Possessions, Book One: Unclean Getaway by Ray Fawkes

"So... what do you like to do for fun?"
"Gurgazon likes to vomit, cackle, and make things DIE!"

Ahhh, book serendipity.  Even though I spend untold hours obsessively reading book reviews, some things still manage to slip past my radar.  Like Unclean Getaway by graphic novel writer Ray Fawkes.  But one day last week it arrived in our branch, all new and shiny, and after one look I just knew I had to take it home to Ewan.  And when we sat down to read it, we laughed so hard that everyone else in the house wandered in to see what we were up to.  After it was done, Ewan asked plaintively, "Do we have to take Gurgazon back to the library?".  He's never said that about any book before, ever.  But he's right.  This one's a keeper.

Gurgazon the Unclean is a pit demon embodied as a little girl who looks a bit like a possessed muppet.  She has rows of razor-sharp teeth and an unfortunate propensity for green vomit, but when her mouth is shut, she's pretty cute.  As the story begins, she is captured and brought to live in the Llewellyn-Vane House for Captured Spirits and Ghostly Curiosities.  While the other supernatural inhabitants (including a headless lady ghost, a poltergeist, a haunted juke box and something called the "Ice Field Lights") appear pleasantly domesticated, Gurgazon the Unclean will not be bound.  She is unholdable!  TREMBLE before Gurgazon!  SHUDDER at Gurgazon's unholy power!  Gurgazon will have her REVENGE on the world!!!!

Or maybe not.

Unclean Getaway is the chronicle of Gurgazon's increasingly frustrated  attempts to escape.  But the plot is a minor note.  The real pleasure in Gurgazon's story is the perfectly-timed deadpan humour, from the wacky send-up of horror conventions to the way the characters all play off Gurgazon.  Ewan and I especially loved Polly, the impulsive, emotional poltergeist who communicates by scrawling on the wall.   She tantrums and sulks hilariously when Gurgazon rejects her offer of friendship. The Light is pretty funny as well, with his reasonableness and civility a great counterpoint to Gurgazon's raging fits.

Gurgazon: "Gurgazon will open a hell pit right here and DEVOUR you ALL!"
[PAUSE]
Light: "Listen.  We're having a pretty good time carving pumpkins over there.  Why not come and join us?"

Ray Fawkes gives an interesting interview about the world of Possessions here.

But remember..."Gurgazon is not entertainment!  Gurgazon is your DOOM!". 

Foiled by Jane Yolen and Mike Cavallaro

"The story I have to tell you is not about Avery.  It's about me, and fencing, and what I learned while masked.  It's about defense and defenders.  It's about power, and I don't mean electricity.  It's about family.

Most grownups will tell you things are revealed when you take off a mask.  But they're wrong, as they often are.  Everything was revealed when I put my fencing mask on in Grand Central Station.  Everything. "
 
Jane Yolen, wildly prolific and revered author of fantasy, fairy tale, poetry, myth, and picture book (Owl Moon, anyone? Or that fabulous How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight series?) has just published her debut graphic novel.  As one might expect, it's a gem. 

Foiled follows Aliera Carstairs, a young woman who has been fencing since childhood and draws great emotional strength and a sense of identity from the ancient sport.  A whiff of the mysterious follows her through school, as Avery, a strangely beautiful new boy whose looks contrast with his odd and sometimes cold behavior,  becomes her lab partner.  Crows seem to follow Aliera at a discreet distance. On weekends Aliera  fences and then visits her disabled cousin  Caroline to immerse herself in fantasy role-playing about an imagined kingdom.  "We play with more passion than it deserves.  Than either of us really understood."  One day Aliera's mother buys her a used foil at a garage sale, with a strange red jewel on the hilt.  And when Avery asks Aliera out on a date and she brings her mask and sword into Grand Central Station, she and Avery step into a fantasy world where Aliera is the Defender of the Seelie Court in the Kingdom of Helfdon, and Avery turns out to be a creature of darkness. 

