#Maya Bohnhoff

[mayxthexforce]

Magash & The Singing Mountain Clan

Since there are a few (three or four) iterations of this clan, I figured I'd make a post to specify which one I go with when it comes to writing Magash.

For starters, the singing mountain clan as depicted in Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff and Michael Reaves' The Last Jedi novel is an all-female, 99% human clan of witches that inhabit the Singing Mountain. They're sort of like the amazons in the way that —unlike other depictions of the same clan and unlike the Nightsisters— they do not have men in their territory. Due to Dathomir's past of sex trafficking and slavery, the witches of the Singing Mountain have stuck to a life away from men for generations, abandoning their mountain to find a mate whenever it is that they decide to have a child, then returning once the child is conceived.

Magash's clan doesn't follow the ways of the Jedi, nor do they follow the ways of Allya as they were first given to them by the former Jedi. They also do not worship neither the winged goddess nor the fanged god. Instead, they worship the Unformed: their own way of understanding the force; along with the spirits of nature. Magash also refers to the dark side of the force as The Dread.

The clan is led by Augwynne Djo– NOT related to Tenel Ka Djo's lineage. The daughter of Augwynne, Gethzerion, became the founder of what would later become the Nightsisters after being exiled from the Singing Mountain for attempting to kill her mother.

Magash is the only non-human member of the clan, as she was born from the union between a witch of the singing mountain and a nightbrother. Despite Augwynne Djo's opposition, Magash was given the tattoos that identify her as the child of a nightbrother by her mother not long after she reached adulthood and became an Adept, in hopes that if she ever encountered the nightbrothers, the markings would keep her from harm.

Because of this, however, Magash was othered by Augwynne Djo, who feared that she would follow a similar path as her daughter Gethzerion did all those centuries prior. And, as a result, many other members of the clan also avoided her.

[thexgrayxlady]

Things I Read in May

The Antiquities Hunter by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff - 4.25/5.0 I got this off the 0.99¢ rack at the used book super store because I needed to spend at least five dollars to use my credit card. My rating is absolutely skewed by the price. That being said, this is a delightful little airport book. Like, make no mistake it's an airport book, but one that you want to take home when you're done with it. It's a fun adventure about a PI going undercover with a sexy national parks agent/archeologist to bust illegal antiquities trade. There were a couple of jarring weird turns of phrase that didn't feel like they fit with a mid to late twenties early thirties PI and I wish the protagonist was more active towards the ending, but I still feel like I got a dollars worth of entertainment out of it. You can tell that the author had a good time writing it and I had a good time reading it.

Otherwise Engaged by Amanda Quick - 3.0/5.0 I'm working through the backlog of I needed to spend five dollars to buy the thing I really wanted books. You can tell that the author has written a lot of other books. It's very competently written, has a better set up for fake dating/engaged than The Love Hypothesis, and it was very quick and easy to read. I wish the author had focused on just one of the subplots and fleshed it out more instead of having both of them or had them come together in a less convoluted way, but at the end if the day the subplots aren't really what this book is for. It's a good beach/train/rainy day book. I don't have very many thoughts about it.

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness - 0.75/5.0 This has been sitting on my shelf almost finished for years now. I wanted to finish it before sending it on to the Used Book Superstore. Then I remembered why I stopped reading it. I don't think it should go to the used book superstore anymore. It is so goddamn boring. I had to put on a YouTube video in the background to finish the last hundred pages. This is me finishing this book:

It starts out interesting and full of details, but then it doesn't let up with every minute detail about the main character's life and it is a slog to get through. The vampires are perhaps the least threatening and interesting vampires I've ever read about. The things that do happen are truly and deeply stupid. The main character just has every super special awesome witch power ever even though she doesn't want or use them? She finds out she's been a time traveler all along in a throw away line?! The love interest won't have sex with the main character until marriage!? It's just adult Twilight (derogatory).

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by - 3.75/5.0 If I had a nickel for every Doctor Moreau book I read this year, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice. Unfortunately, out of the two Doctor Moreau books, this is my least favorite. That's not to say it's a bad book, I just don't think that it's for me. I thought it was well written and the characters were interesting and fairly well defined. It's well paced and atmospheric with a strong sense of what its trying to say. However, I think it could have done without the second viewpoint and there's a big reveal that doesn't hit as hard as the author wants it to. That being said, this book let me read one of the best things I've ever read in a goodreads review, "it's problematic that Doctor Moreau is doing unethical science."

