alexia all over the world as she discovers new facets and limitations of her abilities, such as her reaction to the mysterious God-Breaker Plague and what exactly happens when a supernatural man and a preternatural woman have unprotected sex. Even when she'd like them too, the adventures just never really stop for Alexia and her friends.

So there's the rundown of the plot. Still need convincing?

How about this: basically none of Alexia's friends are heterosexual. Lord Akeldama's gay and keeps a coven full of handsome dandies, as is Professor Lyall, Conall's Beta. Alexia's own father had affairs with both men and women, though she never actually knew the man, and Alexia's close friend Genevieve Lefoux is a lesbian who is not subtle about her attraction to Alexia. (Heck, Alexia even experiences a little attraction of her own to Genevieve, but she quashes it down because she's married.) There's also a love story that develops between Lord Akeldama, his favorite coven member Biffy, and Professor Lyall, though not until a little later in the series.

What's best, though, is that none of the tension is caused by someone realizing they're gay and then spiraling into a shame crisis because of the era. While I wouldn't say any of the homosexual characters are announcing their sexualities from the rooftops, they're also not using each other as beards to keep up any charades. More of the problems are caused by vampire-werewolf relations than anything else, and I love that.

All of the characters are genuinely entertaining, too. Alexia's best friend Ivy speaks in malapropisms constantly, Lord Akeldama uses the most ridiculous endearments, and Alexia's mother and stepsisters can be almost caricatureish in their adherence to proper standards of behavior sometimes. The mishmash of characters and settings is set aloft by Carriger's writing, too, which is reminiscent of actual Victorian novels but with a decidedly modern sense of humor.

The final thing I want to mention about these novels is how cool I find the concept. Instead of keeping the supernatural in hiding like in every other vampire/werewolf novel, Carriger puts them at the forefront of society. Vampires dictate what's trendy. Werewolves are the premier military leaders. Ghosts can be used to investigate crimes. There's also some pushback from more conservative groups like the mad scientists I mentioned earlier or the Knights Templar, who fear the supernatural and want to send them back into hiding/eradicate them as is God's will. It's really interesting to me to see how Carriger reinterprets actual history to include supernatural creatures and how that would change things, and I'm hoping her upcoming Custard Protocol series expands more on that.

Overall, the Parasol Protectorate novels are a flurry of fun, adventure, and romance, and I want them to become movies already. Five stars.

Authors Who Need More Love: Trenton Lee Stewart

This might be shorter than usual, because I'm going out with friends in like forty-five minutes, sorry!

Photo cred here

Been looking for another good friendship-driven series now that Harry Potter's done? This is what you want.

Reynie Muldoon is an orphan from Stonetown. He's more interested in reading the paper than watching TV, so the other kids just kind of ostracize him. That quirk, though, is what leads him to his first ever friends.

He and his tutor, Miss Perumal, notice an advertisement aimed at brilliant kids one day, so they decide to have him go - what's the worst that could happen, a waste of a day? Before she can take him, though, Miss Perumal's mother falls ill, so Reynie has to go by himself to take the test.

Reynie passes the first test and every one subsequent, noticing that a lot of the tasks are actually riddles, not questions. Once he's done, he and three other kids - Sticky, Kate, and Constance - are left to meet Mr. Benedict, the man behind the tests. 

Cleverness is what got Reynie through the tests, but that can't be said for the others. Sticky's a genius, Kate's a daredevil who used to be in the circus (no, really), and Constance is stubborn and contrary. Together, they're the perfect team for what Mr. Benedict needs them to do: infiltrate the Institute, a mysterious school located on an island near Stonetown.

Why are they infiltrating? The headmaster of the Institute, Mr. Curtain, has a machine called the Whisperer that's putting subliminal messages into the media - radio and TV broadcasts, to be specific. Soon, though, he's not going to need the middleman. He'll be able to broadcast messages directly into people's heads. Reynie, Sticky, Kate, and Constance need to figure out where the Whisperer is and how to disable it before Mr. Curtain can get that far.

