Sangu Mandanna's Top 10 Adaptations + The Lost Girl Giveaway!

Hello dear readers!

I feel so honored to have the brilliant, awesome, brilliantly awesome Sangu Mandanna (author of The Lost Girl) over at the blog today, and she's stop over to share her Top 10 adaptation faves! Wanna know if your own faves made it to her list? Check it out below.

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Adaptations are very, very tricky. When an iconic or popular book is adapted, fans become rabid. They want their favourite book made just right. I want my favourite books adapted just right. So I get very snotty when something doesn’t live up to the book.

I also understand that an adaptation is just that. It’s somebody else’s vision, not usually the author’s. It’s not supposed to be the book transcribed into a different medium. Many adaptations have failed because they’ve tried to be too like the book (in my opinion the first two Harry Potter films, much as I love them, aren’t as good as the others because they’re such literal translations of the books).

So it’s a fine line. I am very picky. But I have seen some winners and here, in order, are my top ten.

10. Blood and Chocolate (2007), adapted from the novel by Annette Curtis Klause
This is an unusual choice because the film is so very different from the book. So different, in fact, that just about the only thing they seem to share is a title, character names and werewolves. So maybe this only made the cut because I actually saw the film before I read the book, which meant I wasn’t prejudiced either way. But, weighed separately, I like the book and I like the film. So that makes this a success for me.

9. Pride and Prejudice (2005), adapted from the novel by Jane Austen
I don’t know why I like this so much. I just do! And Matthew Macfayden really grows on you.

8. Beauty and the Beast (1991), adapted from the traditional fairy-tale (original author or creator unknown)
Oh, I know it’s Disney. I know it’s not entirely faithful to the original versions of the story. But I love this. I love Disney. (And am I crazy or does anyone else think the Beast has a really sexy voice?)

7. Emma (2007), TV adaptation of the novel by Jane Austen
This is the second of Austen’s novels to make it onto this list, so it will probably come as a surprise when I confess that I am not an Austen fan. I haven’t really been able to enjoy her books. But for some reason film and TV adaptations of her work are always a winner for me, and Emma just about tops the list. Kate Beckinsale is a great Emma.

6. The Hunger Games (2012), adapted from the novel by Suzanne Collins
I thought the filmmakers did a great job with this adaptation. It was true to the book and added a few very nice touches (seeing more of Seneca Crane was awesome). The music really made this film for me; it was incredibly stirring.

5. Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), adapted from the novel by Diana Wynne Jones
All I can say is: SO. UNBELIEVABLY. CUTE.

4. The Godfather (1972), adapted from the novel by Mario Puzo
I think this is the iconic example of an almost perfect adaptation. Practically every fan I know thinks so. The film may have cut a lot of the book’s plot and subplots out, but I think it did so wisely because it gives itself room to do the real story justice. But where this adaptation really succeeds is with its cast.

3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 and Part 2 (2010 and 2011), adapted from the novel by JK Rowling
I love the Harry Potter books. I also love the films. But these two adaptations are my favourite of the lot. They’re dark, they’re gritty, they’re poignant, they made me cry and laugh, and they’re so very true to the book.

2. Sherlock (2010), adapted from the stories by Arthur Conan Doyle
I love Sherlock Holmes. The original stories rank among my favourite stories of all time and I am a rabid, rabid Holmes fan. Which means I am rabid about adaptations. Very few actually win my approval, let alone make me buy the DVD. Don’t even get me started on Robert Downey Jr. But the BBC’s adaptation of Sherlock Holmes ticks every box. Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman are fantastic. And yes, I have both series on DVD. The third cannot come soon enough...

And finally,

From http://www.williamhadams.com/

1. Les Miserables (musical, 1985 and film, 2012), adapted from the novel by Victor Hugo
Nothing I say could possibly explain just how much I love Les Mis and how successfully and beautifully I think the musical (and film version of the musical) adapted the book. So I’m just going to let the fact that this tops my list speak for itself.


What favourite adaptations make your list?

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The Lost Girl by Sangu Mandanna
Release Date: January 3rd 2013
Published by: Definitions (Random House UK)


Summary:

Eva’s life is not her own. She is a creation, an abomination – an echo. Made by the Weavers as a copy of someone else, she is expected to replace a girl named Amarra, her ‘other’, if she ever died. Eva studies what Amarra does, what she eats, what it’s like to kiss her boyfriend, Ray. So when Amarra is killed in a car crash, Eva should be ready.

