Heather Seggel

Hank and Liana meet cute when he bursts in on her in a hospital ladies room, the crotch of his pants soaked with . . . energy drink. From the first page, The Half-Life of Planets doesn’t augur well for their romantic future. Things are further complicated by Liana’s vow not to kiss anyone all summer; instead, trying to reclaim her reputation, she has thrown herself into her planetary science studies. And Hank is more than a little awkward; Asperger’s syndrome has given him a music obsession Nick Hornby would envy, and no “off” switch once he starts talking about it. The perfect couple? Hardly.

But this odd pair connect and develop a friendship that lets each of them see past the labels they’ve been branded with to the real people inside. Authors Emily Franklin and Brendan Halpin alternate between each character’s perspective from chapter to chapter, and when something new happens, or information is hinted at, we are eager to follow the clues and find out how each side perceives things. Both Hank and Liana have complicated home lives (they did meet in a hospital, after all, and neither was a patient), and Liana’s reluctance to emotionally expose herself runs headlong into Hank’s difficulty processing the emotional content of any message. Again, oil and water. Can this romance be saved?

The answer shouldn’t come as a surprise, but I’m no spoiler. The Half-Life of Planets is frequently funny, and occasionally poignant. Hank is the more vividly drawn character, and it’s interesting to see the world from inside his head; he knows and understands his differences, but can’t control them as well as he’d like. In a wry moment, he comments on the oft-cited “wonderful difference” common to those with autism spectrum disorders: “My reaction upon reading this in the past has always been that anyone who thinks this, or for that matter any, difference is wonderful has obviously never attended an American middle school.” Half-Life is the whole package, a love story with a wonderful difference all its own.

Ship Breaker, the new novel from highly acclaimed author Paolo Bacigalupi, poses a challenge to critics: How do you explain how good it is without a dozen “spoiler alerts”? One of science fiction’s pleasures is the dislocation it confronts readers with, sometimes from page one. Reading along and finding yourself in outer space, under water or in a future you never envisioned creates the sense of wonder the best sci-fi inspires. To give away too much would be cruel, but here are the basics:

The story follows Nailer, a teenage boy and one of the “ship breakers” of the title, as he scavenges for copper wire inside the ductwork of grounded oil tankers, off the Gulf Coast of an America sometime in our future. He has cruel bosses, difficult quotas and a dangerous job which he’ll soon grow too big to do anymore. So when he stumbles upon a clipper ship washed ashore in a hurricane, it seems as though he’s hit the jackpot. Instead, what he finds inside the ship forces him to reconsider his life so far—and his chances for a better, and happier, future.

The novel has surprises in store, not least among them the juxtaposition of a bleak landscape (including forced labor, grinding poverty and drug addiction) with a nautical adventure story, and ultimately a touching discussion about the families we surround ourselves with for comfort and survival, whose ties run deeper than blood. Bacigalupi’s seeming ease in tying these themes together, and interweaving them with a dark take on the consequences of oil scarcity, is evidence of his talent. He paints a vivid portrait of the scavengers’ culture with perfectly chosen details: Facial tattoos that serve as work permits, glowing LED face paint to illuminate the darkened ducts, the luxury of rat on a stick and the scary amphetamine-like drug “crystal slide” all bring their world to life. Ship Breaker is definitely worth exploring, and offers much for readers to take away.

Heather Seggel reads and writes in Ukiah, California.

Sixteen-year-old Sydney Biggs is a girl in trouble and then some: not just pregnant, but grounded with good cause. When best bud Natalia “borrows” her mom’s car, it’s just to drive Sydney to inform the father-to-be, Tommy. But the car is reported stolen, and both girls are taken home by the police. It’s the last straw for Sydney’s mother; she turns Syd over to her father’s care for the summer, and he enrolls her in a wilderness camp, which Natalia ends up attending as well.

In Every Little Thing in the World, Nina de Gramont has given terrific authenticity and freshness to a common story and a setting rife with potential clichés. Syd’s parents are both so wrapped up in their own concerns that she needs to rely on friends and fellow campers to help decide what to do. But the summer will strain her friendship with Natalia to the breaking point, as revelations about Natalia’s own home life force her to rethink the meanings of “life” and “choice.”

Sydney is a great narrator, self-aware about her position in the social food chain and frank about her mistakes. (After losing her virginity to a long-term boyfriend with whom she practiced safe sex consistently, she slept with Tommy, as she says, “not because I especially liked him, but because I was flattered by how much he liked me.”) It’s easy to root for her to make a decision that will bring her some peace and self-preservation, and this smart and thought-provoking book doesn’t shy away from the consequences of each choice.