The kids' struggles with Mr. Curtain and his henchmen span the three main novels of this series, taking them around the world before ultimately landing them back in Stonetown. The fourth novel in this series focuses on Mr. Benedict as a child. (I haven't actually read it, so that's all I know.)

I legitimately adore this series. The kids are realistic - they're both precociously smart and childishly naive. The puzzles are also fun and challenging - I'm nearly a decade older than the characters, and sometimes I can't even figure out the riddles before they do. The story is also full of clever wordplay that brings a smile to my face - the Institute is located on "Nomansan Island," for example. Sound that out.

The only thing I have to say against these books is that sometimes they can be a little bit too sanitized, in my opinion. For example, the kids are taught not to kill any of Mr. Curtain's torture-loving henchmen, because they're better than that. I'm okay with not having tiny assassin children, don't get me wrong, but I think in situations like the kids get into, there's a decent chance that they'd have to try a kill shot if it really came down to an "us or them" decision.

(That sounds terribly callous of me, but I'm running out of time. I'll explain better later if you'd like.)

Overall, the three main MBS books get four stars from me. They're fun and captivating, and the kids remind me a lot of the Golden Trio from Harry Potter. Does it get much better than that?

Authors Who Need More Love: Ally Carter

Let's see if I can actually make this a ~feature~, shall we?

I recently reread all of the Gallagher Girls books, and instead of reviewing them all separately, I decided to make another AWNML post to save time. I never said I wasn't lazy.

(I'm not going to talk about the Heist Society books in this post, since I haven't reread those as recently, but they're good too, so if you're more into thieves than spies, those are worth a shot.)

As you can see, there are six books in the Gallagher Girls series, each of them taking place over about a semester's worth of time. They follow Cammie Morgan from her sophomore to her senior year at the Gallagher Academy, a school that has far more to it than meets the eye. It takes a little while for the overarching connection between the books to kick in, but when it does, everything makes sense.

The first book, I'd Tell You I Love You But Then I'd Have to Kill You, is probably the least obviously related book in this series. It lays a lot of the background, though - Cammie and her friends Liz and Bex are students at the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, a school for rich young ladies from important families. At least, that's what the cover is.

It's really a school for spies.

Cammie, Bex, and Liz have been training since seventh grade for futures with some kind of government agency, though they know it's not without risk - after all, Cammie's dad never did come home from his last mission. They're also super excited to finally begin their Covert Operations class, where they learn the ins and outs of actually, properly spying on people. However, they never expect two new people to come into their lives and shake up a lot of what they'd taken for granted.

The first person to arrive is Macey McHenry, a senator's daughter. Normally she'd never be accepted into the Gallagher Academy, but being a descendant of the school's founder has its perks. She's definitely not up to date on the latest surveillance techniques, but she does know how to deal with boys, something the girls didn't know they'd need until Josh Abrams starts flirting with Cammie when she's on assignment in CoveOps.

Josh Abrams, new person number two. A resident of Roseville, the town that hosts the Gallagher Academy, he sees Cammie fishing through the trash as part of her task. Thing is, people don't see Cammie when she doesn't want to be seen - there's a reason she's a spy. She feeds him a lie about her life, and it slowly builds into them forming a relationship.

Cammie likes feeling like a "normal" girl when she's out with Josh, but she ultimately has to choose between him and her school, and we all know how that pans out. Josh becomes a relic of her past and the subject of a mock CoveOps report the girls wrote for practice - they may as well get something out of it, right?

The series changes gears rapidly when book two (Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy) begins. The sort of typical "teenage girl falls in love with the wrong boy" narrative gives way to a tightly woven plot that makes Cammie and her friends uncertain who they can trust.  In CMHaHtS, the Gallagher Academy hosts a brother school, the Blackthorne Institute, for a semester. One of the students staying with them is a boy named Zach, who seems to be one step ahead of Cammie no matter what she does. His skills and mannerisms make her and her friends nervous - can they really trust boys from a school they didn't even know existed until they appeared on the doorstep, especially when it looks like their headmaster is trying to make off with a list of alumni from the Gallagher Academy? In the end, they decide to trust Zach, hoping that decision won't screw them over in the future.

