A Fan's Playground

First thing I've read for my Hugos homework! yes I feel like I'm behind already. I only have 2 months left!! Anyway this is the sort of book I wouldn't have chosen to read without external reason, and no it still isn't my thing but it's a really excellent version of that thing.

It's a modern YA urban fantasy written in first-person present-tense about a special girl with special secret magical powers experiencing a love triangle and trying to save the world. Which is great if that's your jam, we all have our well-used premises we like to read and this just doesn't happen to be mine! But it does some good stuff with it that makes me admire it at least, and definitely want to rec it to people for whom this type of book IS their jam.

I appreciate that it's drawing on Arthurian legend while also being anti-monarchy, for one thing. And has a black girl in the Arthur role!

Also it's about a girl having a complicated experience of her connection with her history and her family's traditions - there's both good and bad in such things, and the book is firmly on the side of having a choice about what to value in it.

I also appreciate that it's a book that understands that it's not actually GOOD to make teens be the only people who are able to access the secret special magic powers and in fact it's probably because there are adults who want to be able to manipulate them. Secret orders are a problem actually!

There's lots of good themes overall in fact.

And it seems promising about how it's going to handle the love triangle - a polyamorous answer does not seem out of the question, which is fun.

However it is the second book in a series and it ends on a cliffhanger so there's that.

I would call it a 4 or even 5 star book for people who enjoy the modern YA genre. I'm almost certainly going to rank it either first or second on my Hugo voting form in the YA category, because I do think it deserves recognition! But I'm tagging it 3 stars because that's the degree to which I personally enjoyed it.

Okay I've now read all the Lodestar finalists! (the hugo for YA basically.) Here's how I'm voting. Links to my complete reviews from the titles of each book.

1. Elatsoe, by Darcie Little Badger

I adored this book! Idek, it was just perfect to me. My review of it is basically just a list of things I loved!

2. A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking, by T Kingfisher

Fascinating and odd and with a lot of heart, like Kingfisher's writing so often is, and I loved every bit of it.

3. Legendborn, by Tracy Deonn

Good at being exactly the kind of book it is, and it explores some important themes, but I found the monster-fighting to be kinda boring, personally.

4. Raybearer, by Jordan Ifueko

An uneven debut novel, but with a lot of promise, and some things done very well.

5. Cemetery Boys, by Aiden Thomas

A very slow start and some uncomfortable implications in the ways the themes tied together, but I enjoyed all the various complicated relationships in the book.

6. No Award

7. A Deadly Education, by Naomi Novik

Competently written but I never felt compelled to care about anything that was happening.