Meet Mary Quinn: 12-year-old orphan, thief and pickpocket, sentenced to die for her crimes. Saved from the gallows, she’s transformed from a street urchin into a fine young example of womanhood, thanks to Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy For Girls. On the cusp of her 17th birthday, she learns that the Academy is a front for Victorian London’s top secret women’s detective agency—and she is invited to join.

Mary’s first assignment places her in the household of a wealthy merchant suspected of sabotaging his own cargo ships in an insurance fraud scheme. Employed as a companion for the Thorolds’ daughter, Mary must entertain the miserable girl while trying to unearth any incriminating data. As it turns out, she’s not the only one seeking this information . . . and the Thorold family aren’t the only ones with secrets to protect.

A Spy in the House is, by any yardstick, an excellent novel. A fine whodunit, with clues carefully rationed out as the story evolves, it also holds some great surprises likely to catch even the sharpest readers off guard. There’s keener plotting and more depth to the characters than in many “adult” mysteries, and the grit and grime of London in the midst of a summer heat wave is palpable. Issues of race, class and the world’s oldest profession are tastefully interwoven with the story; much is made clear from the context in which it appears, but parents should be prepared to answer a few questions if they arise.

Mystery novels for younger readers often rely on excessive humor or quirkiness to offset the scariness inherent to suspense. This can disappoint a reader looking for a “real” mystery. A Spy in the House is entirely true to the genre, full of thrills and danger and wonderfully sharp writing. That’s the good news. Even better is that this is just the first part of a planned trilogy, so those of us who are already hooked can look forward to two more novels. I, for one, can't wait. Long live The Agency!

Heather Seggel is a freelance writer. She lives and works in Ukiah, California.

Martin Stokes is a 17-year-old black high school student. Arrested on his own front stoop for “steering” an undercover cop to a drug dealer, he’s spent five months in jail at Rikers Island when this story begins. By turns bleak and funny, Rikers High follows Martin’s struggles with his overworked legal-aid attorney, the bullying of his fellow inmates, a complicated home life and his own burgeoning anger at the unfairness of his incarceration. The novel spans just two and a half weeks, but those few days feel as long as a lifetime.

Rikers High opens with Martin being cut in the face with a razor, and the story builds tension around whether or not he will seek revenge for the attack and jeopardize his chance for release. Author Paul Volponi taught adolescents at Rikers Island for six years, and he notes in a foreword that while the characters are fictitious, most of what transpires in the novel really happened at some point on his watch. That includes corrections officers beating up inmates and fighting with the teachers, kids beating up on each other and even one death, as well as seemingly endless hours of mind-numbing boredom. Volponi balances the excitement of the story’s various conflicts with a real sense of how long the days feel when you have nowhere to go and nothing to do—when fighting for the fun of it begins to seem like legitimate entertainment.

Martin is a smart kid with a good sense of humor (“I’d been sitting five feet from [the teacher] for a week, with a big cut on my face. But he still had no idea I was his student. He should have been a detective instead of a teacher. Then maybe the jail would be empty and some high school . . . would be full of kids.”), and readers will root for him to do the right thing. They’ll also have much to discuss with this engrossing and thought-provoking read.

Heather Seggel is a freelance writer in Ukiah, California.

Jasper Jones starts with a bang. Charlie Bucktin is at home in bed when Jasper, a neighborhood outcast and older boy, taps on his window asking for help. All of 13 and a bit of a bookworm, Charlie follows and is terrified by what Jasper shows him. By night’s end, he’s had his first drink, first cigarette, and is on the way to his first felony obstruction of justice charge. This book pulls no punches at the outset.

So it’s confusing when author Craig Silvey abandons that energetic pace for the rest of the book. The neighborhood gossip in this small Australian coal-mining town is certainly juicy—there’s marital infidelity, racism, incest, suicide and the vicious vandalism of a flowerbed—but each of these side trips pulls focus from the plot thread that opens the book. Charlie’s first-person voice on the page is mature beyond his 13 years (when pondering a world where bad things happen to good people, he describes it as “A world that’s three-quarters water, none of which can quench your thirst”). But in the midst of a potentially life-altering mystery, he idly goofs off with his best friend. And talks about cricket matches. For pages on end. A reader could be forgiven for shouting out, “Get back to the corpse!”

Given all that, there’s still a good coming-of-age story here, wound through all these other subplots. Charlie is alternately likable and ridiculous; in other words, a 13-year-old. And the half-Aborigine Jasper, caught between two worlds, could have sprung from the pages of those Mark Twain books Charlie’s always got his face buried in; he’s the Jim to Charlie’s Huck, and their relationship has an interesting arc. There’s much room for improvement here, but Jasper Jones is a brave and ambitious novel.