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Photo: Sabina Music Rich [via Unsplash] In my upcoming new YA fantasy, In the Ravenous Dark (out today!), one of the main characters one of the love interests, in fact is dead. This bit of information always seems to pique people’s interest, because, well, how is he dead and still walking, talking, and falling in love? In Ivrilos’s case, he’s a guardian spirit bound to our protagonist, Rovan, in order to control her, particularly her powerful blood magic, but then the two of them become reluctant allies and eventually something more through their shared interest in toppling the underworld authority. It’s through the duality of blood and death magic in the book that these two characters, living and dead, are able to interact and even touch. But this got me thinking about the other types of dead characters I’ve read in (mostly) recent (mostly) YA books, what makes them tick, and more importantly, what makes them compelling. Below are a few of my favorite reads ....
Head below for the full list of Young Adult SFF titles heading your way in April! Keep track of all the new SFF releases here. All title summaries are taken and/or summarized from copy provided by the publisher. Note: Release dates are subject to change.
House of Hollow Krystal M Sutherland (G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers) Iris Hollow and her two older sisters are unquestionably strange. Ever since they disappeared on a suburban street in Scotland as children only to return a month a later with no memory of what happened to them, odd, eerie occurrences seem to follow in their wake. And they’re changing. First, their dark hair turned white. Then, their blue eyes slowly turned black. They have insatiable appetites yet never gain weight. People find them disturbingly intoxicating, unbearably beautiful, and inexplicably dangerous. But now, ten years later, seventeen-year-old Iris Hollow is doing all she can to fit in and graduate high school on time ....
(Scribe US 978-1-950354-42-9, $16.00, 240pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, April 6, 2021) Post-apocalyptic SF novel of survivors in the only two city-states left, literally fed only by the suffering they see in graphic footage of perpetual war. [ Black Mirror… Rise & Shine does not shy away from the complex moral terrain of political agency. Carefully, subtly, Allington lets the tension between multiple propositions build: that law and order form a part of collective survival; that service of the people can easily slip into control of the people; that people want a leader; that effective leadership requires multiple perspectives; that people can change; that some people don’t. Allington sustains the tension until the final pages, where he offers a thought-provoking ending worthy of his imaginative take on dystopia. ....
4 meddling Asian aunties to the rescue! When Meddelin Chan ends up accidentally killing her blind date, her meddlesome mother calls for her even more meddlesome aunties to help get rid of the body. Unfortunately, a dead body proves to be a lot more challenging to dispose of than one might anticipate, especially when it is accidentally shipped in a cake cooler to the over-the-top billionaire wedding Meddy, her Ma, and aunties are working, at an island resort on the California coastline. It’s the biggest job yet for their family wedding business “Don’t leave your big day to chance, leave it to the Chans!” and nothing, not even an unsavory corpse, will get in the way of her auntie’s perfect buttercream cake flowers. ....