Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Six magically weird YA fantasy books

One title on Melissa Albert's list of six magically weird YA fantasy novels, as shared at the BN Teen blog:
Vassa in the Night, by Sarah Porter

This wonderfully weird YA is a dark tangle of urban angst, Russian folklore, and Porter’s own rich invention. Vassa lives in an eerie Brooklyn plagued by lengthening nights, in which endless hours seem to pass between dusk and dawn. At the center of this mystery is BY’s, a deadly chain of all-night convenience stores where shoplifters pay the ultimate price—beware the heads on spikes that surround each store, which dance atop chicken legs till sung down to earth by a prospective shopper. When Vassa is framed for shoplifting and marked for death by Babs, the nefarious owner of her local BY’s, she’s locked into a pact: survive three nights as a BY’s cashier, and she might walk away with her life. What follows is a three-day fugue in which Vassa explores the shadowy secrets of her past, meets strange characters including a severed hand with a conscience and a pair of uncanny lawyers, and uncovers the secret behind the unending nights.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue