Reviewer Ben Interviews Michael Grant

The prolific writer behind Bzrk, the Animorphs saga and most importantly (for me anyway) the GONE series has finally put the last full stop on the sixth and concluding instalment of the latter, called Light, which was published last month.

I critiqued it on this site and it was about that review that Michael and I started chatting when I caught up with him while he was in London recently. Both pleased about my praise and respectful of my criticisms, the interview began with his response to my belief that there were a couple of false endings in Light.

“We went through this before with Animorphs and the final book in that series ended up being very controversial with the readers. They weren’t really happy with where we went,’ he says. “I thought I’m not going to be self-indulgent this time. I’m going to do it the way I want to do it up to a point, but I’m going to keep the fans happy. Because by this time, kids have paid me $70-80 and I’ve asked for six years of your life and if that means I add an extra five per cent to make sure the fans are happy, I owe it to them.”

We get into Nutella and Lost later, but in the meantime, enjoy (and don’t worry, it’s pretty much spoiler-free)…

So you feel you owe your fans the finale, then?

Do I owe them? You’re goddamn right I owe them. They’ve trusted me. The fact that they’re happy is a very satisfying feeling. I’m like, ‘thank you, you had a million books to choose from and you chose my book.’

Did you know what the last few pages of this book would be early on in the GONE process?

I think I knew the last line fairly early. And I never do usually, because I make stuff up as I go along each time. But all I knew was the last line, I didn’t know who was going to die, I just knew where it had to end.

I don’t want to know what’s going on. It would be boring to me. I like the level of anxiety and fear that comes from sitting down at my computer each day and thinking, ‘how am I going to do this? What’s going to happen?’ That anxiety feeds what I do.

I respect the world’s capacity to give me answers. I’ll give you an example. A train makes its appearance in the GONE series. I was writing that book and I was missing something. So I was driving my daughter to school and went the wrong way and got cut off by a train. And as I was sitting waiting for the train to pass I broke out in a grin and went TRAIN. I had my answer.

It’s, I guess, kind of a happy ending though, right?

Except for the ones who are dead! (laughs) I don’t like these triumphal endings. That’s anomalous. That’s not the way the world usually works. Sometimes people come out of it just fine, some are just destroyed and there’s everything in between. I wanted to show realistic reactions to terribly traumatic situations.

Lost, another piece of art that people said was made up as they went along was an inspiration for GONE. People were a bit harsher on that ending.

The Lost guys have a much tougher gig than I do. They have to hit a commercial break every 12-and-a-half minutes, they have to have jeopardy at the end of every episode, a mid-season cliffhanger and then they have to listen to everybody’s agent saying, ‘my guy wasn’t in this last episode, what the hell?’ I’ve got complete autonomy, I don’t have to worry about what things cost. If I want to fly a spaceship into the scene I can. The word spaceship is as cheap as the word bagel.

Your characters became so in-depth and intricate and surprising as the series went on. Cheesy question, but who’s your favourite to write?

I think my favourite to write was always Diana. I got the voice, I knew how she sounded, I knew how she felt. The question about her was always we know she’s a bad girl, but is she a bad girl with a basically decent core or is she just bad? I liked playing with that. Both Astrid and Diana are like two sides of my wife, depending on the day. In many ways, Quinn is the me character in the whole thing. I don’t think I’d be particularly brave, but I’m a bit of a workaholic. When he finds his place, he becomes a serious character who has some depth and we can admire him. I knew from the start Edilio was not the – quote unquote – Mexican sidekick. I knew there was something more going on there. He had no special powers apart from the fact he was hard-working and faithful and then he became at the end one of the central characters.

And then there’s Drake, one of the most horrific people ever put on a page. And he’s a kid. But you maybe say a little something to why he might be the way he is in Light. Why?

I was really doubtful about writing that. I got that point and I did not know that that was Drake’s grandfather and I was like, ‘that’s Drake’s grandfather’. I wanted to do an un-nuanced, no shades of grey, this guy is just BAD. I didn’t want to explain him too much, but I thought people would pester me for explanations of Drake, so I threw that out there. There’s not a lot there, it doesn’t really explain it.

The series has been bandied around as a Hollywood vehicle over the years. How’s that going?

I have gone a couple of rounds with Hollywood on this. Its natural home is television, but you’ve got a lot fewer venues to go to. There’s something fundamentally different about showing a 13-year-old kid hitting another kid in the head with a full swing of a baseball bat. Putting that on screen is just so explicit. I wouldn’t want to see that.

