YA F Lev

YA F Par

Did you read and love Tricia Levensellar's Daughter of the Pirate King and Daughter of the Siren Queen duology?

Well, Seafire is right up your alley (gangplank?)!

Caledonia and her best friend Pisces have their lives turned upside down when they are about 12 years old when their brother, parents, and their ship are attacked by Bullets, army minions of Aric, a tyrant overlord. In retaliation, the girls salvage their ship, take command of it, and adopt quite the crew --entirely made of girls-- over the next four years. But when they take on a Bullet as a prisoner after he saves Pisces's life, their course changes. The Bullet, Orin, knows where Caledonia and Pisces's brothers are. And even though they've become drugged minions like the other Bullets, Caledonia and Pisces and the crew of the Mors Navis set out to rescue them. It's quite the trip to get there... will they make it in time? Will the crew survive? And when they find their brothers' ship, will their brothers' spirits have survived?

Seafire is an awesome sci-fi story that is set in the indeterminate future with advanced technology, but also with some aspects of modern-day living lost. Caledonia and Pisces are strong female characters who have their own minds, and their all-female crew are diverse in their likes, abilities (one is mute), personalities, and penchant for violence. It is fast-paced and the emphasis is on friendship and how the crew has come together--many of them orphans--to become a family for one another.

There is very little romance, and while the reader gets clear affirmation that some of the girls in the crew are lesbians, we are not 100% sure of Caledonia and Pisces's sexualities. I came away, though, thinking that Caledonia is bi and Pisces is a lesbian.

Warcross (#1) by Marie Lu
YA F Lu

When bounty hunter and hacker Emika Chen finds herself unexpectedly entered into the exclusive Warcross championship, she is determined to get to the bottom of a dastardly plot while trying to pull off a win in the worldwide virtual reality game.

Waste of Space by Gina Damico
Coming soon to BPL!

Ten teenagers are conned into boarding a (fake) spaceship, completely unaware of the fact that the entire production is staged. Once the teenagers start to find out about this secret, things go from bad to worse inside the spaceship.

This meme came across my Facebook feed the other week, and I laughed long and hard because A) it's so true and B) I love a good Lord of the Rings allusion. 

HOWEVER, I was also in high school at the heyday of LOTR, when the movies came out. And if you have read the stories or seen the movies, you're missing out on some of the greatest adventure stories that exist! You're also missing out on understanding some pretty great memes.