The Heir of Ariad: Book launch (Aberfoyle, ON)

I am delighted to share his very special book launch. 

A former student of mine, Niki Florica, 

has just published her first book.

Five years ago, when she was only 12 years old, 

she was writing guest reviews for me on CanLit for LittleCanadians.  

Now, at 17, she is a published author.

Please join Niki Florica for the launch of Book 1 in her Christian YA fantasy

The Heir Of Ariad

Written by Niki Florica

Elm Hill

978-0-310101888

412 pp.

Ages 13-18

August 2019

on 

Saturday, August 24, 2019

1:30-3:30 p.m.

at

Puslinch Public Library

29 Brock Road South

Aberfoyle, ON

(One exit west of Guelph Line, north of 401)

🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑

This book launch will include:

• refreshments

• contests

• book sales

• author signing

and

• words from the author.

🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑

From the author's website, here is a bit about The Heir of Ariad: 

The Skies seem a strange place to die of thirst. But four years of drought and twenty beneath the phantom king who designed it have brought all of Ariad–even the Rain Realm–to its knees.

Kyrian would be proud to die among Skyads. The weight of a vanished father's legacy and the secrets of the past have forced him to carve a place among his people at the price of his own sweat and blood. Ariad is withering, and Kyrian knows it. But no one can fetch the Rains against the tyrant's will, and no one but the Creator who has vanished into legend can kill an invisible king.

But there are forces at work beyond Kyrian's sight. A powerful, masterful Will.

Suddenly, there is blood on his hands. The Skies are filled with enemies, and the only way to escape a dark end is to flee the clouds forever. But there in the Lands waits a powerful prophecy, along with a powerful weapon, and now as Ariad withers to dust, all hope may rest with the one young mortal who fled his home a fugitive, and must return to it a king. 

Retrieved from 

https://www.nikiflorica.com/post/the-heir-of-ariad-book-one-first-peek 

on July 5, 2019.

Strangers: The Reckoner, Book One

Written by David A. Robertson

HighWater Press

978-1-55379-676-3

216 pp.

Ages 14+

October 2017

David A. Robertson, author of the Governor-General's literary awarded illustrated children's book When We Were Young (illustrated by Julie Flett, HighWater Press, 2016), returns his writing to young adults with Strangers, the first book in a new supernatural thriller series called The Reckoner. Still honouring his Cree roots with a story installed in the fictionalized Cree community of Wounded Sky, David A. Robertson shows us life on a remote Manitoba reserve where a past tragedy and current illness and murder have its inhabitants reeling in suspicion and anger.  And it doesn't help that that trickster Coyote is playing a leading role.

Seventeen-year-old Cole Harper has been living in Winnipeg since his Aunt Joan and grandmother moved him there to forget "everything he'd lost in the tragedy and his role in it" (pg. 13) ten years earlier.  Now his friend Ashley Ross is summoning Cole back to Wounded Sky with cryptic messages about needing to come home.   But Cole's return is far from welcome and he learns from Ashley that his phone had been missing and he'd never sent any messages to Cole.  And he tells Cole this minutes before he is shot dead.  While he awaits RCMP Constable Wayne Kirkness, Cole is visited by Choch, the anthropomorphized spirit being Coyote, who reminds Cole of a deal they'd made ten years earlier when Cole had saved two friends, Eva and Brady, from a burning school in which everyone else perished, including Cole's mother. Now Choch expects payback though he doesn't tell Cole exactly what he needs of him.  After Ashley's murder and an illness hits the community, Cole is sure it is to make things right here at Wounded Sky.  But then two more murders and deaths from the illness have the community turning on Cole, whose arrival coincided with the newest tragedies.  How can he do right by Wounded Sky when it's obvious the community, except for a few, resent his return from the city and his earlier role in the fire in which he only saved two lives?