[nemo56234]

The Antiquities Hunter by Maya Bohnhoff

The Antiquities Hunter by Maya Bohnhoff, an enjoyable read of a private investigator who is drawn into a search for stolen antiquities. Gina is protecting her friend -an NPS agent- when her friend gets shot in what appears to be an attempt to stop the search. Gina refuses to take it lying down and joins in to find the source of the stolen goods. If you enjoy a well - written stolen goods mystery put this book on your TBR list.

[filkyeahfilk]

There’s a young man who lived In a hole ‘neath the stairs Now he’s riding the railway to Hogwarts. 

Lyrics available on Bandcamp.

[bayconnews-blog]

GUEST SPOTLIGHT: Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff is the NYT bestselling co-author of Devil’s Daughter and Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Her stories have been published in Analog, Amazing Stories, Century, Readers of Fantasy, Interzone, Paradox, and Jim Baen's Universe. Her debut novel The Meri (Baen), was a Locus Magazine 1992 Best First Novel nominee, and her work has been nominated for the Nebula, British SF, and Sidewise Award. She's published over a dozen speculative fiction novels and is a founding member of pro-writers co-op Book View Cafe  www.bookviewcafe.com www.mayabohnhoff.com

[nevinslibrary]

Mystery/Thriller Monday

Gina Miyoko is a Private Investigator in San Francisco. When one of her best friends, a National Park Service agent (an undercover one) gets stalked, Gina is on the case, first as a bodyguard, and then Gina winds up in Mexico, in the jungle, trying to find those who looted Mayan artifacts. And, it gets dicey, super dicey.

It was a fun new thriller/mystery. Sometimes Iike PI mysteries and other times I don’t, but, this one was definitely in the former column. And, the characters. The main and the secondary characters were just brilliant and unique.

You may like this book If you Liked: Everglades by Randy Wayne White, Old Bones by Douglas Preston, or The Heist by Janet Evanovich

The Antiquities Hunter by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

[uwlmvac]

Bill Gresens’ Archaeology Book Review for September 2019

The Antiquities Hunter by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff (four trowels) 

Private investigator Gina Miyoko follows a twisting trail of clues into the jungles of Chiapas State in Mexico to discover a breathtaking cache of Mayan antiquities buried for centuries. Read the entire review at:  https://mvac.uwlax.edu/book-review/antiquities-hunter/

[scifi2feature]

[jhezenkoss]

STAR WARS HAS MEMES THAT KILL

[tediousreviews]

Analog (October 1997)

It's time for a new monthly feature in these reviews. If you're keeping track, that means that between Dragonlance, Asimov's, and now this, on average most months will only have one book that I actually chose to review.

I subscribed to Asimov's as a young teenager because I wanted to a constant stream of new and good science fiction to read and I lived in a small town with a small library and no bookstore. After three years, I was starting to feel like Asimov's wasn't what I'd been looking for after all.

What I wanted, if I remember correctly, was space stories. I wanted stories about the world of tomorrow. I wanted to read about what it might actually be like to live on Mars or the Moon or a space station sometime during my own lifespan. I wanted what I thought of at the time as 'hard' science fiction. And for some reason I though that's what I'd have a better chance of finding in Analog.

There's part one of a serialization here, two novelettes, an essay supposedly related to actual science, and two short stories.

Serial

O Pioneer! (Part One of Three), Frederick Pohl

A Hollywood hacker and his former prostitute girlfriend get married, go through an allegedly not magical portal to an alien world, have disappointingly boring sex (although he seems satisfied), and become prominent citizens before nothing happens because it's part one of three.

The mystery portal powered by unexplained technology seems like it'll be important later on. And I suppose that Mrs. Vanilla's history as a dominatrix and her current practice of buying boxes of sex toys for the local lesbians might have a payoff as well (although I doubt it, something about the writing seems to just scream 'hey look it's sex! sex is sexy right?'). But most of the plot seems like it'll center around the main character's 'information wants to be free' attitude getting him involved in a coup attempt of sorts as the other humans betray their unsuspecting alien neighbors.

Novelettes

Variations In Dreampaint, Marc Stiegler

Time travel, salted with multiple universes.

It's not that I don't think people can fall in love at first sight. Or that I don't think they can nurse obsessions for decades. I just can't empathize with it very well. It just seems like so much effort.

I mean yes, you do need to stop the murderess from going back in time to murder people and creating dueling horrible fates for humanity. But why would it bother you that she has a boyfriend?