But fifteen years of studying never prepared her for this.

Now she must abandon everything she’s ever known – the guardians who raised her, the boy she’s forbidden to love – to move to India and convince the world that Amarra is still alive ...

Buy: Amazon | Book Depository

GIVEAWAY TIME! WIN A COPY OF THE LOST GIRL! (UK version)

Thanks to the lovely folks over at Random House, we have 1 copy of The Lost Girl to give away!

Rules:

Open to UK residents (if know someone in the UK who can receive this book when you win, feel free to enter!)

Must be at least 13 years old

Ends 2/16.


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[The Wolf Princess Blog Tour] Cathryn Constable's Childhood reading!

I am so so excited to be a part of this blog tour! I devoured this book when I got my hands on it, and it just made me feel really nostalgic. I am hosting Cathryn on my blog today so she can share with you the books that shaped her while growing up, and who knows? These books might have inspired her while writing The Wolf Princess!

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My Childhood Reading

Cathryn Constable

Looking into the Wardrobe

‘This must be a simply enormous wardrobe!’ thought Lucy, going still further in and pushing the soft folds of the coats aside to make room for her. Then she noticed that there was something crunching under her feet.’

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobeby C. S. Lewiswas published in 1950, the first book in The Chronicles of Narnia (although not the first chronologically). I would have been given a Puffin paperback when I was about nine, I suppose. By that time, I would have read The Princess and the Goblin and have started on E. Nesbit. I had very old copies of both Alices (Wonderland and Looking Glass) which I found unsettling. 

But The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was, and still is, the rule by which I measure almost all of my childhood reading because it became a paradigm of the story in which children go beyond, behind, through. It was, still is, the best example of children being transported to another world where perils are overcome, before being returned to this world, smarter, wiser, more able to deal with the challenges (and banalities) of the merely every day.

Of course, the mechanics of enchantment were always important:

The back of the wardrobe. The station platform (Prince Caspian). The picture in the bedroom (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader). The back staircase (George MacDonald’s Princess and the Goblin). A looking glass. A sandpit (Five Children and It). A soon-to-be demolished church (Alan Garner’s Elidor.). And of course, Andre Maurois’ escalator in Fattypuffs and Thinnifers.

Andre Maurois’ Fattypuffs and Thinnifers.

All of these portals were in themselves, nothing special... Sometimes the characters in a story only had to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, like the wood in William Croft Dickinson’s Borrobil when the fires of Beltane were lit. Even from an early age, the accidental nature of deep enchantment had been suggested to me in the story of Childe Roland. Burd Helen chased the ball, but rang the wrong way, ‘widdershins’ round the Church and was carried off by the Elf King. The very ordinariness and accidental nature of these enchantments was what made them, for me, even more exquisite.

But it was the moment of enchantment that really excited me. Because, of course, the mechanics were, just, well, mechanics. It didn’t matter what the door looked like, it was just there to be stepped through. I longed to know how it felt... but even more... how the writer used language to make me feel a certain way...

The joy of reading how Lucy stepped into the wardrobe... the second row of fur coats, her extremely sensible attitude about not closing the wardrobe door... In these two paragraphs or so, it was like experiencing the quiet hum of an engine as the narrative, which had been going along and going along, suddenly switched gear. 

The story began to change around me, and if felt as if I, too, was being enchanted... stepping through and beyond into a wood at midnight. 

Of course, being dragged into another world, sometimes against one’s will, but certainly being taken by surprise, is what good fiction does at any time. But somehow these tales, and they were my very favourite sort of reading, gave me a sense from a very young age, that this world, wonderful though it might be, was not the only world we inhabit. There is always more. There is always beyond.

About the book:

The Wolf Princess by Cathryn Constable
October 4th 2012 by Chicken House

Alone in the world, Sophie dreams of being someone special, but she could never have imagined this.

On a school trip to Russia, Sophie and her two friends find themselves on the wrong train. They are rescued by the beautiful Princess Anna Volkonskaya, who takes them to her winter palace and mesmerises them with stories of lost diamonds and a tragic past. But as night falls and wolves prowl, Sophie discovers more than dreams in the crumbling palace of secrets.

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This is one of the most beautiful guest post I've ever had in Amaterasu Reads, and didn't that just made you wonder just how much the books we've read while growing up influenced us?

