River's Daughter

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

16) River's Daughter by Tasha Campbell is the first publication of Verb Noire, the small press started in the wake of RaceFail'09 to "to celebrate the works of talented, underrepresented authors and deliver them to a readership that demands more."

It's a simple, short fantasy novel about a mixed-race girl growing up some time after the Civil War, and discovering and reclaiming a heritage that had been hidden from her. It's a quick read and a well-written book, though the genre is not particularly up my alley. I did enjoy the book, but I mostly bought the book because I wanted to support Verb Noire in the hope that with time, books more in line with my literary tastes will appear.

I found the male characters were represented simplistically throughout, and I was particularly frustrated by the way Papa was drawn in the confrontation scene. Here was a potentially rich character with conflicted loyalties reduced to a single, repeated note. But there are strong female characters, and the truth is that River's Daughter is about women learning how to find their own power. And in those terms, as a simple allegory, it works pretty well.

Shadow of the Red Moon, by Walter Dean Myers. 36.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

A disappointing YA sf/fantasy novel with woodcut-like illustrations by Myers’ son, Christopher Myers.

A prologue of info-dump explains that after the apocalypse, the Okalians huddled in their Crystal City, hiding from the deadly plains outside. A plague kills all people outside of the city when they turn 18 or so, and the Okalians are always besieged by the Fen, who are feral children.

When the Fens break into and destroy the city, the Okalian teenagers are sent away in the hope of finding the promised land, and also hope that by now the plague has died out. Three teenagers journey across the land, sometimes accompanied by a friendly unicorn. They battle the Fens, find romance, and make the obligatory stop at the Land of the Lotus-Eaters -- here addicts of a psychoactive fruit.

Flat and clichéd. If you’ve read other YA quest fantasy, there’s not much new here.

But if you missed my earlier review of it, I highly recommend Myers’ historical fantasy The Legend of Tarik.

Click here to see it on Amazon: THE LEGEND OF TARIK

Shadow of the Red Moon