Forbidden Wish (Sneak Peak) Jessica Khoury
Penguin Young Readers Group/Razorbill
When a young thief summons Zahra from her lamp, she must grant him three wishes. But the world in which he lives forbids her presence, and her unwilling allegiance to her jinni kin means she may have to betray him at any moment. Nevertheless, she can’t help falling for the charming, fearless boy named Aladdin.
This sneak peek contains the first few chapters of this novel. If you’ve been lurking around The Story Sanctuary long, you’ll already know I’m a total sucker for fairytale retellings. So this was one I couldn’t resist checking out in advance.
I love that the story is told from the jinni’s perspective and that the love angle comes into play between the jinni and Aladdin. Aladdin is a bit of a player—which my little fairytale romance heart wasn’t too crazy about—so it seems all the girls know him and have experienced falling in a dead faint at his feet. He’s still the clever, quick little thief. The streets of his city really came to life in this tale. It felt like something between the underbelly of old London and a Middle Eastern town. Very fantasy, very believably gritty and dirty and dangerous.
This is definitely a book I’ll keep on my watch list to read when it comes out next February.
Language Content (Chapters 1-8)
Mild profanity used infrequently.
Sexual Content (Chapters 1-8) None.
Spiritual Content (Chapters 1-8) The story is told from the point-of-view of Aladdin’s genie. Other genies exist, and there is a lot of animosity between them and humans.
Violence (Chapters 1-8) A boy is beaten by soldiers. A burly man and a young woman face off in a fight (for money.) Brief descriptions of a battle that led to the fall of a kingdom.
Drug Content (Chapters 1-8)
Aladdin goes to a bar to drink wine and gets a bit drunk.
When Lo-Melkhiin comes to her village looking for his next wife, she knows he will choose her beautiful sister. She knows, too, that her sister would then be next in the long line of girls who meet death soon after becoming his bride. She vows to take her sister’s place.
In the palace, Lo-Melkhiin comes to her every night. She spins stories for him, grand tales about her home. Each morning she wakes. Each night he comes again. Strange things begin to happen. Power flows through her hands at weaving. Rumors surface of the good, kind man Lo-Melkhiin once was. She vows to weave power strong enough to free him from whatever curse has made him cruel. But she must do it before he destroys the kingdom and her.
Because the story is told through a lilting first-person narrative, I was so captured by the tale I didn’t realize the main character isn’t named. Normally that would really bother me, but as I said, I was sucked right into the plight of this brave girl who expected every night to be murdered by her husband.
As the story went on, I had more of a love-hate experience regarding her relationship with Lo-Melkhiin. I wanted there to be flashes of his former self behind his eyes or something, and it really wasn’t that kind of story. She believes wholly on faith that a good man exists, imprisoned inside him. I think that worked, I just had to adjust my expectations a bit.
I also kept having to resist the urge to compare this story to a recent favorite, Book of a Thousand Days. The narrative flow is a little similar, in that it has this poetic feel. It’s not really the same, and I think the two can’t really be compared. Book of a Thousand Days felt denser (in a good way) to me. This story felt simpler, not necessarily in a bad way.
That said, I’m generally a huge fan of fairytale retellings, and this, based on the stories of Scheherazade, did not leave me feeling disappointed.
The one note I’ll add about content is that I grew up in a church which condemned watching or playing Pokemon because it bore too close a parallel to trying to control spiritual creatures (too much like demons), and from that perspective, I’m not sure I would have been allowed to read this book as a younger teen. Certainly my parents and spiritual leaders would have been concerned with the demon-possession aspect and with her own power coming from worship and prayer given to her by the people.
At this point for me personally, it’s not always easy to decide where to draw the line on spiritual matters emerging in books, movies, and video games. My daughter’s father and I don’t always share the same values on these issues. In fact, we don’t always even land on the same (conservative vs liberal) side of the scale depending on the issue. So co-parenting across those lines can also be challenging. Because it is important to both of us to foster respect for our decisions in our daughter, I think we tend to try to err on choosing the more conservative side of the spectrum. It’s often about waiting rather than forbidding. At ten, the answer is no, but at fourteen, it might be yes. I suspect this book might fall into that category in my own judgment.