To save myself from recapping the entire series, I think I'll cut it off here, with just a basic run-down of what comes next: Macey's father runs for Vice President, and she nearly gets kidnapped on the tour, putting everyone into panic mode - but there were two Gallagher girls on that roof, and after some of the clues come into place, it doesn't look like Macey's the one in danger. Cammie, however, might need to watch her back, especially when the kidnappers decide they don't need her alive after all.

Combine that with Liz's plans for World War Three and Zach's screwed-up family history, and there's suddenly a lot riding on four teenage girls who aren't technically qualified to save the world just yet.

Personal opinion time: I love this series. It's got a great mix of lighthearted humor and serious, well-developed intrigue. It even takes a minor, minor detail from the first book and makes it absolutely crucial to book five, even though book one as a whole doesn't have a whole lot to do with the series overall, as I stated before. They're also relatively short, so it's pretty easy to just whip through the series in a couple of days.

The characters are also incredibly well-written. They all feel like real teenage girls, with all the angst, uncertainty, and confusion about boys that entails. My favorite thing, though, is that they're not Strong Female Characters. They all love getting glammed up for a date or for a dance just as much as they love learning how to incapacitate 300 pound men with two moves. They're tough, but they're not cold, and a lot of their emotional growth involves them learning to trust each other enough to let their guards down and cry. They're also incredibly resourceful, but I think that comes from the spy training. And Macey's family having enough money to buy a small island.

The only complaint I have is relatively tiny, though not invalid by any means, and it's that I wish there were more (read: any) LGBT+ characters. Seriously, a whole school full of girls and not one of them is dating another? A lot of the series is devoted to Cammie and her friends trying to figure out boys, which I understand, but for people who either A) aren't interested in boys or B) just want to get to the spy stuff already, the focus could be off-putting. I can also understand that maybe to sell the novel, Cammie herself would have to be straight (or at least end up with a boy), but there are so many other characters who could have been LGBT without it affecting the plot of the series whatsoever.

Overall, I definitely recommend the Gallagher Girls series for anyone who needs something quick, interesting, and with a solid mixture of action and romance. They're not necessarily world-shattering, but they're good, and the characters are girls just like me - if I could speak fourteen languages, at least.

(Bonus: the relationships aren't creepy or based on that misogynistic "Let me, the man, protect you, the girl, because you're mine" vibe!)

Authors Who Need More Love: Tamora Pierce

So I haven't finished anything recently that I feel actually merits a review (cheesy murder mystery serials will be the death of me, fyi), but I want to get something written, so I've decided to start a feature-y thing. Let's see if I can keep this up!

I hope this is pretty self-explanatory: I'm going to pick an author who, in my personal experience, doesn't have a huge following, and then talk about why that's completely unacceptable. Maybe I'm going to be incredibly wrong and discover that this author actually has a huge Internet presence and I'm actually a fool who hangs out with a bunch of uneducated people, but that's a risk I'm willing to take. It wouldn't be the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to me, that's for sure.

(No, Internet, I'm not telling you what the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to me is. At least not right here in the middle of a post.)

My first Author Who Needs More Love (AWNML?) pick is the great Tamora Pierce - more specifically, her Tortall books. (I know she has another universe, too, but I've never read it, so....) There are four series set in this universe so far, with more coming in the future, much to my delight. The series all relate to each other, too, so you never really have to say goodbye to any of the characters.

