The third and final part of June’s 11 in 11 by 11/11/11 book reviews.

There were two books I read in June that were truly outstanding, both in different ways.

Geraldine McCaughrean is not a well-known author in the United States, which is a shame, because her young adult fiction stretches the boundaries of any genre she chooses to write in. The White Darkness is a contemporary adventure with elements of the supernatural, a journey to the bottom of the world and back. Sym has always been fascinated by Scott’s doomed expedition to reach the South Pole, and particularly by the romantic young Captain Titus Oates–throughout her childhood and teens, he’s been her imagined companion, the voice inside her head she shares all her problems with. When her uncle takes her on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Antarctica, Sym is so excited that she doesn’t pay attention to the signs that this is not an ordinary trip. When catastrophe strikes and the trip turns into a desperate fight for survival, everything Sym has ever believed is put to the test, and her connection to the imaginary Captain Oates becomes her last link to reality.

The most astonishing thing about this book is that despite the blindingly obvious hints that something is fishy about Uncle Victor, the clues that the reader interprets easily but that Sym totally misses, none of that feels annoying, like so many books where the author has heard of dramatic irony but doesn’t realize that it shouldn’t be wielded like a Louisville Slugger. Sym’s innocence is so plausible that it makes perfect sense that she wouldn’t know that Uncle Victor has been lying to her not just about the trip, but about everything, her whole life. If McCaughrean had gone the other route–of making Victor seem honest to the reader as well as to Sym until some dramatic reveal–it would have been just as much a cheat. The reasons for Victor’s behavior have to be obvious to the reader in order for the story to have an impact. I also like that Sym’s almost-total deafness isn’t revealed until several chapters in; it’s a challenge that doesn’t define her, but isn’t trivial either–and it makes possible one of the most moving events in the entire book. Personally, I like the uncertainty of the supernatural elements: is Oates’s presence in Sym’s head imaginary, or is it something more? The story doesn’t hinge on this question, so it’s possible for it to stay uncertain if the reader doesn’t want to resolve it one way or the other.

The other excellent book, of course, is Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings. I groused about this one publicly through Facebook status updates. I used to love giant fantasy epics, and then I didn’t anymore. And there’s something about Sanderson’s novels (barring the Alcatraz books) that makes me antsy and impatient, something I can’t identify. It’s not like they’re bad books; I’ve read all but Warbreaker and I like them very much. And it’s not the length; I read Anathem in almost one sitting and it’s almost as long as The Way of Kings. I don’t hate the prose, I’m interested in the plot both long- and short-term, and I mostly care about the characters. And every hundred or so pages I just had to put the book down and do something else.

In discussing the book with a friend, I realized that part of my problem was probably that I was only truly interested in one of the three plots, in the sense that it was the one I wanted to come back to. The other two, I cared about while I was reading them, but…it’s a military campaign, I’ve read about dozens of military campaigns, and the girl in the other section was an academic, a researcher, and practically a librarian, so give me a break, where did you expect my attention was going to go? So it’s possible that my impatience is a desire to get back to the story I care about, but it shows up only as low-level mental itchiness because the other two plots are at least worth reading. Usually with books like this (multi-plot stories) I either like all the plots, or I’ve got one I love and I’m bored or annoyed by the others, so my reaction is a lot more extreme. It could also be that the density of the material is just overwhelming. It took me a month to read the unabridged Count of Monte Cristo, because I’d read for a couple of days and then have to put it down before my brain exploded. And I love that book with an unseemly passion. Still, I’m sort of leaning toward the first reason.

But as much as I would have enjoyed a book that only had that one plot, The Way of Kings simply wouldn’t have worked without all three intertwined. The Stormlight Archive, of which this is the first volume, is going to be an extraordinary work of fantasy, and Sanderson is either a genius or completely off his nut to even contemplate it. I’m interested in the world, I’m interested in the mystery of what happened to it, I’m interested in where the characters will go next. I want to know what Dalinar got that was worth losing all memory of his wife. I want to know what Jasnah’s research will turn up about the world’s history. I want to know how many hints Kaladin has to have dropped on his head from a great height before he works out what kind of power he has. I’m interested enough that I will stick with the next book despite putting it down at least a dozen times before I’m done. This is a different kind of achievement than Anathem, but if Sanderson can keep it together, I expect it to be marvelous.

Next up: July’s books. More of them, and a higher number of really good ones.