My review for The Wolf Princess will be posted tomorrow, so if you're curious to know what I thought of the book (hint: I LOVED IT!) then you have to wait!

Thanks for dropping by! Care to share your thoughts about this post? Let's discuss!

[Surrender Blog Tour] The world of POSSESSION and SURRENDER by Elana Johnson

Today is the release day of Surrender, the sequel to the awesome Possession by Elana Johnson! I am the last stop for Tuesday, and guess what? We are hosting Elana on the blog today and she's here to tell us a little bit about the world we read of in her books. Read on, and find out how you can win 1 of 5 SIGNED copies of the sequels to fabulous YA books!

The Birth of POSSESSION and SURRENDER

A Guest Post by Elana Johnson

Okay, so when I was ready to begin my third book, I wasn’t quite sure what it would be. But I had just finished UGLIES by Scott Westerfeld, and I knew I wanted to write a book “like that.”

The problem?

I had no idea what “that” was. I hadn’t yet discovered the dystopian genre. So I cracked my knuckles and performed some Google-fu, and the next thing I knew, a whole new world had opened up to me—literally.

I learned as much as I could about the post-apocalyptic and dystopian genres, reading as many YA books as I could find.

At the time, in early 2008, there weren’t very many. THE HUNGER GAMES would be out that fall, but I’d never heard of it. THE MAZE RUNNER would follow a year later, but again, I’d never heard of it.

And me being shallow, I hadn’t read 1984, or THE HANDMAID’S TALE (I still haven’t…).

So I crafted a book based on the limited literature that was available and what I’d learned online.

Thus, POSSESSION was born.

I think the book fits quite well in the dystopian genre. It takes place in the far future, where there’s a government that has done what they deem best to ensure the survival of the human race.

I think POSSESSION – and thus SURRENDER – are a bit different, because the method of control is supernatural. There’re paranormal abilities at play here, and so it’s a combination of the paranormal and dystopian elements that give the series its flair.

In SURRENDER, we learn a lot more about the progression from our world today in 2012 to the world readers experience on the page. It’s a form of mutation, actually, something that I’m sure sneaked its way into my stories because of my love of X-Men.

Certain people are gifted with certain abilities like mind control, voice power, and the ability to control and adapt to technology. The variety of gifts is endless, but those who can read and implant thoughts are the most powerful. They’re the people who can keep the general population under wraps and they’re the ones who dictate how society runs.

In POSSESSION, we learned that this “great” society wasn’t so great. Now that we know that, SURRENDER is the story of “what are we going to do now that we know our society isn’t so great?”

We see people working behind the scenes as Insiders, playing their dictated roles during the day, and sabotaging the government at night.

I like books like this, because I think we all play many parts in our real lives. We might not like it, but sometimes we go along with things because it makes us feel safe, or we benefit from it somehow. Those kinds of situations allow for a broad exploration of emotions, something else I really like to do in my books.

So there you go! A little bit more about the birth of POSSESSION and SURRENDER, not only the world on the page, but how they came to be in my mind.

About the author:

Elana's work including POSSESSION, REGRET, and SURRENDER is available from Simon & Schuster wherever books are sold. She is the author of From the Query to the Call, an ebook that every writer needs to read before they query, which can be downloaded for free on her website. She runs a personal blog on publishing and is a founding author of the QueryTracker blog. She blogs regularly at The League of Extraordinary Writers, co-organizes WriteOnCon, and is a member of SCBWI, ANWA and LDStorymakers.

She wishes she could experience her first kiss again, tell the mean girl where to shove it, and have cool superpowers like reading minds and controlling fire. To fulfill her desires, she writes young adult science fiction and fantasy.

Stalk Follow her using the links below:

Blog: http://elanajohnson.blogspot.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/possessionthebook
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/elanaJ

You can win one of five SPECTACULAR SECOND books this week! It’s easy peasy lemon squeezy. All you have to do is fill out this rafflecopter widget with what you’ve done, and you can win a signed copy of either INSURGENT (by Veronia Roth), A MILLION SUNS (by Beth Revis), CROSSED (by Ally Condie), PERCEPTION (by Kim Harrington), and IN HONOR (by Jessi Kirby)—all spectacular second novels by some of today’s hottest YA authors.

