fannish maunderings, ignore

Okay, I was more on my seat throughout Check Please: Age of Oven than I was watching Avengers: Age of Ultron. Which maybe says something about where my fandom heart is these days or maybe says something about the heart and sincerity of small creator-controlled media as compared with an enormous corporate production. (Feeeeelings, oh man.)

book: The Darkest Part of the Forest

Okay, so. If Holly Black's previous book, Coldest Girl in Coldtown, was everything I find hard to take in YA anymore - teens who can't wrap their heads around adult time-horizons making unfortunate permanent decisions - The Darkest Part of the Forest is everything that is best and most powerful about YA as YA and why I will never quit this genre despite being old enough to be a YA's mom.

This is an outstanding book, you guys. This book made me gasp and say "ohmygod, ohmygod" out loud at the playground which you better believe got me an odd look from the mom sitting closest by but I have *no regrets* because it was *so good*. Black is tapped right into the deep, real stuff of fairy tale tropes (and the Jungian collective unconsciousness, maybe) - siblings, changelings, bargains, quests, parents, adolescent yearning. It's not quite a flawless book, there's a bit of clunky exposition in the last act, but up to that point it was just exquisitely put together.

For those as may be curious, there's some very, very minor reference to Black's Tithe trilogy, but you definitely don't need to have read those, and I liked Darkest Part significantly more than even the one of those I liked most.

( spoilers )

aryky, I am pointing at you in particular, READ THIS ONE.