THE ULTIMATES: OMNIVERSAL VOL I: START WITH THE IMPOSSIBLE {review}

Trade Paperback, 144 pages

Published July 19, 2016 by Marvel

Rating: ★★★

I think my biggest problem with Ultimates Omniversal: Vol I is that I wanted to like it just a little too much. America Chavez punched her way into my heart from the very first time I saw her and it's likewise hard not to adore the former and current Captains Marvel, Monica Rambeau (now Spectrum) and Carol Danvers. Rounding out the rest of the Ultimates team are King of Wakanda, T'Challa, the Black Panther, and Dr. Adam Brashear, an aged supergenius who goes by the name Blue Marvel.

SO many great characters, yet there was something that didn't quite connect with me. Whether it's that the plot didn't feel quite big enough or that the characters didn't interact enough, I'm not truly sure. It's possible that the roles Carol and T'Challa play in multiple other books as well as their own runs had an effect on the storyline. For example, I know the next volume deals with Civil War II. Now, Marvel burned me with the atrocious first Civil War a few years ago and I have absolutely zero interest in reading any other Marvel events ever so I'm not looking forward to that.

That said, there were a lot of things I really liked. America dancing with her date via their phones in the first issue to close a dimensional portal was cute and upbeat. Monica and Carol discussing how Monica feels about her powers and herself was a highlight for me; I want much more of that. I've always found that I relate the strongest to stories that base the emotional narrative on the relationships between the characters.

I also very much liked Adam's backstory and the way it tied in to the present. That he's 87 years old, a super genius, a former soldier, a father, all of that really added an emotional depth. What I'd really like to see is how his age and intelligence cause him to interact with someone like America, who is young, impulsive and likes to punch stuff. There was too much of Galactica just pondering. It felt like six issues of lead-up and personally I'd rather jump into a story.

All in all, Ultimates Omniversal Vol I was enjoyable, but didn't quite live up to its potential.

THE SWAN RIDERS BY ERIN BOW {review}

Hardcover, 384 pages

Published September 20th 2016 by Margaret K. McElderry Books
Rating: ★★★

I spent the last 50% of this book raging in disappointment. The Scorpion Rules was excellent; an interesting premise, an engaging and strong main character, and a strong, sophisticated plot that brought you along at a slow but steady pace. None of that is present in The Swan Riders.

At the end of the previous book, to save her own life and that of her fellow condemned Prisoner of Peace Elian, the main character Greta willingly became an artificial intelligence. While the first bit of the book dealt with how she adapted to her new expansive intelligence and inhuman experiences, Greta quickly became a background character in her own story. She went from a quiet but compassionate and firm natural leader to a passive person who was largely reduced to saying character names in an admonishing tone. Taking away an aspect of a character needs to be countered with the elevation of another aspect, if it's not, you just end up with a shadow character. That's what we got in this book: a shadow character. Perhaps it was intentional, perhaps not, but it didn't engage me.

For me, the plot of The Swan Riders was weak for one reason: Talis. I found it very, very hard to care about an AI that had spent the last few centuries committing genocide, mass murder, and ritual child murder as ways to force peace onto a resistant world. I didn't care that he was in pain or his 'journey'. It's like how the Star Wars prequels tried to make Darth Vader a sympathetic character: sorry, but petulant fascism is not interesting to me.

THE SCORPION RULES BY ERIN BOW {review}

Hardcover, 384 pages

Published September 22nd 2015 by Margaret K. McElderry Books
Rating: ★★★★★

Futuristic dystopian young adult novels are a dime a dozen, but The Scorpion Rules brought some new twists to old ideas.

It's at least five hundred years in the future, where the ice caps have melted and the face of the world has changed drastically. The countries we know are no longer, replaced by places like the Pan Polar Confederacy and the Cumberland Alliance. An oddly informal artificial intelligence named Talis keeps a peace, of sorts, by blowing up cities and maintaining a system of ritual hostage taking. The hostages, called the Prisoners of Peace, are the main characters of this story. All leaders of all nations must submit one of their own children to be a hostage in order to lead. When nations declare war on each other, the children are executed by the mysterious Swan Riders, the idea being that leaders are less likely to declare war if their own child's life is on the line.