Language Content
None.
Sexual Content She understands that she’ll be expected to have sex with her husband, and worries about it. No details given.
Spiritual Content The people pray to smallgods. Each family has a shrine set up, often to a family member who who has died. Everyone prays to the person and leaves relics and offerings at the shrine. These give the smallgods power. When she leaves her family to become Lo-Melkhiin’s wife, her family sets up a shrine to her and her sister prays and keeps it. Over time, others pray to her as well, and her power grows.
Lo-Melkhiin returned from a hunting trip possessed by a demon. It controls him, keeps him caged within a small part of his brain. It also uses his power as king to control the people. It kills his wives to strengthen itself. It’s a pretty dark concept.
The demon’s power is pitted against her growing power as a smallgod. Each tries to destroy the other: she wants to free Lo-Melkhiin. He wants to kill her and take her power for his own.
Some spiritual power and authority also goes to the Skeptics, learned men who study the universe and its often unanswerable questions.
Violence References to wives being murdered. He sort of draws out their life force and leaves them withered and dead husks. It’s briefly described.
When an explosion during a riot leaves Asa’s sister in a coma, she vows to do what she must to bring her back. As the youngest daughter in a royal house on the brink of collapse, her choices are desperate. She impersonates her sister in a marriage alliance to the heir to another ruling family, a boy with tragic secrets of his own.
Every time Asa thinks she has made things better, she’s met with the bitter realization that she’s in fact only made her sister’s and her family’s situation more dire. War could come at any moment. War which will destroy them all. Asa scrabbles to right each new domino that falls, hoping against hope that she can get ahead of the catastrophe enough to spare those she loves most: her sister, her family, her kingdom, and unexpectedly, her new husband.
This book is one of those fantastic ones that left me amazed at the way the plot twisted in on itself. Every time I thought I knew what was going to happen, it was like the author flipped my whole perception upside down or revealed a secret that completely changed the game. The rabbit hole of political intrigue went deeper and deeper until I didn’t think there was any way there could be light at the end of that tunnel.
I loved the characters. I felt like each of them could have walked off the page. I liked the relationship and conflict between Asa and her father and Asa and her sister Emmie best. Super complex relationships, really getting into that tug-of-war between love and hate. I loved the way her relationship with Eagle unfolded, too. I am least crazy about his name, but absolutely adored him other than that.
Another thing that I’m a total sucker for is a really dense artistic narrative style. In a response to a question I asked her via Goodreads, author Tessa Elwood talks about being inspired by Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi in her development of the raw emotional style in Inherit the Stars. She did an amazing job. There were passages I read multiple times just because I liked them too much to read them only once before moving on. An example, you ask? Here’s one of my favorites:
“He steps with me. Hands catching my cheeks, closing in until the room disappears and I taste him. Wide lips and lost places. Tangled forests of pine nuts and rivers and the way the air sings before the sun rises. His fingers chase dawn into my hair.”
Love it. Love this book. Cannot wait for the next one, which it sounds like will be out around this time next year.
Language Content
Mild profanity used moderately.
Sexual Content Brief kissing.
Spiritual Content None.
Violence Brief battle violence, references to explosions. Asa’s sister is injured in a riot and remains in a coma. Asa has to cut into her husband’s shoulder, he then has to cut into hers. He tells her how he earned his scars and of a fellow soldier’s injuries. Some of that is a bit wince-worthy more in word choice than length of the description.
Drug Content
None.
Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
When Shy and his friends reach the California shoreline, they find widespread devastation and panic. What seemed at first like an easy mission – transport precious vaccines to Arizona to stop the spread of a disease destroying humanity – suddenly becomes near impossible. With the border closed and vigilantes hunting down anyone on the road, the trip seems like a hopeless cause. But with more and more people dying, Shy can’t give up. He must find a way to deliver the medicine and the evidence damning its creator.