The first series set in the Tortall universe is the Song of the Lioness quartet. It's not technically the earliest chronologically, but it's the first series Pierce actually wrote, so I'd recommend newbies start there. This series focuses on Alanna of Trebond, a girl who wants to be a knight. Unfortunately for her, girls aren't allowed to do that in Tortall. Instead, she is supposed to go off to a convent school to learn how to become a proper lady and wife. In order to avoid this fate, she and her twin brother Thom decide to switch places, like a medieval Parent Trap. You see, Alanna and Thom have the Gift, a.k.a. magic, and Thom wants to learn how to be a great sorcerer, which is conveniently another subject that's taught at one of the faraway convent schools, even though their father has slated him for knighthood. Alanna promptly disguises herself as a boy, Thom forges new letters for them to give to their teachers, and bada bing bada boom, they're both getting what they want. Not bad for a couple of ten-year-olds.

Alanna has to deal with a lot of unforeseen challenges once she's at Court, such as bullies, keeping her identity a secret, and many unplanned crushes. She spends much of the series working out her feelings for Prince Jonathan, who took her on as a squire even after he discovered she's actually a she, and George Cooper, the leader of Tortall's association of crooks. Before you think that's the major arc of this series, though, note that Alanna also uncovers a plot to kill Prince Jon and his parents and ends up playing a pivotal role in bringing that would-be usurper down. (Also note that this series spans about a decade or so, in case you're wondering why a ten-year-old girl is dealing with so many problems in such a short period of time.)

The Song of the Lioness also devotes a lot of its space to showing that girls can be the equal of boys in whatever situations may arise, though they might develop different techniques to compensate for their weaknesses. Alanna becomes a very quick fighter, for example, since she's smaller but much lighter than the men she's battling. That's a pretty good message to have in a series that's over thirty years old.

The second series set in Tortall is The Immortals, also a quartet. It takes place a few years after Alanna's books end, and focuses on Daine Sarrasri, a thirteen-year-old from the nearby country of Scanra. She's been ostracized from her village after an accident, and meets Onua Chamtong, the horsemistress for Tortall's Queen's Riders. Onua takes Daine as an apprentice after seeing how spookily good Daine is with the horses, which will be useful as they journey back to Tortall.

It turns out that Daine's not just some teenage Horse Whisperer, though - she's got something called "wild magic" that allows her to talk to, heal, and even shapeshift into animals. (I'm so jealous, man.) Daine and Onua meet up with Numair Salmalin, the realm's best mage, as they're traveling home, and he helps Daine focus her powers into something she can actually control.

The rest of the series centers on Daine and Numair's travels, both within Tortall and its neighboring regions as well as in the realms of the gods. They must deal with rebels, unfriendly "allies," and mythological creatures that are crossing back into Tortall after centuries of exile. They also end up falling in love, which skeeves me out slightly when I think about just how big of an age gap there is between them, but it doesn't affect my enjoyment of the novels in the long run. (This also takes place a few years after they meet - she's more like fifteen or sixteen at this point. It's not pedophilia, I promise!) The amount of thought Pierce put into the traditions and religions of Tortall really comes out and shines in this series, too, if that's something that interests you.

The Immortals isn't quite as forceful in its message - Daine isn't a fighter like Alanna, although she's handy with a bow and arrow. (The original Katniss Everdeen?) Daine is incredibly independent, though, and quick to learn how to use her magic to its best advantage. She helps show that skills most people might think are useless or only good for small problems may actually help win wars.

(Dude, how come I couldn't find photos like this for the other two series? You're letting me down, Google.)

The third quartet of novels set in Tortall is the Protector of the Small series, which is far and away my favorite of the four. It takes place a little while after Daine's books end, and focuses on Keladry of Mindelan, another girl who wants to be a knight. This isn't another Alanna situation, though - girls are now allowed to go for their knighthoods, due to a new piece of legislation from Alanna and Jon. Kel would be the first girl to enroll in the program, however, leaving her open to scrutiny from the rest of the realm. (She's also not magical, so the people who claim Alanna only made it because she has the Gift would have their argument ripped out from under them if Kel succeeds.) Kel takes the challenge, though it wins her the disapproval of many. From day one, she's bullied worse than any of the other first-year students, simply because she's The Girl.