What part of so unstable that she responded to a traffic accident with time travel and terrorism is appealing to you? Why would that appeal not fade over the course of decades?

Content With the Mysterious, Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

A professional skeptic is traumatized by the emergence of her own psychic powers. Rather than becoming a 90s comic book anti-heroine, she eventually learns to be content with the mysterious.

The story seems to miss that the reason most skeptics are so flatly dismissive of claims of psychic abilities isn't that there's no scientific explanation for the effects that are being claimed, it's that every time they're tested the claims about the effects are shown to be demonstrably false or at best statistically indistinguishable from random guesswork.

Precognition and clairvoyance in particular would be fairly trivial to demonstrate if they were real abilities.

Science Fact

Laser Weapons, Ben Bova

Listen! Reagan was right about Star Wars and the Democrats are horrible treasonous assholes for placing budgets above the safety of the nation.

Can you tell that I disagree? Well sort of. I do think that a working ballistic missile defense program is a better defense against nuclear war than mutually assured destruction. But I also think that reliable ballistic missile defense systems are inherently provocative because they would allow the nation who has them to launch ballistic missiles at their enemies without much fear of retaliation. And I'm very confident that in the 80s we were not ready to build a working ballistic missile defense system, so talking loudly and publicly about developing one was pointless and unnecessary provocation.

Short Stories

Cease and Deceased, Jerry Oltion

Technobabble has somehow allowed one intrepid aspiring interstellar traveler to create a machine that binds the souls of anyone who dies near it. Obviously this is the perfect way to crew an interstellar ship with a powerful enough engine to get people to other stars in a handful of years rather than decades or centuries.

Facing a legal challenge over the petty detail of having to assist the suicide of one of their aspiring crew-members, the heroes opt for terrorism.

Dream to Live By, David J. Strumfels

A boy is lured out onto the beach by an old man who wants to talk to him about space. Thankfully the old man's actually the boys time travelling grandson.

Final Thoughts

So, my sixteen-year old self's quest for hard science fiction netted a story with teleportation, two time travel stories, a technobabble ghost story, and a story about psychic powers.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

[philippmichelreichold]

Home

Analog Science Fiction Science Fact is the oldest surviving Science Fiction magazine. As Analog's  (then Astounding's) editor,   John W. Campbell ushered and nourished the  Golden Age of Science  Fiction. Campbell insisted on science in Science Fiction.  Today, Analog still  contains hard science stories and has a regular Science Fact feature. I had not read Analog in years, and am absolutely thrilled with my first issue in far too long. In a world where I feel I would be better off without a television, It's refreshing to find drama and suspense that does not reek of violence, and comedy and humor that is not redolent with obscenity/profanity. At a time when the Discovery Channel has reached new lows in pseudo science, it is encouraging to read science popularizations that are actually based in science. The underlying motif to this issue is doing the right thing. In Buddhist terms-- Right Action. Of course, reasonable beings may disagree as to what Right Action might be in a given situation. And sometimes one learns after the fact that one's action was not the best choice after all.

Rejiggering the Thingamajig by

Eric James Stone

is a

wonderful story

about doing what's right. Never thought I'd read a story where a Buddhist T. rex was the protagonist. Bokeerk is a wonderful character, and her companion for her mission, a sentient gun, is a delight. The gun reminded me of the talking bullets in

Who framed Roger Rabbit

or Yosemite Sam. To get home to her children's imminent hatching, she must follow the Eightfold path. Neptune�s TreasureBy Richard A. Lovett is an AI story.   Floyd has an AI living in his head name of Brittney. Reminiscent of the movie

All of Me

, only set in

Neptune

space and without Steve Martin and Lilly Tomlin. Floyd and Brittney have serious personal/autonomy issues. The science of the story is wonderful-- mass drivers and recovery vessels. And space bicycles as well. Also spracht Strattman

Thus Spake the Aliens

by H. G. Stratmann is a story about saving the world, complete with large red Doomsday-cutoff-switch-button. These aliens are in the same business as Clarke's

Others

with a more up close and personal approach. And they are quite implacable about weeding if the need arises. To say the story is rich in allusions to other works would be a vast understatement. The connection between the title of the story and of Richard Strauss's song, widely acclaimed for its use in

2001

, could not be an accident.

