Children’s Books: Smudge’s Mark by Claudia Osmond

From the outset, Smudge’s Mark (Simply Read Books) is dense and meandering and at first seems quite incomprehensible. And I couldn’t put it down. If you think those things don’t seem to go together, welcome to the club and read on. I’m still not sure I understand how it happened, but I do know I’d read another book by this author.

One of the most powerful things about Smudge’s Mark is the strong and personable voice of the narrator, Simon, a.k.a. Smudge. “My grandpa was a wicked prankster,” Osmond-as-Simon begins. “Usually after working the part-time midnight shift at the mushroom farm, he’d make his way home to 49 Stone Elements Drive in the darkness of the early morning.” And the correct response would seem to be: who cares? At this point -- the beginning -- Osmond has seemingly done nothing to insure we care at all. And yet, oddly enough, we do. It is as though, with those first simple words, Simon waltzes into our lives as though he hasn’t a care in the world. And then, layer upon layer, we learn of all the dark places: all the things that are at stake and by then we realize that while we weren’t paying attention, Osmond has somehow -- magically? -- made us care.

Smudge’s Mark is, in its own strange way, a very good book. At story’s beginning, we meet Simon in a moment of quiet, almost introspection. By journey’s end, Simon has more or less preserved life as he knows it as well as Emogen, a hidden realm with a strong connection to Earth.

Smudge’s Mark is intended for older children -- what the industry likes to call young adults -- but I suspect it will find its place with the nine-to-twelve-year-old set. The book does not try to be either Harry Potter or Coraline, but young readers who enjoyed those books are likely to respond to elements of Osmond’s debut novel.

Children’s Books: Time of Trial: Volume 4, The Laws of Magic by Michael Pryor

Time of Trial (Random House Australia) is the fourth of Michael Pryor’s delightful Laws of Magic series, set in an alternative Edwardian England.

Once again, Aubrey Fitzwilliam and his friends George and Caroline are needed to save the world, as one of the characters observes wryly in the novel. This time, after the usual opening scene of magical mayhem -- in this case, cloud ships attacking a university cricket game in which George and Aubrey are playing. It’s during a trip to Holmland (Germany in our universe) where Lady Rose, Aubrey’s mother, is speaking at a symposium.

But this is where the evil Dr Tremaine, Aubrey’s nemesis, is living. He has influence in high places. Very high places. And then there are the golems, which are far from the lumpy clay things of folklore; you can make them very lifelike, so that it’s impossible to tell them from real people till they’re deactivated. Who can be trusted? Certainly not characters who can get sucked into telephones, as in one memorable scene.

Then there’s the pearl Aubrey took from Tremaine in the last novel -- what mystery does it hide? Our heroes are about to find out -- and they won’t like it.

It’s not all bad, though. Aubrey now has a Beccaria Cage, which reunites the body and soul he tore apart in a stupid experiment before the start of the first volume. If only it hasn’t been sabotaged...

As always, the adventure tears along at a breakneck pace, and is very funny. It doesn’t let you go easily; there’s a twist near the end, just when you think the main story is over.

I found myself falling comfortably back into this universe, enjoying it as much as ever. It’s rarely that a series can continue for this many volumes without losing something, but though it will need to finish some time, at least for this story arc, The Laws Of Magic is one series that doesn’t go downhill.

I think the series will become a fantasy classic. Bring on Volume 5!

Children’s Books: Liar by Justine Larbalestier

Micah Wilkins lies automatically. She not only lies to family, classmates and police, she lies to the reader. Over and over. Right until the last page, you don’t know what’s true and what isn’t. Not even then.

Micah was Zach’s outside-of-school girlfriend, who ran with him, but now Zach has died and everyone is a suspect: Micah, Zach’s best friend, his official girlfriend -- everyone!

Why is Micah so fast ? Where did she get that incredible sense of smell? Why is it necessary for her to take the pill, apart from the obvious? And why does Micah’s father’s family live out in the middle of nowhere, not bothering with modern technology?

After a time, we realize that Micah isn’t the only member of her family to lie. Her father is a natural liar. Her grandmother is another. She has lied to her son and to Micah. There is a network of lies in the family, centered around “the family illness.”

I can’t go into any further detail without giving too much away. You may guess it as you read -- but bear in mind that Micah is a liar and while she tells you one ending, there are hints in the book that what has happened to her at the end is something very different.

Liar bounces around, backwards, forwards, flashbacks, family history, her own history, and somehow it works and clues build up, but Justine Larbalestier is her typical nasty self and never lets you be sure. All I can say is that at the end, I was thinking “Ouch!”

This may Larbalestier’s best book yet. Highly recommended for older teens -- younger ones tend to like things predictable and may not be happy to have to decide what really happened at the end.

Young Adult: Fate by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

I loved it when Publishers Weekly described Fate (Delacorte) as being in the “teens-with-special-powers-and-destinies genre” and that really doesn’t miss the mark. Let’s face it, between PC Cast and Stephanie Meyers, this a deliciously well followed part of “literature” these days.

Barnes’ offering is not worse than many others and, in many ways, it’s quite a bit better. I share PW’s issue with the author’s use (overuse?) of italics. Barnes uses them for protagonist Bailey’s trips into the otherworld when she moves beyond being a high school student and becomes the third fate, she who holds the destiny of the world in her slender hands.

Fulbright scholar Barnes writes intelligently and -- for the most part -- engagingly. Did the world actually need yet another ancient mystical being? Sales appear brisk so, apparently, it did. Fate is recommended for readers 12 and up. The book follows 2007’s Tattoo.

New This Month: Inferno by Robin Stevenson

Aside from being a name to watch in the world of young adult publishing, Robin Stevenson’s story is the type of overnight success that really is one. While on maternity leave from her job as a social worker and counselor in 2005, Stevenson began to write seriously. Four years later, she is the author of six books.

The most recent of these is Inferno (Orca), Stevenson’s take on the teen angst novel. She does a terrific job, capturing the impossibly large emotion and the power that propels teenage girls. I think back on that age and shudder. One gets the feeling that Stevenson is able to recreate that feeling for herself with ease. Or it feels like ease, at any rate though, admittedly, good writing almost always looks like that.

In Inferno we meet 16-year-old Emily, though we meet her as Dante, after a series of events have caused her to rethink herself. Having read The Divine Comedy, she recreates herself as Dante because, as she tells someone early on, she liked what the author said about “how we need to take responsibility for the world. As individuals, I mean.”

Clearly, Dante is intelligent and somewhat different. These things, together with Stevenson’s understanding of human nature and developmental behaviors, combine to create a character young readers will have no trouble relating to. We all feel different sometimes. We all feel a desire for reinvention on occasion and so we relate to Dante who seems, at times, hell-bent on creating a divine comedy of her own.

Are there elements of the story and aspects of Dante’s character that seem stereotypical to this subgenre? I think so. But where do stereotypes come from? Readers who are on the other side of Dante’s 16 will remember that age and identify with the character. This is skillful writing featuring a strong female protagonist. A good story well told.