This week I read City of Cannibals, written by Ricki Thompson and published by Front Street.

Wow! I’m not sure where to start with this one. It is a solidly good book with a main character I loved. Dell is about sixteen, and she’s living with an abusive father and aunt when the book opens. She runs away to the city of cannibals (London in the sixteenth century, while Henry VIII is king), looking for a young monk. She fancies herself in love with the monk, though she doesn’t really know him.

It’s an interesting love story for the two–Thompson made me believe that you can love someone you’ve never spoken to, just because you’ve watched him smile and you’ve noticed the way he enjoys nature as he walks along a mountain trail.

This story isn’t just about Dell’s search for someone who will love her. It’s about the instability of life under Henry VIII. It’s about being willing to stand up to a tyrant and to die for a cause you hold dear. It’s about loyalty and courage and those things are contrasted with cowardice and abandonment. There is much to love about this rich, thought-provoking book.

For the negatives? That’s a tough one. I will recommend this one to my daughter, who is sixteen, and I would have let her read it when she was fourteen, but it has some pretty raunchy stuff in it. Thompson did not shrink back from painting a realistic picture of the city—she made it a stinking cesspool. I mean to tell you, this would be a great book for dieters. Read it just before mealtime and you’ll lose your appetite.

Some of the raunchiness seemed gratuitous. In one scene Dell has to relieve herself. She has to wait. She finally gets outside and empties her bladder. I was scratching my head, wondering how that sequence moved the story forward or what was foreshadowed there. I couldn’t figure out why the author added it into the story. I may have missed the necessity of it all, or it may have just been added in to give the world some color. I thought the city was plenty colorful enough without Dell grabbing her crotch and relieving herself in the alley.

But, thankfully, none of the graphic stuff was titillating—quite the contrary—most of it was of the “fish breath and chamber pot” yucky variety.

I’m glad I didn’t miss this one, though. I found it interesting, educational, and entertaining. I don’t know what else you could want from a book. I’m hoping the author comes out with a sequel because I would love to see more of Dell and her Brown Boy and the fascinating, if smelly, world in which they live.

Day two of the CSFF blog tour for the lovely book, Faery Rebels: Spell Hunter, by the talented RJ Anderson.

I posted my review. You may read it by clicking here. In short, I loved the book.

I also was pleased to find, as I dug around her website, that the author, RJ Anderson, is a woman who has a little bit of Knife’s fighter spirit in her. I found her essay on The Problem Of Susan. I’m glad to see that she is willing to stand up for what she believes.

I am especially thankful for her take on this because I get so tired of people just repeating untrue accusations without thinking about what they are saying. I have posted on these things, briefly, myself. Some, such as Pullman, say what they say out of hatred, I think. And then others follow mindlessly along without stopping to ask if his original assessment was even true.

Anyway, that’s totally off topic, but I was happy to see Ms. Anderson’s defense of Lewis and his feelings toward grown-up sex.

Be sure to check out other bloggers on the tour–they’re listed at the bottom of yesterday’s post. If you haven’t been to Fred Warren’s blog, makes sure to go. He’s a funny fellow.

For the next three days I’m taking part in the CSFF blog tour for Faery Rebels, a great YA fantasy, by RJ Anderson, about…well…faeries.

I have to confess, I’ve had this book for a couple of months and I’ve never picked it up to read it. I bought it because I want to keep up with the latest in YA novels since I’m writing my own and trying to sell them. But I didn’t really feel like reading it because it’s about…well…faeries.

I’m not a big fairy fan. As lovely as I thought the cover was—just scrumptious—I didn’t really want to read the book.

So when my pal Becky Miller told me she was doing a blog tour on the book, I thought, “I already don’t want to read it. Being obligated to read it for a blog tour will just make me hate it.” (There are few things worse than being obligated to review a book you don’t like.)

But Becky read it before me and she RAVED about it. So I figured I’d best give it a try. Oh, man! Am I ever glad I did. I loved it!

Here is a book with conflict and action and a character you gotta love. There’s romance, and self-sacrifice. My test for whether a book is great or just good is whether I read it straight through without getting up and wandering around between chapters to snack, check e-mail, floss my teeth…whatever. Some books I like but at the end of the chapters, or even sometimes in the middles of the chapters, I’m slightly bored. I’m not being sucked on from page to page, for whatever reason.

Well, that was not the case with Faery Rebels. When I had to put it down I was thinking about it and wanting to hurry and get back to it and when I was reading it I didn’t want to put it down. I also thought about it after I finished it. It gave such a hugely satisfying ending.

I’ll review the book tomorrow, I think. I’m swamped today. But for now, let it be known that RJ Anderson is one of my new favorites. This story was utterly satisfying.

Now I’m going to go see what others on the tour are saying about this book. I wonder if they all liked it as much as I did. If you’d like to find out, visit the other blogs:

Guess what I got in the mail today.

I’m apparently a historical romance junkie. Who knew?

I fell in love with Eva Ibbotson last week. Yikes! I can’t believe I’ve been living without this woman for so long. And I’m so glad I finally discovered her! A big thanks to Noel at Never Jam today for turning me on to this author.

I’ve read a couple of her books and have two more that should be at my door tomorrow. I’m so excited.

If you want to read my review of A Countess Below Stairs, a kind of “Sarah Crewe grows up and looks for a husband instead of a father” book, jump over here and read it.

I highly recommend that you ignore the stupid cover (because it gives you the wrong impression about the heroine. She’s a wonderful girl and she has dark hair, for pity’s sake, and red, work-worn hands.) and buy the book sooner, rather than later. I found this book totally satisfying.