The key to the story is a problem that is not often addressed, or more to the point-- it's largely ignored. There is a dead line for establishment of a real presence in space-- the point at which we exhaust cheap, abundant sources of energy. Somewhere before we reach that point is the point where a struggle ensues for control of those energy sources that remain. Whether or not civilization survives that struggle will have little impact on  what happens next. No alternative, renewable source will be able to fill the gap that will be left with the depletion of fossil fuels. Nuclear power will remain expensive, dangerous, and will only postpone the collapse. Fusion will remain as elusive as a will-o'-the-wisp for some time. We have gigatons of Hydrogen, but fusion's most

promising process

relies  not on Hydrogen but Lithium. Even if a Lithium-to-Tritium  plant started working tomorrow, we have no way of foreseeing the consequences of eliminating any particular element from the biosphere and would need to work with highly radioactive Tritium.  

Unless Stratman's aliens show up soon to terraform Mars and Venus, and  hand us the keys to the secrets of the Universe, tough times are ahead of us. We will have to use less energy per person or reduce the number of people using energy. We would eventually return to subsistence farming with limited manufacturing powered by wind and solar power-- essentially back to the 17th century. Perhaps the answer to the

Fermi-Hart paradox

 is that no civilization has been able to solve the energy crisis and overcome the energy gap. (It takes a huge amount of energy to go from planet to planet. Witness the huge fuel tanks of the Saturn V's needed to send

Apollo

to the moon.) Even if one used  

the Orion nuclear pulse drive

to establish a local system space program, the unavailability of cheap, abundant energy would make it difficult to maintain the necessary level of technology. Once nuclear fuel became the mainstay of the economy, space exploration could be sacrificed as having a lower priority than meeting needs back home. Perhaps we are not the first civilization to see the stars not quite in our grasp and then to watch them slip away forever.  The Possession of Paavo Deshin

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

has a profile in this issue of Analog. I'm impressed by the thoroughness of her stories. Rusch builds her characters in a believable and sympathetic manner that leaves me yearning for more.

Possession

is one of her

Retrieval Artist

� stories. Retrieval artists are bounty hunters in a convoluted universe, and  Miles Flint is among the very best. Paavo was adopted after his birth parents fled to evade some outstanding alein warrants. But his birth parents have made sure they can keep in touch, naturally.  

Paavo's birth parents are Disappeareds-- essentially outlaws in the old sense of the word. Flint is hired by not one but two clients to locate the birth parents. His adoptive parents are well to do, powerful, and tainted by underworld connections. And they adore Paavo as if he were born to them. Maybe more so.  Rusch make quite plain her view on the subject of birth parents that re-enter a child's life wreaking havoc as they assert their rights. She equates them with terrorists, while Paavo's adoptive father is in his eyes, regardless of how others see him, the ideal and epitome of fatherhood.

(Uncle Orson review of the Retrieval Artist stories.)

Shame by  

Mike Resnick

&

Lezli Robyn

is a fairly straight forward example of what not to do. Given the colonists's mindset and attitude toward Satan, their actions should not have been unexpected. Perhaps that's the real shame of the story-- that as atrocious as the colonists's appear to the author and to his moral authority figure, given human nature they were unsurprising.

Simple Giftsby

Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

is a story about the stereotypically greedy corporation out to profit on the simplicity's and naivety of the primitive, non tech natives. What could be more innocuous than a race that closely resembles (in appearance) the

Who's of Whoville

. The ethnologist and linguist sent to learn about the alien's language and culture implore the company to slow down on making a deal with the aliens and are disregarded as obstructionists. The outcome is inevitable, but the suspense building makes it all worthwhile. On Rickety Thistlewaite by  

Michael F. Flynn

is about the prison that is public service. Making oneself indispensable can be very rewarding and satisfying. Then it becomes an obligation not taken lightly by those who depend on you. As Harry Mudd exclaims to the

Enterprise

command team in

I, Mudd

. . . . A War of StarsDavid L. Clements writes a crisp and interesting story about questioning values and making choices. The concept of intelligence housed in celestial bodies-- the cores of planets and stars-- is reminiscent of

Rogue Star

in the

Star Child Trilogy

by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson. I would have hoped though that anyone advanced enough to use stars as weapons would also be advanced enough to not do so. Perhaps I'm just excessively naive.  

Copyleft of my material

Essentially, my work is Creative Commons Attribution-Required, Share Alike.

Adapted from their  Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license summary--

You may Share-- copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format  Adapt--  remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. I cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms. Attribution--  You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests that I endorse  you or your use. No additional restrictions-- You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Providing a link to my source document should suffice in attributing me. Where any condition(s) I place conflicts with the

Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, my condition(s) shall prevail.