The main character is named Greta Gustafson Stuart, Duchess of Halifax, princess of the Pan Polar Confederacy (basically, Canada) and has spent most of her life in one of Talis' preceptures, constantly watched over by AIs of all sorts. They look after goats and chickens, grow all their own food and live sparse, utilitarian lives being constantly prepared for ruling after their parents. Greta is strong, poised and quiet, though her mind is always working. Borders change in what used to be the United States and a new hostage, Elián, is brought to the precepture. Unlike the other Prisoners of Peace, Elián fights constantly, unwilling to accept their strict lives as lambs to slaughter and he is punished physically and mentally by the AIs for it.

STARFLIGHT BY MELISSA LANDERS {review}

Hardcover, 369 pages

Published February 2nd 2016 by Disney-Hyperion
Rating: ★★★

Starflight is a quick, fun caper in the vein of a teenage Firefly, complete with characters on the run from the law, rough space pirates, corporate corruption, and of course, teen romance.

Solara is eighteen, an orphan and was recently convicted of minor crimes, leading to tattoos across her knuckles. She's desperate to leave the rigid, hard place she lives for the Outer Rim, terraformed planets far past the end of civilization, frontier worlds where they might need a mechanic and won't care about her past.

Doran is also eighteen. He's everything that Solara isn't: he's rich, he's spoiled, he's a dick, and he's her old classmate she beat for an award. I personally think Doran could have been an even better character if he was actually a girl and the inevitable romance was queer. Now that we've got our two perspective characters, one male, one female, with a heaping dose of snark and dislike between the two we've got our obvious romance plot set and we're off to the races.

I mock because I'm tired of straight white teen romance as it's the most common thing in YA. However, I actually quite liked the romance in Starflight. Doran's journey from spoiled jerkwad to loyal friend and crewmember is enjoyable; Solara and Doran's alternating perspective works well for the plot as you can read both of their feelings change before their relationship does. The romance is one of the best aspects of this story.

The other characters on the ship all have their own secrets and motivations, some of which are revealed in the book, some of which are clearly left for the sequel (it features two other crew members as perspective characters). They work together well and that works for the book. I had a real soft spot for the tiny ship mascot, a tiny sugar bear named Acorn. I'm not totally dead inside. Add in various gangs of space pirates and the government chasing them and you've got a story that never truly gives you time to rest, rocketing from action scene to action scene.

THE ABYSS SURROUNDS US BY EMILY SKRUTSKIE {review}

Hardcover, 273 pages

Published February 8th 2016 by Flux
Rating: ★★★★★

So not only have I been captured by pirates - I've had the misfortune of being taken in by theatrical ones

I loved this book. Actually, more than that, I have been WAITING for this book. YA sci-fi/fantasy books are chock full of brave teenage narrators that are engaging and engrossing but almost all of them are achingly, depressingly heterosexual.

Not here. Cassandra Leung, our protagonist, has dated girls in high school and has feelings for a young pirate girl named Swift. That's a major part of the book, not the main plot, but their relationship weaves itself through the narrative.

The Abyss Surrounds Us is a bit like Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon meets Waterworld, except it vastly improves upon both by having the main character be an Asian teenage lesbian rather than the dull, dime-a-dozen straight white man. The plot isn't as complex as Novik's writing, of course, it's relatively simple and straightforward.

I found the conflict between the pirate captain, Santa Elena, and Cassandra to be far more interesting than the portions of the book dedicated to Bao, the titanic creature bred to attack ships. Santa Elena is cruel, ruthless and clever, ensuring the loyalty of the crew and attempting to improve their success rate. I wanted more of her. The lack of emotional connection between Bao and anyone else, including Cassandra, just made it hard to connect or particularly care about his fate. Especially when compared to the machinations of the far more interesting female characters.

Bao sees the hurricane behind Santa Elena, and he respects it. He sees no storm in me. Not yet.

The end definitely left me excited to read the second part; I want to find out what happens between Cassandra, Swift and Santa Elena. Though Santa Elena's presence was felt throughout the novel, always hanging over the burgeoning relationship of Cassandra and Swift, she was not heavily featured and I hope that there is more of her in the future.