Mosquitoland is a quest – a high schooler is running away from her father and stepmother in Mississippi to see her mother in Ohio. She gets on a bus, and adventures abound. She meets all kinds of eccentric folks, avoids perilous situations, runs out of the money she stole from her step-mother, and, of course, learns things about herself in the end. It wouldn’t be a quest without that lesson.
It’s less precious and funnier than I thought it would be. Recommended for a vacation/beach read.
City of Thieves is wonderful.
The plot: Lev and Kolya are both young men who are arrested in nazi-besieged Leningrad. A Soviet colonel is planning his daughter’s wedding and needs a dozen eggs. He makes them a deal: they can find a dozen eggs during the ultimate siege in a Soviet winter, they get their freedom.
City of Thieves made me feel cold and hungry and desperate. It also made me laugh and think about friendship and community and how we choose who to rely on. This is a wonderfully layered story. Highly recommended.
Six of Crows was surprisingly fun. It’s not particularly original – six mismatched almost-adults are thrown together to break into an un-break-in-able prison. Will they make it? How will they do it? Who will pair up?
But it’s a good world – there’s a previous trilogy I’m going to go hunt down to learn more about the various lands and their people and exactly who has magical powers and how they got them.
Also: Two strong female characters. Adventure! Excitement! Cunning and derring-do! Escaping an impossible situation or two!
This has summer read written all over it.