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And in case you haven't heard of Surrender, check out the information below:

Raine has always been a good girl. She lives by the rules in Freedom. After all, they are her father’s rules: He’s the Director. It’s because of him that Raine is willing to use her talent—a power so dangerous, no one else is allowed to know about it. Not even her roommate, Vi.
All of that changes when Raine falls for Gunner. Raine’s got every reason in the world to stay away from Gunn, but she just can’t. Especially when she discovers his connection to Vi’s boyfriend, Zenn.

Raine has never known anyone as heavily brainwashed as Vi. Raine’s father expects her to spy on Vi and report back to him. But Raine is beginning to wonder what Vi knows that her father is so anxious to keep hidden, and what might happen if she helps Vi remember it. She’s even starting to suspect Vi’s secrets might involve Freedom’s newest prisoner, the rebel Jag Barque….

Purchase your copy here!

Hop on to Elana's blog to find out the next stop tomorrow so you can get more chances to win the Spectacular Second novels!

Interview with Teri Terry + Slated ARC Giveaway!

And DD2 continues! Now we are featuring an awesome book that I am pretty sure you all are so excited about. I am too!

We are dishing out some juicy info about Slated, so sit tight! Please welcome Teri Terry to our blog!

Follow Terry: Website | Twitter | Facebook

Teri has lived in France, Canada, Australia and England at more addresses than she can count, acquiring three degrees, a selection of passports and a silly name along
the way. The footpaths and canal ways of the Buckinghamshire Chilterns where she now lives inspired much of the setting of Slated. She hates broccoli, likes cats, and has finally worked out what she wants to do when she grows up.

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Your biggest inspiration in writing Slated?

Oh, go on, start with the toughest question first!

Though, when I think about it, writing a story about someone who doesn’t know who they are or where they come from was a natural place for me to go. We moved constantly when I was growing up, and I carried on dashing about the globe when I left home: always trying new things and new places. I think the sense of dislocation I’ve always felt, of not really belonging anywhere, comes out in Kyla.

What do you think is the perfect quote (from Slated) that can describe the book as a whole?

‘But how can I know who I am now, if I don’t know who I was?’

(Kyla to Ben, chapter 23).

I think this encapsulates Kyla’s growing realization of what has been done to her, and the cost of it. Her search for - and fear of - who she was, are central to her story.

What's the future like in Slated? How different is it from the present?

Slated is set in a near future. Decades before it begins, in the 2020’s and 30’s, the UK closed borders and become isolationist after collapse of the EU. Student riots, gangs and terrorists were brutally quashed by a Law and Order Government. But the Lorders had to compromise in a coalition, to give underage criminals and terrorists a second chance and a new life: Slating.

Kyla’s story begins in 2054 England. Mobile phones are illegal to under 21s, there are only 3 channels on TV and unauthorized public assembly is forbidden. Computers and internet use are closely monitored. Teens still live with their parents, go to school, have friends. But they are watched; their lives are controlled. This true for all but particularly so for Slateds like Kyla.

Would you like to be "Slated"?

Definitely not!

Yet…there is a certain attraction to the idea of being able to start over, to have a second chance. Everyone, I’m sure, has moments they wish they could take back, events they’d rather forget than relive in their minds. Decisions they’d like to reverse. Yet you lose everything; it isn’t selective. I’ve never been in a dark enough place to want that.

What are the themes tackled in your novel?

Identity is a big one. Also learning to listen to yourself, to your instincts. Understanding that people are complicated: most of us are good and bad, not just one or the other. And no matter how hopeless things seem or how stacked against you, you still have a voice: you can’t stand by and be quiet when things are wrong.

Who's the character that is the hardest to write? The one you enjoyed writing the most? Do you have a favorite character?
Did you ever base Kyla (or any of your characters) on a real person(s)?

Kyla was my favorite character to write. She is strong, deceptively so, even though she doesn’t always know it. She was also tricky to write in some respects, because she does have different sides. Hidden sides. Especially in the sequel which I’ve just finished writing, but you’ll have to wait until 2013 for that one!

None of my characters are based on real people: they live entirely in my head. They have loud arguments there if I don’t pay enough attention to what they want.

Can you give us one line from your novel that you find important, striking or unforgettable?

I’d like to pick the last two lines of Slated: they are given as two sentences, though they need to be read together. But I can’t possibly quote that here, it would be too much of a spoiler!

Another that really sticks in my mind is the last line of chapter 1: ‘Failure is not an option.’