In which I continue with reviews of the 11 in 11 by 11/11/11 project books I read in June.

In the middle of the range–books that were excellent but not mind-blowingly so–were three books. Dunk, by David Lubar, was as good as I’d expect from that author–and that’s very good indeed. Chad’s admiration for the skills of the Bozo, the guy in the dunk tank who taunts and ridicules passersby so they’ll pay to take a fling at him, leads him to want to be the Bozo–to have that gift of gab. What he learns is that the Bozo’s talent isn’t just about hurting people, but about making a connection with them, good or bad. Lubar’s brilliant twist on this is that Chad is the kind of guy who in another book would be the juvenile delinquent, the loser, the thug; he gets us inside Chad’s head so that his attitude is understandable but never excused.

Nightingale Wood by Stella Gibbons was a late addition to the list, replacing a book I changed my mind about reading. Stella Gibbons is probably best known for the brilliant Cold Comfort Farm, and if you don’t feel like reading it, you might try the movie–Kate Beckinsale before she became an action hero, Ian McKellen as family patriarch and itinerant preacher of a weird Protestant sect, and source of many obscure quotes in our family. Ahem. Nightingale Wood is a hybrid between 1930s literary fiction and romance novel, and I think it would have been better if it had stuck to one or the other. The romance aspect is especially troubling because the romantic hero is kind of a selfish git and not really someone you can root for; the secondary romance, though, is very satisfying.

Finally, Billie Letts’ second novel, The Honk and Holler Opening Soon, suffers only by comparison to her first, Where the Heart Is. Like that one, it’s got quirky characters, an unusual setting, and a redefinition of the meaning of "family," and Letts is really good at that…but she’s done it before, and while the situation is different, the core of both stories is the same. I realize that this sounds like damning with faint praise, so I want to be clear—this was a very enjoyable book. I liked reading it and was never dissatisfied with the plot or characters or prose. It just didn’t grab me like I think it could have.

Next: the exceptional books.

Summer turned out to be too busy to keep up with the review-writing schedule, and now that summer’s over, I really don’t want to write individual reviews for all those books. (I just noticed that the last review I wrote was in July, for a book I finished end of May.) I broke this into three sections, because I love the sound of my own voice, even if it’s an imaginary sound because I’m, you know, writing it, and the whole thing got too long.

I got behind on my reading schedule in June, partly because I spent six days wading through The Way of Kings and partly because I read a lot of other things in between. Most of what I’ve read so far I’ve really liked, so if you break it down by month there’d be maybe one or two that were okay (or worse) and the rest would be very good. June’s reading was split more evenly between excellent and meh. (I do have a rating system that I keep track of in my database, but I don’t post those with the reviews because for me, the fine gradations between Super-Fabulous and Poke-My-Eye-Out-With-A-Stick are not consistent. I’ll mark a book as Enjoyable and later realize that it was actually better than that. So I don’t like associating those ratings with a public review.)

Two of the books, Death in Florence by George Alec Effinger and Armor by John Steakley, were on the lower end of the ratings spectrum I don’t post. Death in Florence is one of Effinger’s early novels, a story about a utopian experiment that, like all utopian experiments, is rotten at the core. The premise is interesting as long as you read it as absurdism, but it doesn’t feel like it goes any deeper than that.

Armor, on the other hand, is beautifully characterized, has a well-realized fictional world, and is also a kind of philosophical exploration that I think is more successful than Effinger’s. Where it loses points with me is how hard Steakley hammers on the philosophical point he’s making. This science fiction novel focuses on a soldier in a future war whose main weapon is the armored suit that gives him protection, weaponry, and life support. When his entire unit is wiped out by the enemy, a computer glitch keeps sending him on mission after mission, sometimes while he is seriously injured, simply because none of the human personnel believe that sort of thing could happen. Steakley’s point about humanity and needless war is unfortunately obscured by his unrelenting portrayal of all things military as either stupid or evil. It is a pointless war of aggression, and the high leadership is totally ignorant of the situation on the ground, but–not a single officer who shows humility or understanding? Not one leader who, with boots on the ground, can admit that the strategy is doomed to failure? I recommend reading this book in conjunction with Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, which uses the same basic premise but with a completely different attitude. (Armor is one of my husband’s favorites, and our disagreement about how good it was made for great tension because he wouldn’t admit I was right.

Next: the mid-range books, ones that were good but not outstanding.