Copyright  of material that is not mineImages used in reviews are from

ISFDB unless otherwise indicated and are copyrighted unless otherwise indicated.

Copyrighted images are presented here under fair use. You would need to contact the copyright holder to use them. They are not covered by my creative commons licensing.

Coverart from ISFDB for Analog 2010 Jan-Feb

[gabrielle-the-writer]

Book Review

Title: The Antiquities Hunter Author: Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff Genre: Mystery My Rating: 3/5

When P.I. Gina learns her best friend Rose has a stalker, she’s hired as Rose’s bodyguard. The stalker is most likely trying to deter Rose, an undercover agent, from testifying about stolen artifacts. Gina tries to flush out the stalker, but Rose is critically injured in the process and Gina must take Rose’s place as an undercover agent. She travels to Cancun with a mysterious Mexican agent, Cruz, whom she’s not sure she can trust. The two must find out if a wealthy collector has anything to do with Rose’s stalker and the theft of Mayan antiquities. There is a lot to like about this book, particularly Gina’s background–her mom is a Russian immigrant who might be a witch. Her Japanese dad is a retired cop. They both give Gina religious talismans to protect her and Gina has her own sense of superstition. What a refreshing backstory! A multiracial, short, tough woman who cares deeply about her friends and family. The male lead, Cruz, however, leaves a lot to be desired. Stunningly attractive, mysterious, possibly a double agent?, an archaeologist,  published author, AND undercover agent… he is everything at once and way too good to be true. I have a pretty strong ability to suspend disbelief, but that was too much for me. Gina’s phenomenal acting abilities while she’s undercover aren’t quite out of the realm of belief, but her interactions with the lecherous collector are generally unsettling and a near-sexual assault that doesn’t serve (at all) to move the plot forward put me off. In the end, the plot felt needlessly complicated when the villain was ultimately revealed. I was drawn to this book by the promise of a Mayan storyline and got a pretty superficial glance of Mayan culture, myth, and modern archaeology. Though this was not the book for me, I did enjoy parts of it and I feel like Gina could be developed into a really compelling character in future installments.

[fantasticalhistory]

Notes from Leprecon 45

Notes from Leprecon 45

I was at Leprecon 45 last weekend, where I ran some games of Go Action Fun Time, and moderated a few panels. Normally I’d link to Lep45, but they have already transitioned their website to Lep46.

The excitement of Go Action Fun Time!

Before I share my notes from the panels, let me warn you that I do not take notes well as a moderator. I’m having to watch the panelists and the audience and you…

[maytheforceormaynot]

Order 66 has all but exterminated the Jedi. The few remaining who still wield the Force for good have been driven into exile or hiding. But not Jax Pavan, who’s been steadily striking blows against the Empire—as a lone guerrilla fighter and a valued partner of Whiplash, a secret Coruscant-based resistance group. Now he’s taking on his most critical mission: transporting a valued Whiplash leader, targeted for assassination, from Coruscant to safety on a distant world. It’s a risky move under any circumstances, but Jax and his trusted crew aboard the Far Ranger, including the irrepressible droid I-Five, are prepared to pit their combat skills and their vessel’s firepower against all Imperial threats—except the one Jax fears most. Reports have raced across the galaxy that the dark lord of the Sith has fallen in a duel to the death with a Rebel freedom fighter. But Jax discovers the chilling truth when he reaches out with the Force . . . only to touch the dark, unmistakable, and malignantly alive presence that is Darth Vader. And Jax knows that Vader will stop at nothing until the last Jedi has fallen. 

[filkyeahfilk]

I’ve got no real life- I live on Tatooine...

We posted a video of this song a couple years back, but it’s time for us to bring it back in honor of Star Wars season. So, here’s “Midichlorian Rhapsody” by Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff, 2014 Pegasus award winner and absolute gem of a Star Wars parody. There’s also a video of the 2014 OVFF performance, if you want to see a bunch of filkers pull off an impressive arrangement (there’s a reason Queen rarely performed Bohemian Rhapsody live...)

Lyrics available on Bandcamp.

[theserpentsadvocate]

Sooo... I found this on my computer... and I apparently finished it and forgot to post it and now it’s been so long that like three of the people I was going to tag are no longer on tumblr so ooooops.

Rules: In a text post, list ten books that have stayed with you in some way. Don’t take but a few minutes, and don’t think too hard — they don’t have to be the “right” or “great” works, just the ones that have touched you. Tag some friends, including me, so I’ll see your list. Make sure you let your friends know you’ve tagged them.

