All posts by kathymacmillan

Read This!: AMINA’S VOICE by Hena Khan

Read This, Reviews,

Amina's VoiceAmina’s Voice by Hena Khan

Summary: Amina has never been comfortable in the spotlight. She is happy just hanging out with her best friend, Soojin. Except now that she’s in middle school everything feels different. Soojin is suddenly hanging out with Emily, one of the “cool” girls in the class, and even talking about changing her name to something more “American.” Does Amina need to start changing too? Or hiding who she is to fit in? While Amina grapples with these questions, she is devastated when her local mosque is vandalized. 

My 12-year-old son and I listened to the audiobook version, beautifully narrated by Soneela Nankani in a way that perfectly captures Amina’s loving heart and earnest nature. Khan has accomplished the remarkable feat of creating a warm, funny school and family story that takes on a variety of issues – dealing with prejudice, navigating friendships, overcoming fears – without ever once feeling like an “issues” book. Religious details that may be unfamiliar to non-Muslim readers occupy the story in a natural, straightforward way that informs without lecturing or information dump. This book also contains, through Amina’s mentions of the treatment she has received from classmates over the years, some of the truest depictions of microaggressions I have ever read – how they occur, how they are discounted by the people who perpetuate them, but how heavily they can weigh on the psyche of a marginalized person. As a reader, I was spellbound by Amina’s story; as a writer, I was inspired by Khan’s masterful use of craft; as a parent, I was grateful for such an engaging story that has led to many important conversations with my son.

AMINA’S VOICE is out now.

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Read This!: THE TOMBS by Deborah Schaumberg

Read This, Reviews

The TombsThe Tombs by Deborah Schaumberg

Summary: New York, 1882. A dark, forbidding city, and no place for a girl with unexplainable powers. Sixteen-year-old Avery Kohl pines for the life she had before her mother was taken. She fears the mysterious men in crow masks who locked her mother in the Tombs asylum for being able to see what others couldn’t. Avery denies the signs in herself, focusing instead on her shifts at the ironworks factory and keeping her inventor father out of trouble. Other than secondhand tales of adventure from her best friend, Khan, an ex-slave, and caring for her falcon, Seraphine, Avery spends her days struggling to survive. 
Like her mother’s, Avery’s powers refuse to be contained. When she causes a bizarre explosion at the factory, she has no choice but to run from her lies, straight into the darkest corners of the city. Avery must embrace her abilities and learn to wield their power—or join her mother in the cavernous horrors of the Tombs. And the Tombs has secrets of its own: strange experiments are being performed on “patients”…and no one knows why.

Sixteen-year-old Avery Kohl has been working as a welder in an ironworks factory ever since her mother was locked in the Tombs asylum and she and her father had to flee their respectable middle-class life. The skills Avery has developed in creating perfect metal connections are only appropriate, as she discovers that she has powers that let her see the connections between lives, and help heal other people’s auras. But in New York City in the throes of the Industrial Revolution, such powers are dangerous, and there are plenty of greedy men who want to use Avery’s powers for their own gain – just as they have been using her mother’s. When Avery’s burgeoning powers attract attention from the mysterious men in crow masks who drag people off to the Tombs, she has to go into hiding with her mother’s Romany friends. She hatches a desperate plan to free her mother…only to find that the greedy industrialists are getting ready to unleash an awful plan on New York City, one that threatens the lives of every worker in every plant and factory. And Avery and her friends may be the only ones who can stop it. Filled with intrigue, adventure, romance, and all the cool steampunk flourishes a reader could ask for, Schaumberg’s debut melds history and fantasy to create an absorbing world just beyond the known.

THE TOMBS is out now.

Happy Birthday to Me! The DAGGER AND COIN cover is here, and it’s beautiful!

Contests and Giveaways, Dagger and Coin, Young Adult Fantasy

Today is my birthday, and I had such a great present this week: the official cover reveal of Dagger and Coin this past Thursday!  Thank you so much to YA Books Central for hosting it!

For those who haven’t seen the gorgeousness yet, here it is:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like the cover of Sword and Verse, this cover features art by Colin Anderson. I love the way he worked in elements of Soraya’s story, but in a way that reflects the design of the first book too.  Don’t they look beautiful side by side?

   

Dagger and Coin will be published November 20, 2018 by HarperTeen. You can read more about the book here.

And make sure to head over to the cover reveal page at YA Books Central to enter a giveaway for an Advanced Reading Copy and a personalized bookmark with your name in the language of the gods!