If it never goes to Hollywood, I’m fine with that. If I’ve got a choice between something that’s going to embarrass my fans, I’m not going to do it.

Do you have crates of Nutella and Cup-A-Noodles delivered to your house now from thankful companies?

No! (laughs) All the way through Animorphs we kept talking about cinnamon buns, because there was a character who was obsessed with Cinnabon – because I was obsessed and Katherine was obsessed. We put that in the book.

But no, nothing from Nutella. But Nutella and Cup-A-Noodles were in there because of my kids. There was a period of time when our daughter would say, ‘go and buy me 500 cup-a-noodles.’ And our son is a Nutella addict. It was an inside joke.

Now that you’ve finished the final book, what are your thoughts about the FAYZ?

I created this horrible place and every kid that reads it wants to live there. At the end I say you’re now free to leave the FAYZ. And the universal reaction is, ‘but I don’t want to.’ In this space kids were empowered, kids did important stuff.

Do Sam, Decca, Brianna, Astrid, Caine and co. still visit you in your sleep?

You have to remember my relationship with characters is different to the readers. From my point of view they’re like employees, they work for me. They’re employees that I like hanging out with after work. I try to think of myself as a benevolent employer, although I kill them occasionally (laughs). There’s a little bit of killing.

I used to work at that place and now I work at other places, but I have very fond memories of it. I could see myself sitting down with them – as soon as they get to legal age – and hanging out. It’d be fun to catch up on old times with them.

Light is out now.

Review: Monument 14

Title: Monument 14
Author: Emmy Laybourne
My Age Recommendation: 12+
Publisher: Hodder Children’s Books
Publication Date: 4th April 2013
Rating: 4/5
Reviewer: Ben

SYNOPSIS
Fourteen kids stranded inside a superstore. Inside they have everything they could ever need. There's junk food and clothes, computer games and books, drugs and alcohol ... and without adult supervision they can do whatever they want. Sounds like fun? But outside the world is being ripped apart by violent storms and chemicals leaking into the atmosphere that, depending on blood type, leave victims paranoid, violent or dead. The kids must remain inside, forced to create their own community, unsure if they'll ever be able to leave. Can they stop the world they've created inside from self-destructing too?

BEN’S REVIEW
This is pitched on the back of the book as Lord Of The Flies meets The Day After Tomorrow. But when I was having a look around the Web about it, someone suggested it was The Breakfast Club meets the end of the world. For me, the latter is more apt, because though there is action here what makes it interesting and different is the sheer mundanity of the apocalypse.

This is particularly intriguing when applied to kids because while children appreciate routines, they don’t enjoy boredom. And if you’re stuck in a supermarket without being able to go outside, with the threat of deadly chemicals meaning you are confined to specific areas, well, you better have a good imagination because time is not going to fly by.

This makes is sound like I thought the book itself was boring. Not the case. It’s a well-written study of youth dynamics. All the usual and necessary stereotypes are here – bookish average joe, cool guy, hot girl, den mother, etc. – and watching them trying to fit together like a puzzle with some of the pieces missing is fun to read.

So too is their gradual disintegration (though Laybourne is always quick to assert the characters’ stoicism and adaptability), leading to a genuinely frightening interaction with some adults and an obvious next-book-cliffhanger.

The voices feel authentic. It was a worry for me that perhaps these kinds of books, when young people are left to fend for themselves and often do so remarkably resiliently, are innately phony, since I have no usual contact with teen/tween-agers.

But a recent car journey during which I spent two hours in the backseat chatting to two precocious, intelligent and self-aware 13 and 9-year-olds, showed me just how resourceful youngsters can be.

This is a clever, surprisingly fresh-feeling novel, with some subtlety I wasn’t expecting. It’s worth reading.

Blog Tour: Sophia Bennett

I'm really pleased to have a guest post today from one of my favourite teen authors, Sophia Bennett. Her latest book, You Don't Know Me, is out now in the UK and you can get a copy here. We'll have a review up soon too so keep an eye open for that. 

Sophia's post is on cyberbullying which is a central theme in the book. Let us know your thoughts. Take a look at Sophia's website too at sophiabennett.com for more information on her books.

Thanks for hosting me today. My new book is about many things, from talent shows to body image, and one of the big underlying themes is cyber-bullying. It was hard to write, because it was painful to put myself in the head of a victim, but in the end I loved (and was actually surprised) to see how she copes with what happens to her: how it strengthens her friendships and leads her to discover her creativity. I also had to put myself in the heads of the bullies. It made me think.