Imagine being in a position where you can’t make mistakes, where any wrong move could be your last…

Tell us one thing that people do not know about Slated. (A random fact, a weird habit you have developed, etc.)

The prologue was a dream: honest! As soon as I woke up I grabbed a pen and notebook I keep by the side of the bed for these moments, and scribbled it down. It came from some unknown and dark place in my subconscious: the panic, the running. What was this girl running from? Why was someone shouting to never forget who she is? What is the wall she puts up?

It took me a long time to decide if I wanted to go to this strange, dark world, and what would happen there if I did. But eventually I couldn’t stop myself. The voices in my head wouldn’t shut up.

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And have you seen how the cover of Slated became what it was? (A captivating, haunting cover befitting such an intriguing book?) Check out the post at Notes from the Slushpile.

Slated by Teri Terry
Add Slated to your Goodreads list!

Kyla's memory has been erased, her personality wiped blank, her memories lost forever.

She's been Slated.

The government claims she was a terrorist, and that they are giving her a second chance – as long as she plays by their rules. But echoes of the past whisper in Kyla's mind. Someone is lying to her, and nothing is as it seems. Who can she trust in her search for the truth?

Orchard Books, May 2012

GIVEAWAY TIME! 

WIN AN ARC OF SLATED BY TERI TERRY!

The lovely folks over at Hachette UK has given us an ARC to giveaway! You can read Slated 3 months before it's release! This is your chance! And yes, this is OPEN INTERNATIONALLY.

Fill out the form below and the very same question I asked Teri:

Would you like to be Slated? Why or why not? (If you don't know what Slated means, it's a process of wiping out someone's memory and giving that person an entire different identity.)


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Teen Book Scene: Around the World in 80 Kisses Smooch Stop (International Kissing Club by Ivy Adams)

Hey everyone! Today is my stop for The International Kissing Club blog tour organized by the fabulous folks over at Teen Book Scene. One of the characters in the book, Shellee Roberts will share some odd facts about her. Check it out below!

Odd Facts About Me: Shellee Roberts

1. I love, LOVE to travel. Anywhere. I inherited the travel bug bad from my globe-trotting parents, and for fun I sometimes spend hours online (when I should be writing) planning trips that I have neither the time nor means to afford. And not just web surfing pretty pictures, I mean down to flight schedules, hotels and itineraries. This is why writing all the travel scenes in The International Kissing Club was so much fun! All of the places that Cassidy visits in Sydney, I’d actually been to. The caveat to all this is I hate, HATE to fly. Just the thought of getting on an airplane makes the nerves in my stomach start jumping around like a kindergarten class on Mountain Dew. It’s a testament to my burning desire to see the world that I’m actually willing to get on one of those tubes of death.

2. I am severely nyctophobic, meaning I’m really frakkin’ scared of the dark. I cannot walk across my own house without a light on. Which means on nights when I’m up late writing in the office at the front of our house, I sometimes have to call my husband on the telephone in the bedroom at the back of the house to come walk me to bed. Yes, I am a grown woman.

3. I totally, absolutely believe in ghosts. My grandmother has been visited by ghosts her whole life, and going to stay with her when I was a kid was creepy cause there was always some weird stuff happening there. This may also explain #2 above.

4. My husband and I have a goal of skiing all 34 major US ski resorts before we die. So far we’ve hit nine. But since we live in the middle of Texas (means it’s tough to get out of the state quickly or cheaply) and we both have bad knees from past skiing accidents, we’re going to have to step it up from going only once a year if we’re going to make it before we’re too old.

5. My first job was working the gate at a living history farm in my hometown. I was fifteen and seriously in love with history, so I thought it would be super fun to work there for the summer, in the Texas heat. I wore a full on 1870s era costume—long skirt, petticoat and bonnet—with not even a fan (cause there was no electricity). This is when I realized that really living in the past is romantic only in books. In reality it was hot and sweaty and really, really hard work all day long.

Thank you for hosting us today!

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Got any weird phobias? Tell us in the comments (leave your email so we can contact you) to be entered to win the Around the World In 80 Kisses daily and weekly prize and also become eligible to win the Grand Prize, a Kindle Fire. For a list of all our Smooch Posts you can visit and earn more entries to win, visit us here.

