Princess Alethea’s Magical Elixir

New reviews are up at Intergalactic Medicine Show!

I’m off for the next two months while on book tour — in the meantime, my review column will be usurped by my dear friend and fellow Codexian Jamie Todd Rubin. I for one am really looking forward to his reviews–which have a decidedly more sci-fi flavor. I’m hoping that after the tour, Jamie will stick around to be a co-reviewer…

Title: The Vicious Deep
Author: Zoraida Córdova
EAN: 9781402265105

Zoraida Córdova is one of those impossible beautiful young women, the kind you keep glancing at to make sure she’s really still there, and not just a figment of your imagination. When she read from her debut novel The Vicious Deep at Lady Jane’s Salon this month, I expected from the title that the content would be dark and angry and thick. But the scene she began to read was in the startlingly light and honest voice of a handsome teenage lifeguard on Coney Island . . .who has just discovered that he’s a merman.

And Tristan Hart isn’t just any old merman – he’s the grandson of the Sea King, and heir to the throne. Tristan’s gorgeous, red-haired mother, Maia, was the Sea King’s eldest daughter who fell in love with a human and traded in her fins for a life on land. It’s hard to force Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” out of your mind when reading – it’s almost a continuing tale, as if Ariel and Eric had a son, and this is his story… (Read more)

 

Title: Wuftoom
Author: Mary G. Thompson
EAN: 9780547637242

Mary G. Thompson and I are book twins: our debut titles released on the exact same day (May 8, 2012) from the exact same publisher (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). We were also scheduled to appear on the same panel at Books of Wonder the weekend before our release date (along with David Macinnis Gill, Paolo Bacigalupi, Galaxy Craze, Kat Klimo, and Elizabeth Norris) to chat about young adult fantasy and science fiction. I thought it only fitting that I acquire her book from our publisher (which is a magical power book twinsies can perform before release dates) and read it.

I had no idea what I was getting into. But then, I had no idea what a Wuftoom was. Where Vicious Deep was deceptively delightful, Wuftoom brought the dark, in spades. (Read more)