Tagged by @the-disposessed ages ago, I’m sorry. Tagging… @allonsymiddleearth, @whimzhbeeaffairs, @natalie-is-my-name, @heckofabecca and … and anyone else who’s up for it.

In no particular order:

1.       Lord of the Rings (etc., etc.): I cannot remember not knowing this story, and I cannot remember not caring about it in some way. I think�� that says enough.

2.       The Tortall books by Tamora Pierce: My first serious introduction to fantasy, and it was all women. I was too young to realize that was unusual; I kind of figured it was normal. Her other books are also excellent.

3.       Harry Potter: I have held on to the founders for years, and I will definitely continue to do so.

4.       Twilight: I liked Twilight at first... nothing special but I nodded along. (I didn’t get the general level of obsession, with it or with Edward.) And then I was tooling around on the internet one day and saw some mockery. I read it, it was funny, it was true… Fortunately I was never a huge fan or it might have hurt, but I slid into hatedom and critique pretty seamlessly, although I like to think I would have picked it up by myself as I got older anyway. I’ll be hating Twilight longer than I’ve liked some things.

5.       Hawksong (and sequels) by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes: Hawksong was the first romance I was fully on board with. It probably helps that it’s a romance but it’s also a fantasy novel and about a war and has lots of politics and culture world-building, so 13-year-old Riley who was a shipper but scorned typical romance didn’t run away rolling her eyes the whole time. It was excellent writing, the ideas were good, looking back I can see that it took an idea which could have been hackneyed and stupid in its execution (heirs to the rulers have to get married to end a war) and pulled it off originally and smoothly… and then there’s a later book where (as few spoilers as possible) a major character needs for plot reasons to choose a mate and there’s a lot of political tension attached to the choice, and then in the end, their romance turns out to be with someone completely different than expected and also of the same gender – and it’s just what happens, despite the fact that they’re an only child and one of the parents has no other family (at that point) to continue the line. It wasn’t something I expected (especially seven ten years ago) and I was really, really thrilled.

6.       Vampire Academy (and Bloodlines) by Richelle Mead: I’m still so very, very sold on Christian Ozera – but honestly, finding this series just before I started getting steadily disillusioned with the House of Night series and was forced to read the horrendous, disturbing, rape-apologist Hush Hush is probably the reason why I didn’t swear completely of YA paranormals, which would have meant missing a lot of excellent books.

7.       Artemis Fowl (and sequels) by Eoin Colfer: Probably my first actual fandom. I remember that I was thrilled to discover Holly was a girl – yes, it said ‘Captain Holly Short’ on the back, but my only reference for the name was Watership Down, where there was a soldier rabbit named Holly and all the characters who were anyone were men. (I should probably reread that book now that I’m not eight anymore.) It also contained the first major character death that actually seriously affected me FOR SOME TIME. Like, I’d cried at character deaths before, but I would lie awake at night for more than a year after, trying to figure out ways he could still be alive. (Book Four, oh my God!) Also, Trouble Kelp, enough said.

8.       The Spirit Gate by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff: A really excellent book I found in my high school library and haven’t been able to find anywhere else since. Eastern-European-based fantasy with influences by non-European cultures and probably the best and most original magical/cultural system I’ve ever read. Also the protagonist is a widow with a ten-year-old son instead of one of the sprightly under-twenty-fives who are so common.

9.       Hunger Games books: They’re not perfect, of course, but it was nice to have a YA series I could obsess over that didn’t result in me turning around two or three years later and saying “Wow, I’m an idiot.” (See Twilight.) Also, I still haven’t read one of the ‘catch-the-craze’ dystopia novels that could compete with it. (I think the only one I would actively recommend is maybe Kiera Cass’s ‘The Selection’.)

10.   Princess Florecita and the Iron Shoes by John Warren Stewig: One of my favourite books as a kid, and I am so freaking angry I couldn’t find my copy ANYWHERE before I moved God damn it. You have a princess rescuing a prince, and do you want to know how badass Florecita is? Do you? Well, forget all the powerful wind spirits she has to deal with and the monsters she has to get past – she’s wearing those iron shoes, right? SHE WALKS SO FAR THEY FALL APART.

Honourable Mention: The King’s Equal by Katherine Patterson: Magic talking wolf, badass female protagonist, cute goats, and THOSE ILLUSTRATIONS.