The rise of the ugly disease and the conspiracy behind its spread will likely remind readers of James Dashner’s Maze Runner series. The Hunted packs a high dose of suspense and a fast-paced plot that keeps the pages turning. At one point the story takes a bit of a sci-fi turn. Something really unreal happens, but Shy kind of scratches his head and moves on. Nothing further develops from that moment, and readers are left hanging.
At times Shy seems a little young for seventeen, especially in his relationship with Carmen, who often reads as much older. Their relationship progresses through the course of the story, but isn’t a strong central focus. Shy wants to track down his family members and first finds his dad, with whom he carries a lot of emotional baggage. The rebuilding of that relationship borders on being too easy or perfect, but like Shy and Carmen, it’s not in the spotlight very much. Readers looking for a suspenseful, post-apocalyptic tale will find no shortage of action in this high-energy story.
Language Content
Extreme profanity used often. More than one character pretty much uses profanity to refer to any general noun. Often.
Sexual Content Shy makes a quick comment about how he hooked up with Carmen (in the first book.) Things heat up between them. They swim in underwear and have sex (not a lot of description there.) All this while Carmen is engaged to a man who may or may not still be alive.
Spiritual Content There are some digs at religion/faith, at Christianity/Jesus in particular as being a useless pursuit. A priest helps Shy and his friends, but there’s no mention of what state the man’s faith remains in.
Violence There are some pretty gross moments, mostly descriptions of bodies long dead. Some seemed unrealistic – if there’s an outbreak of contagious disease, why aren’t corpses burned? Instead they’re kind of just left sitting there getting nastier and nastier.
Vigilantes with guns shoot anyone who could be sick or who gets in their way.
Drug Content
Shy and his friends carry vaccines that they hope can be replicated to stop the spread of the disease.
The story contains an idea that a large medical company has basically scammed the public by creating a devastating illness and then withholding the vaccine, hoping to use it to get rich.
Orphaned and left to the care of his neglectful aunt, seventeen year-old Wade spends as much time as possible in the online virtual world of the OASIS. From virtual school to online chat rooms to video games, Wade lives most of his life and maintains his closest relationships over an internet connection. When the OASIS founder James Halliday dies, he leaves a challenge behind for the most faithful of his users: find three keys, unlock three gates, and locate the Easter egg within the OASIS. The prize: his fortune and control of the OASIS empire. Of course, everyone wants to win, but Wade, a devoted student of Halliday’s interests, knows for him, it’s the only way to survive. Once Wade uncovers the first clue, a dangerous rival threatens his life, and Wade must continue his online hunt on the run. The only way he’ll ever be free is to win the prize.
After coming across rave reviews, I listened to this novel as an audiobook, narrated by Wil Wheaton. We are a pretty pro-Wil Wheaton household: a little bit Trekkie, avid Tabletop followers, and yes, we’ve watched the recorded sessions of the Acquisitions, Inc Dungeons and Dragons games. So, needless to say, both my husband and I were excited to get into this video gamer story. We listened to it on the way to and from my cousin’s out-of-town wedding.
All the way through, I loved the narration. Wheaton’s delivery was entertaining and he seemed to really enjoy the story himself, which made it easy to enjoy hearing it. As a child of the 80s, I got a kick out of a lot of the references (some I missed… must have been too busy with My Little Pony or Jem & the Holograms.) The first quarter of the story itself really had me hooked. Here’s this kid with this big dream, and suddenly the cost of pursuing it skyrockets. Suddenly finding Halliday’s Easter egg could cost Wade his life.
But once Wade went gaga over Art3mis, I felt like the tale lost some steam. Over and over I felt like there were opportunities for conflict or tension, and instead they became long passages about how awesome Wade is and how he knows everything he needs to know, and did we mention he’s awesome? To me, those parts read like a fantasy as opposed to a story. So that kind of dampened my enthusiasm a bit.