There are mysteries aplenty in Strangers and not all are able to be solved in this first book in the series.  Who murdered Ashley?  How is the research facility, now closed, involved in the tragedies at Wounded Sky? How did the fire at the school start? With the advice of his grandmother to find his peace and "If you accept yourself for who you are, you belong anywhere" (pg. 109), Cole faces the challenges of an angry community, the antics of an arrogant and reckless Choch, and his own anxiety to be the hero needed to heal himself and others.

All legends, Cole, come from some place of truth. Whether they're about Coyote or a sky that was cut and bled the heavens like tears, or a boy that saved others. Look at your own scars. (pg. 124)

Beyond David A. Robertson's intricate plotting, he creates a character of Wounded Sky itself.  He makes sure that readers, Indigenous or not, get an authentic glimpse of life on a reserve: remote, ignored, self-reliant, challenged, vulnerable and cohesive.  From Elder Mariah making hot muskeg tea and Cole's tobacco tie, to the northern lights of spirits playing and Coyote's pranks, Strangers is both singular and inclusive, educating readers and encircling many in its story. I look forward to Book 2 in The Reckoner series so that I can witness how David A. Robertson resolves mysteries first revealed in Strangers and undoubtedly creates a few more for Cole to confront.

Lumière (The Illumination Paradox, Book One)

by Jacqueline E. Garlick

Amazemo Books

978-0-99216300-6

458 pp.

Ages 12+

December 2013

"How much do you trust me?"

When you have a secret that could lead to your hanging from the gallows, dipped in hot wax, or discarded with criminals and the Infirmed to a societal wasteland, you're very careful with whom you place your trust.  But at some time, everyone needs a little (or a lot!) of help and you need to trust someone.  

Fortunately for Eyelet Elsworth, her father, a famous inventor, who perished the Night of the Great Illumination, and her mother, who is put to death on the charge of being a shape-shifter and killing the royal baby, always looked for ways to protect her and even reverse her affliction.  Sadly, she lost her father when she was but eight years of age, and her mother nine years later.  Now at 17, Eyelet is running away from her home in Brethren, where she attends (attended!) the Academy of Scientific Delves and Discoveries, pursued by Professor Smrt and soldiers called Brigsmen.  Challenged as exhibiting madness but really hunted for her father's notebooks, Eyelet only has her mother's necklace with an hourglass-shaped vial containing an emerald light, and the location where her father's invention, The Illuminator, is stored.

Though Eyelet may not believe it, she is fortunate to discover her father's invention being  removed from the warehouse.  Grabbing hold on the carriage in which it's been taken, Eyelet is taken by Urlick Babbit to the safety of the home he shares with his father in the Ramshackle Follies, a scorned land beyond the limits of the Commonwealth.  Though Urlick is perennially focused on his face of raised purple scars and blemishes that he believes marks him as a monster, Eyelet sees beyond this, curious about the plethora of gadgets, the restrictions he places on her if she is to stay, and the location of her father's Illuminator. 

But both Eyelet and Urlick are keeping secrets and unknowingly creating misunderstandings that may put their relationship and even their lives in danger.  Neither can guess the other's intentions but each is convinced that they do. Readers will celebrate each forward step of Eyelet and Urlick's adventures, all the more so because they demonstrate great strength of purpose but are emotionally weakened by their perceived debilitations.  Fortunately, the intervention by a secondary cast of characters and a little honesty go a long way in bringing Eyelet and Urlick together, emotionally and strategically, to achieve something grand. Urlick's simple kindnesses towards Eyelet and Eyelet's disregard for his facial features will have you cheering for their inevitable romance so charmingly evoked by Jacqueline E. Garlick's rhythmic imagery.

"All the blood in my body tingles.  Not in the cool metallic way it does when I'm falling into an episode, but warm and cursive, like fancy handwriting over fine parchment paper, all loopy and beautiful, seeping in and out of every pore." (pg. 373)

The plot developments in Lumière will keep readers riveted, as will the imaginative gadgetry–a cigarette holder and flame thrower, for example–that enriches the steampunk genre. But, for me, sharing Eyelet's and Urlick's perspectives, usually in alternating chapters, and their witty repartée took me from beginning to end in two short readings.

