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This room has probably seen as much pain as anywhere I’ve ever been. I’ve only been here a few hours and I’m reeling. Seizures. Shots fired. Ghastly repetition. No brain activity. Waiting for the relatives to make a decision. The alcohol, the drugs, the alcohol again.
Yet there’s a terrible brittle forced jollity. Incessant blaring blither […]

We are standing up when we get the news. If you have a choice, I don’t recommend this.
You’ve seen it on TV and in movies so many times that it’s eerily familar, but then again, it’s totally different. Vital signs march across the big monitor in boldly colored horizontal lines. I can’t shake the resemblance […]

“Freshman [f-ing] faggot!”

I would have given good odds against anyone calling me a “freshman” ever again, and it pretty much made my day.
Er, I mean

“Come back here and say that to my face, you sophomore!”

(or what *I* dream about, anyway)

I think it would probably occur to me to compare and contrast the first two volumes of Larbalestier’s “Magic or Madness” trilogy with the first two books of Scott Westerfeld’s “Midnighters” trilogy even if I didn’t know the two authors were partners. Many novels feature teenage protagonists simultaneously blessed and cursed with special powers, but […]

Maureen Johnson’s Devilish commanded my attention as soon as I heard first of it (via Westerblog, of course). The potent combo of demonic subject matter, a Providence RI setting, and a cover that evokes one of my favorite Penelope Houston albums added up to a heaping helping of positive associations and I requested Devilish from […]

I’ve been on such a major Scott Westerfeld kick for most of this year that not only am I reading everything of his I can get my hands on, I’m subscribed to the Westerblog and I read some of the other young adult books he talks up there, too. Here’s one:
Diana Peterfreund’s debut novel Secret […]

In which the “Needs More Demons” critical scale is explicated at undue length.