The International Kissing Club by Ivy Adams is the story of four best friends: Piper, Cassidy, Mei, and Izzy--the misfits of Paris, Texas. Their whole lives, they’ve dreamed of escaping small-town life and seeing the world. So when Piper is the victim of an embarrassing prank that goes viral online, she gets the idea that the girls should escape via the school’s international exchange program, in search of fun, love and internet redemption.

Emily McKay, Shellee Roberts and Tracy Deebs write under the pseudonym Ivy Adams. They shop, gossip and watch movies in Austin, Texas.

Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff + Giveaway!

It's day... uh, I've lost track. What day is it for our Dystopian Domination blog event? :)

How fitting is this book to my blog? Stormdancer is Japanese inspired and based on Japanese mythology, and Amaterasu (from my blog's title) is the Japanese Sun Goddess!

One of the most awesome authors I've had a chance to talk to, we are featuring Jay Kristoff on our blog today! He'll be talking a little bit about his upcoming book, Stormdancer, and basically just being awesome while doing so.

Follow Jay: Blog | Twitter | Facebook

People call STORMDANCER a Japanese Steampunk novel, but it’d be less like lying to say that Stormdancer is Japanese-inspired. It’s set in an island empire called Shima (Japanese for ‘island’). The customs, language and culture are inspired by Japan’s samurai age, but they have contraptions like air-ships and chainsaw katanas, the sky is choked with pollution, and animal life on the island has been virtually extinguished. Shima is a dystopia, with a capital D. No fluffy squirrels or cuddly bunnies here, friends.

So how does mythology tie into this dying land? I based the religion in Stormdancer on Shinto, a religion in ancient Japan that’s made of awesome. The most important Shinto story is the myth of Lord Izanagi and Lady Izanami – the great maker gods with the easily confused names. Izanagi and Izanami were in wuuuuv, but Izanami died giving birth to the world (and yes, I imagine that would be quite painful). Izanagi went to the underworld to reclaim her, but she’d become corrupted by the darkness (no, not that kind, the other kind). Izanagi fled, and in a rage, Izanami vowed that she’d kill a thousand people every day to punish her husband for leaving her. To which he replied, “Then I will give life to fifteen hundred.” Snap.

Now sure, on the surface STORMDANCER is a story about a girl who can speak to animals, and her friendship with the last griffin left alive. But underneath, Shinto mythology (particularly the tale of Izanagi and Izanami) is at the heart of the series. I had to figure out how the other gods of Shinto would fit into a dystopia too – how would people feel about the Sun Goddess Amaterasu, for example, when the sun is bright enough to barbeque your eyes if you look at it with your naked eye? Or Tsukiyomi, the Moon God, when the pollution is so dense you can’t even see the stars at night? It was a lot of fun figuring out the answer to these questions, and creating a brand new world that’s interwoven with a mythology that’s thousands of years old.

But now I’m running over-length, so as to exactly how it all fits together, I guess you’ll have to read the book to find out 

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Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff
Add Stormdancer to your Goodreads list!

A DYING LAND
The Shima Imperium verges on the brink of environmental collapse; decimated by clockwork industrialization and the machine-worshipers of the Lotus Guild. The skies are red as blood, land choked with toxic pollution, wildlife ravaged by mass extinctions.

AN IMPOSSIBLE QUEST
The hunters of Shima's imperial court are charged by their Shōgun to capture a thunder tiger – a legendary beast, half-eagle, half-tiger. But any fool knows thunder tigers have been extinct for more than a century, and the price of failing the Shōgun is death.

A SIXTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL
Yukiko is a child of the Fox clan, possessed of a hidden gift that would see her executed by the Lotus Guild. Accompanying her father on the Shōgun’s hunt, she finds herself stranded: a young woman alone in Shima’s last wilderness, with only a furious, crippled thunder tiger for company. Even though she can hear his thoughts, even though she saved his life, all she knows for certain is he’d rather see her dead than help her.

But together, the pair will form an indomitable friendship, and rise to challenge the might of an empire.

Stormdancer comes out September 1st 2012 and is published by St Martin’s Press (US) & Tor (UK)
Preorder your copy now on: BOOK DEPOSITORY

GIVEAWAY TIME!

WIN A SIGNED ARC OF STORMDANCER!

Yes, you can! And it'll be signed! And it's also open internationally!
All you need to do is fill out the form and then answer this simple question:

Place yourself into Stormdancer's world. You're in Shima. If you were a Japanese God / Goddess, who would you like to be and why?