The big cyber-bullying incident in You Don’t Know Me was partly inspired by an episode of Educating Essex. If you watched that amazing documentary series you’ll know that Mr Drew is a national hero. So often, reality TV is manipulative trash – as the Manic Pixie Dream Girls discover in the book – but sometimes it’s brilliant.

In that episode, a girl thought she was being stalked. She was absolutely terrified. It turned out that the person sending the ‘stalking’ texts was a friend of hers from school. The gap between what the bully intended to do and how the victim felt was incredible. And even though the bully saw the victim at school every day and must have seen how she was suffering, it still didn’t seem to register, until she was confronted with what she’d done.

That couldn’t be possible, I thought. Or maybe it was a one-off from an unusual, twisted brain. But by then I was thinking about cyber-bullying for the book and looking up real-life stories and do you know what? It happened every time.

Every time, except for dedicated trolls and real stalkers, the bully who seemed so terrifying and cruel online turned out to be just a sad individual mucking about on their computer, having a laugh or making themselves feel good, treating the victim like the pixels in a video game.

That’s the thing about the internet these days, from emails to Twitter to photos on Facebook: the other person isn’t there. They’re not around to look you in the eye and tell you how it makes them feel. But how it makes them feel is terrible. And of course they are there, really. We’re on the internet these days: all in it together.

I include myself, by the way. In a blog post that was otherwise highly flattering, I happened to mention that I don’t like Mary Beard’s hair. This is what I said:
“Mary is a professor of Classics at Cambridge, who has recently been all over the press defending her right not to wear makeup and have cute hair, just so she can tell us about the Romans on TV. We watched her last night. She was brilliant. Actually, I don’t like her hair, but I just adore how strong and feisty and self-confident and clever and interesting she is.”

And one day, months later, I got a comment on my site that I thought was junk or spam, but that turned out to be from Mary herself, politely agreeing to differ on the subject of hair.

Blimey! I felt terrible. I never thought she’d read the blog, but apparently even Cambridge professors Google themselves, and they’re interested in what people think, and they care, and if the people don’t like something about them, it hurts. And Mary is brave enough to say so. It only makes me admire her even more.

I’ve been thinking for ages about her hair since then, by the way. The thing is, on reflection, that I love her hair. It’s enviably thick and an appropriate shade of grey for her age, which shows how confident she is not to dye it. It’s great hair. The only thing I don’t like is the style. I just wish she’d do something a bit chicer with it for TV. But the more I think about her hair the more I admire everything about it, and her, and the way she refuses to compromise, and how she’s leading the way for clever women in the twenty-first century – encouraging them to be brave and confident and true to themselves, which is everything I’m encouraging girls to be in my books.

I don’t think what I said was cyber-bullying, or that Mary thought it was (although goodness knows she has been genuinely attacked online in cruel and harmful ways). But it was unkind, because I didn’t follow my thought process through. I didn’t explain in full. I didn’t think she’d see it. I didn’t think she’d feel.

So there we are, me and the girl on Educating Essex, who I thought was a nutcase but who turns out to have quite a lot in common with me. We didn’t think how someone else would feel. Then someone put us right. Now we understand.

Thanks so much Sophia for this great post - it's definitely made me think about what I post online and its impact on others.

Review: Alif the Unseen

Title: Alif The Unseen
Author: G. Willow Wilson
My Age Recommendation: 12+
Publisher: Corvus
Publication: Sept 2012
Rating: 3.5/5
Reviewer: Ben

SYNOPSIS
He calls himself Alif - few people know his real name - a young man born in a Middle Eastern city that straddles the ancient and modern worlds. When Alif meets the aristocratic Intisar, he believes he has found love. But their relationship has no future - Intisar is promised to another man and her family's honour must be satisfied. As a remembrance, Intisar sends the heartbroken Alif a mysterious book. Entitled The Thousand and One Days, Alif discovers that this parting gift is a door to another world - a world from a very different time, when old magic was in the ascendant and the djinn walked amongst us. With the book in his hands, Alif finds himself drawing attention - far too much attention - from both men and djinn. Thus begins an adventure that takes him through the crumbling streets of a once-beautiful city, to uncover the long-forgotten mysteries of the Unseen. Alif is about to become a fugitive in both the corporeal and incorporeal worlds. And he is about to unleash a destructive power that will change everything and everyone - starting with Alif himself. 

BEN’S REVIEW
This is a quirky book. It’s also a substantial book – one that tackles topics not normally associated with traditional YA. Wilson is a white American woman who converted to Islam while at university and has since become a respected comic book writer and journalist on Muslim issues. That immediately lends the novel a certain focus, a different prism.