Still, the overall mechanism of the contest and the big inevitable showdown between the gunters and the black-hearted IOI guru made for an exciting climax. I liked that Wade’s friends are not who he thinks they are. A bit of that reveal may have bordered on being preachy, but the overall message – that the internet is sort of the new marketplace, and despite the fact that an avatar’s appearance bears no connection to the gamer’s real face, certain kinds of people get preferential treatment. I liked that Cline went there and respected that he took the opportunity to challenge stereotypes.
Despite the slow middle, Ready Player One was a really fun read. I highly recommend the audiobook version.
Language Content
Extreme profanity used throughout the story. More frequently in the first half than the second half.
Sexual Content References to the main character being a virgin. There are places to visit within the Oasis in which players can purchase virtual companionship and use a doll to simulate sexual experiences. There aren’t really any details describing the process. The main character goes through a brief period in which he’s desperate enough to try this, but feels ashamed later.
Spiritual Content Gunters sort of treat Halliday’s book as a holy text. Not in the sense of worshipping him per se, but more like the quest has that much importance.
Violence Bad guys blow up a trailer park full of innocent people and toss a gamer off the balcony of his apartment building to his death. Virtual battles take place within the Oasis. Nothing is described in gory detail.
Drug Content
None.
Random Trivia Spielberg (who is mentioned in the book) will be directing the film version of Ready Player One, which is set to be released in December 2017. Also, to celebrate the release of the paperback version of his book, Ernest Cline hosted a contest inspired by the story in which participants had to locate an Easter egg within the story and unlock gates to reach a final victory. The prize, a Delorean was awarded to the winner, Craig Queen.
Seventeen year-old punk rock star Larissa Kenders has a cause to fight for and a soul mate who understands her better than anyone. But when her lover, Andrew, a brilliant programmer for a powerful company, disappears, Kenders has to take all she’s learned in her quest to protect animal rights to a whole new kind of fight: one to find and save the man she loves. With corporate thugs closing in around her, she must decode clues Andrew left behind about why he may have been murdered. She’ll need help, but choosing the wrong ally could cost her life.
My number one issue with this novel is that I really don’t think it qualifies as YA. Though the narrator is seventeen, all of the issues she deals with are adult issues. There’s no sense of coming-of-age, or sort of graduating into the adult sphere. She begins the novel living independently with her adult boyfriend and then investigating his disappearance on her own.
I really liked that Stewart brought music into the story and used punk music in particular in the way he did. I loved that Kenders had a cause important to her and that the music was a big part of her platform for that cause, yet it lent itself to other parts of the story pretty seamlessly.
I loved her relationship with Andrew. They seemed to really get each other and have a relationship worth fighting for. I loved the scenes where Kenders goes into the virtual world and meets Andrew and it’s laced with the snippets of reality. I LOVED the layering of virtual and real overlapping so tightly that it was hard to tell where one began and the other ended. The theme is explored in discussions between characters a little bit as well – whether events experienced in the virtual world are at all real. Such a great thread. It felt very Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to me, and I totally enjoyed that.
I felt like there was a really abrupt jump in the part where Andrew disappears. I don’t want to give too much away, but one chapter ends with Kenders saying she’s going to go find him and the next begins with a huge event that left me feeling like I missed a few pages. Over all it wasn’t a big deal. There were a couple of times where the boys are kind of like, hey we’re smart, so you (Kenders) sit tight and let us do the hard thinking. It made sense in terms of the plot, but sort of sidelined her as the protagonist and put her more in the damsel-in-distress position. I liked the story better in the scenes in which Kenders was playing a more active role in the story.
Overall I think this is a cool sci-fi story. It definitely reminded me of some of the recent VR movies that I wanted to like, such as Surrogate with Bruce Willis (I liked this better, actually.) I think it will have more appeal outside the YA audience. Not that I didn’t enjoy it, but I feel like it’s more of an adult sci-fi novel with a young narrator.
Language Content
Extreme profanity used infrequently.
Sexual Content Descriptions of kissing and a lead-in to sex, but no description of the actual exchange.
Spiritual Content None.
Violence Brief descriptions of torture tactics used to pressure a man to give up information. A man is killed in an explosion that leaves his body badly burned.