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The Way We Fall by Megan Crewe Guest Post + Giveaway!

It's day 8 of our event and we are having a blast! Aren't we?

And the awesomeness continues! Today we have a great author on the blog to talk a little bit about the dystopian genre!

Follow Megan: Website | Blog | Twitter

What's in a name?

(or, When is a dystopian not a dystopian?)

Genre labels are funny things. In theory, they exist so that people who like certain types of books can find more of that kind of book. Like GRACELING? Read some other fantasy. Love TWILIGHT? Grab more paranormal romances. But because few genres have a widely agreed-upon definition, and those definitions are often shifting based on trends and reader enthusiasm, sometimes they just make the reading experience more confusing.

I'd say I'm reasonably qualified to talk about this, because my upcoming novel, THE WAY WE FALL, has been most frequently labeled as a dystopian, though that's not how I think of it at all.

A dystopia is usually defined as a future society which is set up in a way that at least some of the inhabitants consider to be ideal, but which is actually terribly flawed. A classic example of this is Lois Lowry's THE GIVER, and recent novels that fit the definition include Suzanne Collins' THE HUNGER GAMES and Veronica Roth's DIVERGENT. Often these books also include characters realizing how flawed their society is and attempting to change it.

As the dystopian genre surged in popularity with the publication of THE HUNGER GAMES trilogy, the publishing definition of the term has expanded. A lot of the books selling as "dystopians" focus not on some brand new society, but on the ruins of our current one. A horrible catastrophe has destroyed normal life, and the characters are struggling just to stay alive and maybe pick up the pieces, as in Ilsa J. Bick's ASHES and the GONE series by Michael Grant. These sort of books I'd usually call "post-apocalyptic." There are certainly some dystopians that take place after an apocalypse of sorts, and both genres involve unpleasant futures, so I understand the cross-labeling. But not all dystopians follow a disaster, and not all stories about the after effects of a disaster involve a dystopia.

And occasionally stories that aren't quite either of these things are being considered dystopian as well. Take THE WAY WE FALL. When I was submitting it to agents, I referred to it as a "survival story." The deal announcement calls it as a "contemporary dystopian," which was intended to convey that it includes elements common in many dystopian/post-apocalyptic books, but is set in the present day. If I was going to get really specific about it, I'd say technically the best term would be straight out "apocalyptic." There is no ideal society, and it's not post any apocalypse--its the chronicling of the disaster itself, rather than the aftermath. (In the sequels the lines get a little more blurry, I'll admit.)

The fact that so many novels skim over the apocalypse and focus on what happens when it's over is part of what inspired me to write THE WAY WE FALL in the first place. I wanted to explore that fascinating in-between time, when everything is changing and the characters have no idea when or how it'll end. To be honest, though, I don't worry much about how my or other books are labeled, as long as the general sense is right. If readers want a clearer idea of what the story's about, that's what the book descriptions are for. Mainly I just hope people will enjoy the story I wanted to tell, regardless of what genre they call it!

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How is that for a guest post? I'd love how they call The Way We Fall... a 'contemporary dystopian', because the book certainly feels that way. It's a perfect term to capture what the book is really about.

The Way We Fall by Megan Crewe
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It starts with an itch you just can't shake. Then comes a fever and a tickle in your throat. A few days later, you'll be blabbing your secrets and chatting with strangers like they’re old friends. Three more, and the paranoid hallucinations kick in.


And then you're dead.

When a deadly virus begins to sweep through sixteen-year-old Kaelyn’s community, the government quarantines her island—no one can leave, and no one can come back.

Those still healthy must fight for dwindling supplies, or lose all chance of survival. As everything familiar comes crashing down, Kaelyn joins forces with a former rival and discovers a new love in the midst of heartbreak. When the virus starts to rob her of friends and family, she clings to the belief that there must be a way to save the people she holds dearest.

Because how will she go on if there isn't?

The Way We Fall comes out January 24, 2012, released by Disney Hyperion. Buy your copy at Amazon!

GIVEAWAY TIME! WIN A FINISHED COPY OF THE WAY WE FALL BY MEGAN CREWE!

Yep, we are giving away a finished copy! And yes, this is OPEN INTERNATIONALLY! Make sure to answer the question below or your entries will not count!

The Question: Put yourself into Kaelyn's position. At what lengths are you willing to go to in order to survive in a quarantined island?


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