Kel doesn't let that bullying harden her, though. Her compassionate nature and strong sense of right and wrong inspires her to end the hazing by standing up to her bullies and fighting back. While she originally does this alone, she soon builds a tight-knit community of friends that all help her take down the last few stubborn boys who believe girls have no place learning how to be knights.

This deep need for justice propels Kel directly into the heart of war as the novels progress, first as the leader of a refugee camp, and then as a deserter of the Tortallan army once she goes after the monster who kidnapped the children in her camp. Her friends back her up for all of these undertakings, showing that the ponies really do have it right when they say friendship is magic.

Kel's story is my favorite for so many reasons. She's Gift-less and wild magic-less, making her the first "normal" protagonist in the Tortall books, but that lack of magic doesn't make her any less powerful or capable as a fighter. She also doesn't end up with a defined partner, like Alanna and Daine do. While I liked the love story elements to their stories, it's always refreshing to read Kel's truly friendship-based saga, especially when her friends are as awesome as Owen and Neal are. Neal's humor is another factor that pushes these books to the top of my list, I'm not ashamed to admit it. The PotS quartet might be the funniest of Pierce's series.

The most recent of Pierce's Tortall books is the Provost's Dog trilogy, though it's chronologically the earliest. It tells the story of Beka Cooper, a city guardswoman and the multiple-times-great-grandmother of George Cooper, who we met in the Song of the Lioness. (No, the irony is not lost on George that he's a thief, while his ancestor was one of the best policewomen in Corus.)

Beka's story begins while she's still a "Puppy," or a guard in training. The guardsmen and -women are known as "Dogs," while the criminals are "Rats" and the Dogs' informants are "Birdies." Beka is paired with a team of near-legendary Dogs, Goodwin and Tunstall, for her final stages of training, and their teamwork plus a few unusual abilities of Beka's help them take down a couple of master criminals that have been terrorizing the city of Corus for years.

What unusual abilies are those? One, Beka can speak to ghosts. The souls of people who died abruptly (say, because they were murdered) can attach to the backs of pigeons and tell their story to those who can understand them, which is pretty useful in Beka's line of work. Beka can also hear snippets of conversation from the dust spinners on Corus's streets - think stationary tornados. If one of the criminals Beka and her partners are looking for spoke about their plans near one of those spinners, Beka can use that information to her advantage.

Beka's skills help her become one of the most renowned Dogs in Tortall, sending her on missions throughout the country to help solve crimes that would cripple the nation if they weren't thwarted. Goodwin and Tunstall both come along for the ride, as does Pounce, a cat that will seem veeeeery familiar to fans of Alanna's story.

Beka's story is interesting on another level because it's set before Alanna's time, but has elements that feel more progressive. For example, men and women can both become Dogs, and there's not much internal sexism in the institution - Clara Goodwin even has a higher rank than Matthias Tunstall, technically. There's also Lady Sabine, a knight who didn't have to hide her sex to achieve her position. There are hints of dissatisfaction with this system, though - in the third novel, there are mentions of "the cult of the Gentle Mother," a group of people who believe that women are naturally more delicate and meek, and thus should not be warriors of any kind. The cult doesn't have many people behind it in Beka's time, but it's easy to piece together how Tortallan society got to their beliefs in Alanna's era from the seeds Pierce sows.

TL;DR: If you've been looking for fantasy series where the girls are more than just wife material or the stereotypical Strong Female Character, then look no further than the Tortall universe, my friends.

ETA: It's been pointed out to me that there are five series set in Tortall, which totally slipped my mind when I was writing this post. The fifth series is the Daughter of the Lioness duo, and it's based on Aly, Alanna's daughter (duh), and her adventures in the Copper Isles. It's not my favorite series, as evidenced by me forgetting about it earlier, but it's got a good political thriller feel and doesn't make Aly the White Savior of All of the Natives. Read it after Kel and before Beka if you're going in the order they're written, or after everything if you're going in chronological order.