Fantasy: Ice

Sarah Beth Durst brings us another fantasy tale based on the classic fairy story "East of Sun, West of Moon". Protagonist Cassie was raised by her father and grandmother in an arctic ice station, with scientific instruments as her toys and the deadly cold arctic icefields as her playground. She's a confident and experienced outdoorswoman: and for her 18th birthday, she's promised herself she'll tag a Polar Bear.

But the bear that Cassie corners isn't an ordinary one: he's a Munaqsri, guardian of a species and custodian of polar bear souls. Not only that, but he says that Cassie was promised to him in lieu of her long-lost mother. Cassie is incredulous, but she can't deny Bear's magic. In return for becoming his bride, Cassie forces him to promise to rescue her mother from the Trolls who live east of the sun, and west of the moon.

Once married, Cassie finds herself falling in love with her life in the barren arctic. Far from being a wasteland, the Bear lives in a fabulous castle of ice, with snowy gardens and magical powers that provide for her every need. But when Cassie can't resist peeking at Bear while he is in human form, she nearly loses everything to her impulsiveness.

This book provides a very mature perspective on the classic fable, but one that older teens will find challenging and engaging. Cassie experiences loneliness, pregnancy, captivity and even death in her quest to free Bear. Her success hinges upon one startlingly obvious observation, but the book will keep you guessing right to the last page.

Fantasy

Grades 10 and up

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Fantasy: Dragonfly

Author Julia Golding has created a fairly standard fantasy novel here, with a typical princess-in-trouble, endangered betrothal, eventual reconciliation storytline. Dragonfly would be a fairly run of the mill fantasy, except that there are many unique touches and original details that make the book worth reading.

Fourth princess Taoshira is sent off to marry a rude, uncouth princeling from a foreign land. Neither she nor the prince are pleased with the prospect: Prince Ramil calls her a "white painted witch", and Tashi has her formal sensibilities offended time and again when she arrives in the much more casual land of Gerfal.

Tashi sends a message to her co-princesses calling off the wedding, but before she can announce her intentions she and prince Ramil are both kidnapped by their mutual enemy, Emperor Fergox Spearthrower. Through their wits and perserverence, Tashi and Ramil escape, and find that their opinions of the other have changed drastically for the better during their ordeal.

The plot is quite predictable, but the details of princess Taoshira's complex and formal religion are standouts. Her prayer sequences and thoughts on religion will be of interest to any teen with an interest in philosophy or world religions.

grades 8-11

Fantasy

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Fantasy Thriller: Bones of Faerie

Nuclear war, disease, zombies: these are the standard premises around which most apocolyptic fiction books are built. Janni Lee Simner bucks the trend with this tense, horror-filled YA novel about the end of the world as we know it.

15 year old Liza can't remember a time when plants and forests didn't crave the taste of human blood. She lives in a small village, where the residents fortify their homes against the bloodthirsty faerie magic, and cast out anyone who shows any signs of magic of their own.

It's a tenuous, dangerous existence, and Liza finds out how close she is to disaster when her father casts out her newborn sister for having silver faerie eyes. Just a week after her sister's death, Liza's mother disappears from the village: everyone gives her up as lost, for surely no-one could survive in the sinister forests that surround the town.

When Liza discovers that the faerie magic is growing in her, she knows that she must flee the village for the safety of her friends and family. Matthew, a boy who also shows a glimmer of faerie magic, decides to go with her. Together, they decide to search for Liza's mother in the deadly forest: neither one knows anything about the world beyond their village's boundaries, and so their search is blind. Slowly they realize that finding Liza's mother may shed light on the origins of the cataclysmic war between humans and faeries, and that their hybrid faerie magic may be the key to finding a new way of life in a world where humans are no longer the peak species.

Fantasy/thriller
Grades 10-12
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You can't trust Micah. Eveyone believes that she's a compulsive liar, but that might be the only true thing her high school classmates will ever know about her.

Micah doesn't know why she lies, or if she does, she's not going to tell. Sometimes her lies seem so real that she's not sure herself what's true and what's false. But when her boyfriend dies horribly, Micah's history means that everyone suspects her: the police, her friends, her parents, even herself.

Micah isn't a likeable heroine, and you'll be wondering right up until the end whether or not she's responsible for Zach's death. That's ok: Micah's wondering too. The real mystery is what could possibly make a pretty, smart teenage girl into a pathological liar? You'll be absolutely surprised when you find out.





Science Fiction
Grades 10-12
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