The Summer Prince, by Alaya Dawn Johnson. Recommended! You know how half of my book reviews these days complain about having read it all before? The Summer Prince does not have this problem! I am not sure I can talk about this book without sounding like fawning jacket copy, "fresh-voiced and distinctive", but, look, it is awesome. The setting is vivid (and fascinating). The relationships are lovely (and a deliberate subversion of the same-old love triangle business). Instead of some fakey contrived system to rebel against, we get a mix of *real* world problems - classism, a heavily-stratified society, refugee issues, entrenched and corrupt politicians - and serious science-fictional ones (about the people left behind, when the Singularity is happening somewhere out there). The whole thing is just this beautiful mix of the ancient and primal (the names, the central ritual), and the inventive and futuristic, and the real-but-other culture of Brazil - I think my biggest regret about the book was reading it on paper instead of in an electronic format where I could have more easily looked up translations for the bits of Brazilian Portuguese, I mean, it was always obvious whether something was a food or a musical instrument or a game or whatever, so you didn't have to have a translation to follow the plot, but it's nice to have the specificity of picturing the right sort of thing. (But it's not just, like, random flavor that it's set there, it's integral to the story, the Portuguese concept of saudade is central to the theme.) I did not end up feeling fannish about this book - like, I did not feel the deep passion for the characters that made me want to tell my own stories about them - but I totally want to hold this book up to YA writers and say, look, guys, this one gets it right, this is how you do it, if only every book could be smart and moving and thought-provoking like this.
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