 

Everything I Can Tell You So Far About My New Book

Dagger and Coin, Sword and Verse, Works in progress, Young Adult Fantasy

Earlier today I finally got to announce the title of my upcoming YA novel:

Dager and Coin by Kathy MacMillan

I’ve been working on this book and unable to say much about it for more than two years, so it’s exciting to finally be able to share more!  Here’s what I can tell you about it so far:

  • Dagger and Coin is due out in Fall 2018.
  • Dagger and Coin picks up about 30 days after the events of Sword and Verse. However, I prefer to think of it as a companion novel rather than a sequel, because it focuses on a different protagonist and can be enjoyed even if you haven’t read the first book.
  • The cover is just as beautiful as the cover of Sword and Verse and was done by the same artist, Colin Anderson. Hopefully I will be able to share it soon!
  • The main character in Dagger and Coin is Soraya Gamo, the heiress who was engaged to Mati and was all set to become queen. We saw in Sword and Verse that Soraya was much more than just a pretty rich girl, and in this book she has thrown her lot in with her former enemies in order to pursue her ambitions.
  • Many of the major players from Sword and Verse appear in this book, especially Raisa, Mati, and Jonis. We also get to know some minor characters from the first book better: Deshti (Raisa’s adversary in the Arnath Resistance), Alshara (Soraya’s younger sister), and Gelti Dimmin (that handsome guard captain).
  • Decisions made in Sword and Verse come back to haunt our characters in Dagger and Coin, particularly a big one made by Mati. Sword and Verse was about upending an unjust system; Dagger and Coin is about the messy, seemingly impossible task of constructing a better one in its place.
  • This book is unabashedly, fiercely feminist. In 2016, I thought, “Oh, I wish this book were out now! It’s so relevant!”  In 2017, I thought the same thing. Sadly, I don’t think this story is going to get any less relevant in coming years.
  • I like to think of this book as a tale of a well-educated female policy wonk battling her misogynist foes. In case you are wondering about my politics. 😉
  • I’m just going to put this out there right now, because some people have mentioned it: Soraya and Jonis are NOT EVER going to be a couple. Just not going to happen.  Soraya’s relationship with Jonis is arguably the most important one in the book, but don’t look for kissing there.  Just don’t.
  • Look for kissing (and more) elsewhere, though. There is romance in this book, just not with Jonis.
  • Like Sword and Verse, Dagger and Coin can be read and enjoyed as a standalone. Of course, it also features lots of rewarding tidbits for readers of both books!  And yes, if you read Dagger and Coin first, it will give you lots of spoilers for Sword and Verse, so be warned if that sort of thing bothers you. (Personally, I love spoilers, but I am weird that way.)
  • I’m seriously considering making myself a bingo card of all the things that Soraya will undoubtedly be called once the book is out in the world.  I mean, she’s an ambitious woman, see, so of course that means she must be inviting the whole world to comment on what’s wrong with her.  A few of my predictions: too proud, too strong, too passive, too emotional, too icy, too ambitious, too shrill, too slutty, too prudish, too petty, too demanding, too calculating…
  • The story of the gods comes into play in Dagger and Coin, but in a different way than it did in Sword and Verse, because Soraya’s relationship to the gods is completely different from Raisa’s.
  • I really, really love this book and I can’t wait to share it with you!

Read This!: TOO FAT, TOO SLUTTY, TOO LOUD: THE RISE AND REIGN OF THE UNRULY WOMAN

Read This, Reviews

Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly WomanToo Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman by Anne Helen Petersen

Summary: There have been unruly women for as long as there have been boundaries of what constitutes acceptable “feminine” behavior, but there’s evidence that she’s on the rise–more visible and less easily dismissed–than ever before. In Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud, Anne Helen Petersen uses the lens of “unruliness” to explore the ascension of eleven contemporary powerhouses: Serena Williams, Melissa McCarthy, Abbi Jacobson, Ilana Glazer, Nicki Minaj, Kim Kardashian, Hillary Clinton, Caitlyn Jenner, Jennifer Weiner, and Lena Dunham. Petersen explores why the public loves to love (and hate) these controversial figures, each of whom has been conceived as “too” something: too queer, too strong, too honest, too old, too pregnant, too shrill, too much. With its brisk, incisive analysis, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud will be a conversation-starting book on what makes and breaks celebrity today.

This book is a wonder. Peterson articulates so many frustrations and furies that I have personally felt, and that I know other women have felt, and documents the way our society attempts to limit women in a way that is precise, articulate, and utterly undeniable. Her choice to center each chapter around a specific female celebrity and how she is supposedly “too” something is inspired – these studies are not so much about the women themselves as they are about how the women are seen, discussed, and applauded or vilified by the world around them. This book is an absolute must-read for anyone who is interested in understanding what all women experience in large and small ways as they dare to exist in a world that constantly tells them that they only have worth in relation to men.
Some choice quotes:

“’Shrillness’ is just a word to describe what happens when a woman, with her higher-toned voice, attempts to speak loudly. A pejorative, in other words, developed specifically to shame half the population when they attempt to command attention in the same manner as men.”

 

“To be an unruly woman today is to oscillate between the postures of fearlessness and self-doubt, between listening to the voices that tell a woman she is too much, and one’s own, whispering and yelling  I am already enough, and always have been.”