Because ostensibly this is a chase story, a pacey romp about hackers, secret code, an oppressive force seeking to quash the uprising. Wilson does that solidly, even if the action itself isn’t particularly bombastic.

What makes the book intriguing though is the geography. Set in an unspecified city (though it’s not hard to guess who the author may be suggesting), through this narrative we start to think about the question of freedom, the power of the less wealthy populace, the potentially tyrannical nature of a patriarchal state with impossibly deep pockets.

Wilson also laces her tale with the supernatural and it’s deliberately – I think – opaque. The book at the centre of the novel is magical, or maybe not. One of Alif’s group is a demon, or maybe not. This DOESN’T belong in the fantasy section, but it adds a unique twist.

Overall, the novel didn’t quite join the dots for me and some of the storytelling felt a little slow, which reflects its rating here. But as something different? This is an ambitious and effective attempt.

Perhaps its greatest achievement is in the sidekick. A devout, burkha-wearing young girl with devotion to her God who is also witty, intelligent, brave, resourceful and loving. Young readers don’t get to read about many of those.

You Don't Know Me - Blog Tour

Here are the details for Sophia Bennett's blog tour for her new book 'You Don't Know Me' which will be published on 2 May. We can't wait - don't miss any of the posts!

Review: The Kissing Booth

Title: The Kissing Booth
Author: Beth Reekles
Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: December 13th 2012
Pages: 384 pages
Copy: Ebook
My Rating: 2.5/5

Synopsis:
Elle and Lee have been best friends since they were born, on the same day, in the same hospital, to mothers who were best friends too.
Now Elle's mother is gone but Elle and Lee are still best friends, and the Flynns are her second family.
Even Lee's older brother, Noah.
Noah is a player, a sexy, dangerous guy who loves to get in fights, and he infuriates Elle with his controlling behaviour. He treats her like a little girl and warns off any boy who shows an interest.
So Elle has never had a boyfriend.
She's never even been kissed.
Then, for the school fair, Elle and Lee set up a kissing booth. Elle isn't meant to be one of the girls doing the kissing, but when someone pulls out, she has to step in.
And first in line is Noah Flynn.
Elle never expected her first kiss would be with her best friend's brother. And she certainly never expected to discover he sees her as more than just a little sister.
Now, Elle and Noah are becoming something more than just surrogate family.
But does Elle really want to fall for bad boy Noah?
Especially if it means losing her best friend.

Kate's Review:
I love this new trend of teenagers writing for teenagers.

It seems entirely appropriate that young people are producing work for their peers to enjoy. After all, who can inhabit the mind of a sixteen year old better than a sixteen year old? And there are some truly marvellous books emerging from these young talents. In Australia, Steph Bowe, Jack Heath and (now-expat) Alexandra Adornetto published their first books before turning twenty, and internationally, Christopher Paolini became a publishing sensation in his mid teens. And now there is Beth Reekles.

Discovered through social media platform Wattpad, Reekles is one of a new crop of young writers getting their foot in the door via the internet. Her first novel, The Kissing Booth has now been published by Random House - a major international publisher. Reekles is just seventeen.

I wanted so much to love this book. I think Reekles' story is wonderful. And writing a whole novel while still at high school? An incredible achievement. And there is no denying Reekles is a huge talent.
I think my main problem with this story is it just felt too long, at over three hundred pages, with not enough content to back it up. Girl has crush on boy, boy is big brother of best friend, who wouldn't approve, boy is also a bit of a thug so dad wouldn't approve either, so they have to date secretly. That is the entirety of the story. Of course there is tension - will they be discovered??? - but the best friend already knows the girl has a crush on the boy and that they've kissed, and doesn't seem too fussed. And the dad is tolerant and lenient to the point of unbelievability, so the threat of discovery doesn't seem like too big a deal. I just wanted to shake Elle and say, "Just tell them. Really. They won't care. Stop making such a fuss over nothing!!!"

Another problem is that there are just far too many supporting characters in this book . I was constantly thinking, "Who was Cody again? Wait, have I met Walter? I have no idea who June is!!!"
And I was at times disturbed by Noah's domineering behaviour. Even though Elle - thankfully - stands up to him, the fact that she falls for such a controlling and - at times - emotionally abusive individual made the feminist in me squirm.

However, despite these issues, in the second half I did find myself warming to this story. Once Elle and Noah finally got "properly" together, and he stopped being scarily controlling, I did get swept up in the romance of it all.

But then, I am a hopeless romantic.