Yolen is adept at hinting of fabulous worlds projecting into the ordinary, and showing  teens rising to otherworldly challenges. Hers is the ancient world of faerie, with courtly laws and and deceptive glamours.  Foiled maintains a tone of adventure rather than malevolence, however, making it perfect for a younger audience than, say, some of Gaiman's faerie-tinged graphic novels.

Cavallaro's art is very accessible and easy to read visually, but still quite dynamic and expressive.  I especially love how the real world is drawn in black and white, reflecting Aliera's colour blindness, and the world of faerie is in vivid, eye-popping colour.  It reminds me of the dichotomy between the gritty world of Kansas and the extraordinary world of Oz in The Wizard of Oz. And I like the tiny stars in Aliera's eyes on the book cover.  Nice detail. 

Foiled leaves lots of room for a sequel.  Aliera's story is clearly just beginning.  Here's hoping we see more of it soon.

Hearts at Stake by Alyxandra Harvey

I'm starting to think that the reason my adolescence was so bereft of yummy, adoring, mesmerizingly sexy guys is my lack of vampire blood.  Vamps clearly seem to be getting all the good action these days.

Hearts at Stake is a fine addition to the current craze for teen vampire romance.  It's funny, adventurous, seductive, and has two smart, enterprising best-friend heroines.  I loved the idiosyncratic chemistry and unquestioned loyalty between Solange, born to an ancient vampire family, and Lucy, her human bff.  According to an ancient prophecy, Solange is destined to be the next vampire queen.  Neither Solange nor the current queen is really enamoured of this idea (Solange's idea of a good time is throwing pots in her backyard ceramics studio, preferably wearing mucky jeans).  In fact, Lady Natasha, the current queen, is so offended by the possibility of being dethroned by Solange that she plots to snuff out the entire Drake family to make sure the prophecy will never come to pass.  Plot leads to counter-plot, and soon Solange is kidnapped and Lucy roars off to find her with Solange's rather distracting brother Nicolas. And while Nicolas and Lucy are busy hunting her down, Solange and her kidnapper Kieran are finding themselves falling for each other as well.

BTW, I like the fact that the girl on the cover is believably sixteen.  I'm getting sick of covers showing twenty-two year old girls posing as fourteen-year-olds (I'm looking at you, Clique!).

Bloomsbury Kids have given us not just one but two book trailers, one for Solange, and one for Lucy:

Every Soul a Star by Wendy Mass

"And as streams of light fan out behind the darkened sun like the wings of a butterfly, I realize that I never saw real beauty until now."


Let's see if I can sum up my reactions quickly.

1)  Pretty good plot.
2) Pretty good characters
3) Pretty good writing style.
4) AMAZING descriptions of the night sky, what you can see in a remote campground with a telescope at night, and why people chase eclipses.

I like books that can make me see the world a bit differently.  This is one of them.  Now waiting for my next starry night....

"The Name's Mouse. Missile Mouse. "

I really, really hope that Jake Parker's graphic novel Missile Mouse and the Star Crusher is the launch to a new series.  This  mouse has "winner" written all over him.  He's gutsy.  He's cool. He's smart.  He's a secret agent.  He's got a dangerous reputation, a spaceship, and enough nifty gadgets to rival James Bond. And he's in full, glorious technicolour.  Really, when you're sitting down to read a bedtime story to your friendly neighbourhood action/adventure/sci-fi/superhero  fan, you couldn't ask for better than this.

The plot--let's just say it involves a weapon of mass destruction.  Galaxy-sized mass destruction, not just puny earth-size. The good guys and bad guys are racing to find it first.   There is a kidnapped scientist involved.  Missile Mouse is on the good team.  That's really all we need to know.

What really makes Missile Mouse a standout piece of graphic fiction is its superb artwork.  Parker's ability to express character and mood through face and body language is impressive.  The characters, aliens and backdrops are all well-delineated and easy to read visually, but they also convey so much dynamic movement, and do it so smoothly.  Although Missile Mouse is on one level a take-off on the spy genre and makes full use of its cliches, Parker never lets his heroes feel one-dimensional.  The story is fast-paced and exciting, and the overall effect is sophisticated, lively, and lots of fun.  

