Read Alikes
A Thread of Grace
by Mary Doria Russell
Magic for Beginners
by Kelly Link
Icebergs
by Rebecca Johns
Manhattan Nocturne
by Colin Harrison
You’re Not You
by Michelle Wildgen
No Good Deeds
by Laura Lippman
My Latest Grievance
by Elinor Lipman
Pandora’s Star
by Peter Hamilton
Traction Man is Here
by Mini Grey
Our Kind
by Kate Walbert
Whales on Stilts
by M. T. Anderson
The Eyre Affair
by Jasper Fforde
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
by Kate diCamillo
The Emperor’s Children
by Claire Messud
Morningside Heights
by Cheryl Mendelson
Little Big Man
by Thomas Berger
The Year of Secret Assignments
by Jaclyn Moriarty
Happiness Sold Separately
by Lolly Winston
So Sleepy
by Uri Shulevitz
Adèle & Simon
by Barbara McClintock
The Brambles
by Eliza Minot
Book! book! book!
by Deborah Bruss
The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets
by Eva Rice
Blow the House Down
by Robert Baer
The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories
by Susanna Clarke
The Inhabited World
by David Long
Minaret
by Leila Aboulela
Piece of My Heart
by Peter Robinson
The Night Journal
by Elizabeth Crook
Dealing with Dragons
by Patricia C. Wrede
Love Walked In
by Marisa de los Santos
Interface
by Neal Stephenson (Stephen Bury)
Uniform Justice
by Donna Leon
Guess How Much I Love You
by Sam McBratney
American Born Chinese
by Gene Luen Yang
The Man of My Dreams
by Curtis Sittenfeld
A Safe Place for Dying
by Jack Fredrickson
What is the What : the autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng
by Dave Eggers
The Abortionist's Daughter
by Elisabeth Hyde
The True Account
by Howard Frank Mosher
Birds without Wings
by Louis De Bernieres
Racketty Packetty House
by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Dirt Music
by Tim Winton
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
by Max Brooks
Anahita’s Woven Riddle
by Meghan Nuttall Sayres
A Place of Greater Safety
by Hilary Mantel
Napoleon’s Pyramids
by William Dietrich
The Reconstructionist
by Josephine Hart
The History of the Siege of Lisbon
by Jose Saramago
The Shakespeare Stealer
by Gary L. Blackwood
Gloriana’s Torch
by Patricia Finney
The Tough Guide to Fantasyland
by Diana Wynne Jones
In this Rain
by S. J. Rozan
Ilium
by Dan Simmons
The Intuitionist
by Colson Whitehead
As She Climbed Across the Table
by Jonathan Lethem
Book Description
As I read Un Lun Dun, China Miéville’s satisfying first fantasy novel for teens, I could imagine that his literary influences might include Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth, Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and even J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Miéville conjures up a wonderful alternative world – both like and unlike London - where words are alive, houses are constructed from all sorts of material that’s mildly obsolete in London (hence, “moil” houses), books talk, giraffes are far from gentle animals, wraiths abound, propheseers more or less correctly predict the future, and a dark cloud dreams of polluting the world into extinction. But wait – the prophecies proclaim that Shwazzy will arrive in the nick of time and save UnLondon from certain smoggy doom. Turns out that Shwazzy is really 12-year-old Zanna, who magically arrives from London with her best friend, Deeba (who adopts a cardboard milk carton in UnLondon and names it Curdle), and heroically undertakes to fulfill what’s been foretold. But nothing happens quite as it’s supposed to, and there are many scary encounters and death-defying adventures (as well as puns and other wordplays) before good prevails, at least for the time being.
|
