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Elantris by Brandon Sanderson. A new fantasy writer and one I intend to keep an eye on. His Elantris is a city of gods, transformed suddenly into a slime-covered city of walking dead--joined, of late, by the Crown Prince. Just before his bride, Sarene, was to arrive. The characters are mostly wonderful, the story enjoyable. There are some first novel awkwardnesses--some of the conversations go on a tad long, and Sanderson has a tendency to resort to eyeball cliches instead of showing real reactions, especially with one of the villains, which makes him that much less interesting, despite a reason coming at the end for his zealotry. But those are just minor glitches of the sort the writerly brain notes--the reader brain notices, and appreciates how the world building was interesting and complex, the plot intricate, and the characters were, oh, fun to get to know. The protagonists were not Noble Heroes so much as genuinely good people, something far too rare these days, at least for my taste.

Epic by Conor Kostick is out from The O'Brien Press in Dublin, so it might be a tad hard to find for us in the States. But what a fabulous read. The premise is not new--kids slipping between a gaming world and their real world of their planet--but how he uses it really is refreshingly new, convincing, and absorbing. The main character, a boy named Erik, designs a girl character to send into the game world. What he learns, what he does, how his family and friends react, how the Committee who control the allocations of goods react, I just couldn't put this novel down. It's one of the best YA novels I've read in a very long while.

Another fascinating YA novel that people might not find is put out by Scholastic, called Montmorency: thief liar gentleman? by Eleanor Updale. This is sfnal only in feel--the Victorian passion for scientific endeavor, often carried out on people who were not consulted. Like the jailbird who was near death, operated on, his progress exposed to the Faculty. He reinvents himself as Montmorency, gentleman thief, and becomes his own sidekick, the crude, and cruel, Scamper. How he does this, what the Victorian world was like (particularly the new sewers) and what happens was a wonderful read. Delicious writing, with brilliant detail.

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