By the way, Missile Mouse and the Star Crusher is actually the second outing for MM.  A short Missile Mouse story was featured in the graphic fiction anthology for young people Flight:  Explorer, which I also highly recommend.

Here's the Missile Mouse book trailer:

Missile Mouse: The Star Crusher Book Trailer from jakeparker on Vimeo.

And Now for Something Completely Different: The Unfinished Angel by Sharon Creech

After reading Dawn (see below), Sharon Creech's Unfinished Angel felt light as air.  Unfinished Angel is a small, simple, lovingly written story about an untrained angel who lives in a castle in Switzerland and speaks broken English,  and a girl from America who can see and talk to him.  When Zola, the young girl, discovers a group of mistreated orphans hiding nearby, she informs the angel that they are his responsibility:

"Angel!  You're supposed to know everything!"
I am?  This is a little shock to me.  No, it is a big shock.  Because I am not knowing many, many things.
Zola does not look too happy with me.  She says, "There are kids there, living there, in that dark and dirty and cold place.  A bunch of them.  Eight or ten.  Maybe more.  They're skinny and hungry and dirty.  It is extremely tragical."
"Why are they living there?"
"Angel!"  Zola holds her head in her hands as if I am giving her a very big headache.  "That's what I'm asking you.  You're supposed to know these things.  You're supposed to fix these things."
Know and fix?  How does Zola know these things?  Why does she know them and I don't?  I am not feeling so good. 


Between them, Zola and the angel successfully rescue the orphans and make sure they are welcomed into the community.  Creech's world is warm and comforting, and a lot of humour comes from the angel's exasperation at the peculiar ways of humanity.  There's a bit of sadness and reality in this book, and a bit of magic too.  All in all, it's a lovely, uplifting treat.

Dawn by Kevin Brooks

"And tomorrow I'm going to start killing God." 

There's no question that Kevin Brooks is a powerful writer.  He's unafraid of taking chances, and he is relentless when writing about the darkness and squalor of the world his characters populate.  His stories are brooding and violent, and feature angry or bewildered misfits with the odds stacked against them.  Betrayals are par for the course,  and no one comes to save you from your problems just in the nick of time.   He's not for everyone, that's for sure.  But for those who like that  kind of unflinching stare into the heart of darkness, he's an excellent choice. 

Dawn Bundy, the heroine of Brooks' latest novel,  has big odds stacked against her.  Her mother is an unemployed alcoholic who spends her days watching television, and her father disappeared two years previously after raping her in an orgy of alcohol and religious frenzy (while singing hymns about the blood of the lamb).  Dawn has no friends  and struggles with repressed memories and deep feelings of abandonment.  Her closest companions are her two dogs, Jesus and Mary, named after the notoriously melancholy and violent band Jesus and Mary Chain, to which Dawn listens incessantly.  She also loves and feels protective of her barely-functional mother. She blames a local Christian sect for taking her father away from her, and fantasizes about killing God, although as she sadly admits early on, "there is no God.  He doesn't exist. Which is why it's going to be kind of difficult to kill him."

Into this bleak world  Brooks throws two schoolmates who enter Dawn's life with suspicious agendas and a dangerous mobster just out of jail who believes the family owes him money.  Dawn is in way over her head, and we expect to see her situation spiral disasterously out of control, which it does.  But not at all in the way that I thought it would.

And then, miraculously, Brooks leaves Dawn at the end in a state of inner grace.  Love, forgiveness and healing prove to be within her reach, and they transform her.  It's not a happy ending, exactly, but at least she has the inner resources to sustain herself as she faces her difficult situation.   And how incredible is that, that Brooks can make us feel that Dawn has somehow saved herself even as her world falls apart?  It's a testament to his ability to create literature that is soulful and unnerving at the same time.