"Ohmilord, ohmilord, ohmiLOOORD!" I scream.

"What are you doing?" Urlick shouts.

"Saving you?" I gulp as I swing past. "What does it look like I'm doing?"

"Have you lost your mind?"

"No, not yet. But soon, I suspect." (pg. 345)

Book Two in The Illumination Paradox series is set to be titled Noir (another title based on Eyelet's father's notebooks) though there is no ETA for it yet, though I will continue checking Jacqueline E. Garlick's website at http://jacquelinegarlick.com/, as I recommend you do, because Lumière leaves Urlick just about at his end.  And we wouldn't want anything to separate them when he's just found the "only girl I ever believed could understand me" (pg. 204), would we?

Rush: The Game, Book 1

by Eve Silver

Katherine Tegen Books / HarperCollins

978-0-06219213-4 (hc)

978-0-06219216-5 (ebook) 

364 pp.

Ages 13-17

June, 2013

Reviewed from Harper Audio version

Just before she dashes in front of a truck to save a deaf little girl in the road, teen Miki Jones is sure she hears someone call her name.  And it isn't Luka, the boy on the track who her group is watching, who rushes to save Miki.  But when she awakens, wondering if she's alive or dead, in heaven or somewhere else, Miki is introduced to the young man with that voice, Jackson Tate.  Unfortunately, he doesn't answer a lot of her questions, taking her healed self to the lobby, a clearing with large boulders where she meets their other team members: Luka; a red-haired cheerleader Rochelle; and Tyrone, a young man in his 20's.  Here Miki is told the basics of the game, as Luka calls it, in which members of their team have been "pulled" from real life, initially by apparent death, through time and space to complete missions against aliens known as the Drau.  If they are successful in eliminating the Drau wherever they've been sent, and have survived, as indicated by the colours of their wristbands, they are respawned and returned to their lives as if no time has passed.  

It's a steep learning curve for Miki who learns the rules of the game; how to gear up with weaponry; to avoid looking into the mercury-like eyes of the Drau; and how to fight.  Luckily Miki has two things in her favour: she is proficient in the martial art of kendo, and Jackson is always watching out for her.  In fact, upon her respawn, Miki discovers that Jackson is a new student at her high school, which is lucky because she has a lot of questions and confusion and Luka is apprehensive about talking about it outside the game. Unfortunately, her best friend Carly sees Miki as interested in both Luka and Jackson, and her uninformed perception puts their friendship in jeopardy.  

It hardly seems fair that Miki, who is already struggling with her mother's death from lung cancer and her father's consequent alcoholism and denial, should be plunged into an alternate world to fight aliens who want to take over all of humanity.  But, it doesn't seem like she has any choice, learning that both she and Jackson have ancestors who fought the Drau and it is in their genetic memory to do the same.  This exceptionality serves to help them anticipate attacks by sensing the Drau, but may also be their doom.  With escalating raids by the Drau, and Jackson's role in Miki's summoning to the community, the bond that has grown between the two seems destined to be challenged. 

Just as there seems to be little time for Miki to become acclimatized to her new reality between missions, young readers will find it difficult to rest and synthesize the ever-changing circumstances of Miki's life.  Rush is definitely a thriller, akin to Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games, with a strong female protagonist who is thrown into a difficult situation and must continue to think on her feet if she is to stay alive.  Just as gamers might recognize commonalities between their games and Rush's storyline, circumstances change randomly and sometimes irrevocably, and all you can do is play along. Eve Silver has ensured that Miki continues to learn as she plays and to take it all in stride, even if it is evident she hates playing the game but will, if only for the sake of her father.

On her website, www.evesilver.net, Eve Silver reassuringly indicates Books 2 and 3, named Push and Crash respectively, are slotted for release in 2014 and 2015.  Thank goodness, because Rush's conclusion is vexing and one that readers will demand be resolved favourably.  You know what I mean, Eve Silver, right? All others will need to read Rush to make sense of this.   

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I've posted the book trailer for Rush uploaded by Eve Silver to YouTube on June 7, 2013.