Lodestar 2020

I’m really really pleased with the Lodestar nominees this year. Thank you Lodestar nominators! (I did not read any YA last year and so didn’t nominate anything, so I can’t take any credit for it.) I finished all of them except the Black (and I understand why that was nominated, I just couldn’t take more of that series) and they were ALL GOOD, what is this madness. (As opposed to last year, where I felt the quality of the nominees was abysmal.) I think that the overall quality of these nominees, taken as a group of six, is actually greater than any other fiction category this year!

I’ve already written up Catfishing and Deeplight (spoilers in comments), both of which I absolutely adored, though in entirely different ways.

Riverland (Wilde) - 4 /5. Sisters’ home troubles have magical consequences as well. This one sucked me in in a terrifying way and didn’t let up until I’d finished the book. Therefore I don’t know if I can talk about it rationally. It’s definitely an issue book, and there’s definitely a kind of reader that it’s looking for. I don’t know that I would have been exactly that reader, even as a child, but I think I would have found it resonant enough that while it might not have spoken to me directly, it might have stayed with me in indirect ways. Though... the lesson it teaches, to speak up to those who care and are listening, is a good one, but what if there isn’t anyone like that who’s listening, or what if there is but that person can’t do anything to help? IDK, maybe I’ve just been reading too many horror stories lately, but it did make me wonder.

Dragon Pearl (Lee) -3 /5. Fox-shapechanger-magicadolescent Min goes on a quest to find her brother, who may be mixed up with the powerful Dragon Pearl.

There were lots of things to like about this! Korean-flavored magic IN SPACE, yeah! Fox magic, yeah! Cadet friends, yeah! I liked it a lot more than Ninefox Gambit. I think I did have kind of a hard time with it because… so… Min is, what, 12? 13? And of her own volition she ( okay, I guess I can’t talk about this without spoilers )

. And I realize that E is not a completely typical 10-year-old, but I just… can’t see her doing aaaaaanything like this in a couple of years and so my reaction was basically MIN IS TOO LITTLE FOR THIS OMG SOMEONE TAKE HER HOME. Heck, even Miles Vorkosigan didn’t get up to things like this when he was thirteen.

Also, perhaps partially because Min is 13, I found it curiously emotionally flat. She does things with pretty serious consequences, and she doesn’t seem to really care about those serious consequences for more than one or two perfunctory lines, and neither does anyone else. Well, except for what I thought was the most egregious example of this, which turned out to be a plot point, so… there’s that. I do kind of feel like the book fell into a bit of an uncanny valley for me, though -- it needed to either have Min acting in a way that had fewer serious consequences, or it needed to be a much more serious book.

Minor Mage (Vernon) - 4 /5. Huh. I read this right after writing up Dragon Pearl, and the interesting thing is that it takes a very similar tack thematically to Lee’s book but fixes the problems I had with it. In this book Oliver, the minor mage, is 11 or 12, and he’s sent off on a mission to make it rain that is way too hard for a 12-year-old, and he has adventures and in the course of the adventures does things that have pretty serious consequences.

I mean, it’s still rather a lot for a 12-year-old, though Oliver is realistically presented as someone who’s very practical and levelheaded, so it’s easier for me to suspend my disbelief. And the major differences are (a) Oliver doesn’t go on this adventure-that’s-way-too-old-for-him on a whim, he both realizes he's the only person who can and at the same time is literally forced to do it (and the fact that he’s forced to do it is something of a point the book is making and that Oliver has to work through; the book is concerned with what happens with groups of people in mob mentalities) (b) Oliver is trying to save people in immediate danger, with no adult help available, when he does the things that have serious consequences, which just makes me feel better than Min’s rationale of “I’m going to hare off to try to save my brother who I have no real reason to believe is in imminent danger and when I have lots of adults around that I could talk to about it” (c) Oliver is greatly emotionally affected by the serious consequences and his role in them, he thinks about them, and it’s believable that it will affect his entire character in years to come.

In addition, Oliver learns during the course of this book that his “minor” skills can be used for a variety of things with a bit of cleverness, whereas Min learned… that she was very powerful and her skills could basically beat up everyone else?

Anyway, I liked Minor Mage a lot. I feel like Vernon is just very consistent in giving me books that make me happy both in the text and the subtext way.

I will say that the beginning is rather depressing and I was sort of worried about Vernon, and was totally unsurprised to read in the afterword that she wrote the beginning in a difficult part of her life. It does get better, though it’s a more serious book than others of hers I’ve read.

Rating! Gosh, I’d be happy if any of these won (except I guess the Black, but I’d understand it, at least). This category was the hardest for me to rank so far.

1. Deeplight, which was just That Good
2. Catfishing on Catnet, which was exactly what I needed to read right now
3. Riverland, which was terrifyingly immersive for me
4. Minor Mage, which I’m unhappy about having at (4) because it was so good but I guess that’s a good problem to have?? IDK I might switch it with Riverland
5. Dragon Pearl
6. The Wicked King