Olive's Ocean

by Kevin Henkes

Martha Boyle's life is rocked when she hears a knock at her front door the day before she leaves for summer vacation. A woman introduces herself as Olive's mother, a girl Martha's age who was hit by a car and killed a few weeks before. The mom found an entry in Olive's diary that said that she hoped she and Martha could become friends, and that Martha was the nicest person in school. The diary page haunts Martha. Olive was a strange girl--an outcast--and Martha barely knew her. When she arrives at the coast to visit her grandmother, Olive is never far from her mind, but she's also got her own issues to deal with. The group of five brothers who live down the beach provide some interesting distractions, as does her deepening relationship with her grandmother. This is a beautiful coming of age story, with a lovable main character, and colorful extras. I think Martha's story will be with me for a long time.

Heap House

by Edward Carey

Welcome to Heap House, a sprawling, dark, dingy mansion, situated in the middle of a vast pile of junk. It's home to the Iremongers, a strange and reclusive extended family. They intermarry to preserve their bloodlines and consider themselves almost royalty. People with partial Iremonger blood are their servants. Their identities are tied to "birth objects," commonplace things that represent and shape who they are from birth. Clod Iremonger is 15, with a bath plug for a birth object. He is unhappily engaged to his cousin Pinalippy. Clod has a skill that makes him seem odd in the eyes of the other Iremongers; he can hear the birth objects speaking. They only speak their names, but their voices are always with him. He is resigned to his dreary life until he meets Lucy Pennant, an orphan who is told she has a little Iremonger blood and forced to work at Heap House. Lucy changes the way Clod sees his world, but her arrival sets off a chain of events that might mean the end of Heap House. Black-and-white illustrations are as deliciously unsettling as the text. Characters are rich with personality, from Clod's frightening Granny who has never left her bedroom, to his bath plug, who manages to be sassy even though the only thing he says is "James Henry Hayward." Stories don't get much weirder, but that's precisely what makes it so magical.

The Thickety: The Whispering Trees

by J.A. White

Kara and Taff are right where we left off--deep in the heart of the Thickety. They soon run into the infamous witch Mary Kettle, who claims she will help the pair by teaching Kara how to hone her skills as a wexari, a special kind of witch who can cast spells without a grimoire. The Forest Demon has many obstacles for Kara, though, and their lives are constantly in danger. Monsters abound, and the detail with which they are created makes them extra scary. The siblings never know who they can trust, and the emotional roller coaster is incredibly tense. The ending, once again, is a total shocker!

I just really love this series. What an imagination this guy has! My only complaint is that the main cliffhanger that left me gasping at the end of A Path Begins is STILL a cliffhanger at the end of The Whispering Trees. I was really hoping to get some resolution there, but I guess I'll have to wait until the next book to satisfy that curiosity. These are just the type of books I would have loved as a kid, but they're simply too good for adults to miss. Great sequel, Mr. White. I hope you are furiously writing, because I can't wait to see what's next!

Speaker for the Dead

by Orson Scott Card

It's 3,000 years after Ender's Game, but due to the complexities of interstellar travel, we still have Ender, as a 35 year old man. Yay! He has become Speaker for the Dead, a position revered, and slightly feared, by this society. He is working at a University. Valentine is pregnant with her first baby, and he's looking forward to being an uncle. And then, he gets a call to speak the death of a researcher on the planet Lusitania. Much to Valentine's chagrin, he decides to go. The voyage takes only weeks for Ender, but 22 years for everyone else. By the time he gets to the planet, he knows that Valentine's baby will be a young adult, while he will not have aged at all. Despite the personal pain it will cause, he's still nursing guilt about the Buggers. There's a different alien life form on this planet, affectionately called the Piggies, and his sense of responsibility wins out. This is the story of Ender's time on Lusitania, attempting to find redemption for himself, while helping the humans who have colonized there. When he arrives, he finds the welcome less than warm, and there are unfortunately other deaths that need speaking.

I listened to the audio book, and at the end, the author himself talks about the fact that this was the book he intended to write all along--that Ender's Game was the intro he had to write in order for Speaker to make sense. While I loved this a tiny bit less than Ender's Game, it still pulled me in with it's wildly imaginative new world. Unraveling the mystery of the Piggies was great fun, and the character feel like old friends now. I can't wait to continue my adventures in the Enderverse!