Also, I really liked the character of Lee. He was a sweetheart and his relationship with shy Rachel was one of the highlights of the book.

The book is also, for the most part, very well-crafted. Reekles has a great ear for dialogue and there is some truly lovely description in this story. The girl can write, there is no doubt about that!

I wanted to love this book and I didn't - not quite. But there is no denying it is a major achievement for such a young author, and Reekles is definitely one to watch in the future She has huge talent and I will definitely be following her story from this point.

Bring on the teenage YA revolution!

Review: Just One Day

Title: Just One Day
Author: Gayle Foreman
Publisher: Penguin Group USA
Publication Date: January 8th 2013
Pages: 300 pages
Copy: eBook
My Rating: 4.5/5
Reviewer: Kate

Synopsis:
“In Rome, I really wanted an Audrey Hepburn Roman Holiday experience, but the Trevi Fountain was crowded, there was a McDonald's at the base of the Spanish Steps, and the ruins smelled like cat pee because of all the strays. The same thing happened in Prague, where I'd been yearning for some of the bohemianism of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. But no, there were no fabulous artists, no guys who looked remotely like a young Daniel Day-Lewis. I saw this one mysterious-looking guy reading Sartre in a cafe, but then his cell phone rang and he started talking in aloud Texan twang.”

Allyson isn't enjoying Europe.

The tour group she's on is flying through all of the major attractions, more concerned with sticking to a schedule than really enjoying the destinations. Her mum won't stop calling to check up on her. Her best friend has morphed overnight from shy and studious to outgoing and flirty. And all the rest of the year group want to do is drink and party, two pastimes Allyson has no interest in whatsoever.

Oh, and their trip to Paris - which Allyson was desperate to see - is cancelled because of a train driver strike.

Allyson is just beginning to think the tour is a total bust until, one star-crossed night, Melanie
convinces her to take a risk and ditch the traditional Shakespeare production the group are meant to be seeing in favour of catching a play by the anarchic free theatre collective, Guerrilla Will. One of the actors is charismatic Dutchman, Willem. He captivates Allyson and, it seems, he is just as taken by her. But then, at the end of the play, he disappears into the night.

Allyson thinks she will never see him again until, the next morning on the train, there he is again. And he convinces her to take another risk: go with him to Paris. Just for one day.

Over the course of that one day and night, Allyson falls in love with Paris. And with Willem. Until he disappears again. For good this time.

Back home in the US, Allyson begins college. But she can't eat, can't seem to get enough sleep, and can’t concentrate on study. That one day in Paris has changed her forever. She's not Allyson any more - the serious and studious trainee doctor. And she's a shell of the person she was with Willem - the wild and spontaneous "Lulu".

Allyson begins to think the only way she'll work out who she really is to find Willem. And find out if the love they shared really was for just one day.

Kate's Review:
Who amongst us hasn't had a time in their lives when they wished they could be someone else? It's a very rare human who is utterly content with who they are. It's an even rarer one who knows entirely who they are. Our lives are an exercise in trying to discover this, and never is this quest more intense and important than when we are teenagers.

Allyson is nineteen and her identity has always been prescribed for her by her parents' – particularly her mother's – wishes and dreams. She doesn't really know who she is outside of their definition of her, so when the opportunity comes to be someone else – enigmatic, spontaneous Lulu – she grabs it, if not with both hands, then with a tentative fascination. For the first time in her life, Allyson is given the opportunity to define who it is she wants to be.

For me, this new Gayle Foreman novel (which has been, since the transcendental If I Stay, an “event”), was as much a breathless love story between Allyson and the Puck-like Willem, and a romance between Allyson and Lulu – the girl she wants to be. In searching for Willem she is, on a much deeper level, searching for her true self. This universal journey is what elevates Just One Day

above the straightforward ethereal romance it could have been – a sort of Before Sunrise for a YA audience. Allyson is a very empathetic heroine because we've all been there, in the moment where we realise who we are is not who we want to be, but we're not sure how to change this.

I loved this novel. I loved its whimsical feel. I loved the delicious, sumptuous European scenes and the bleak ones set in Allyson's native America. I loved the capricious, mysterious Willem, and Allyson herself – the girl who yearns for something more.

And oh golly I loved Dee. Just wait until you meet him!

Gayle Foreman is a fabulously talented writer. She pens simple stories that are utterly, heart-wrenchingly affecting. She makes us believe utterly in her characters and feel that each of them could be us, in another life. And that's just what I adored about this novel. It's all about that “other life” - the possibility of a world outside the one we know.

The fact that other world – in this case – is magical Europe doesn't hurt either.
I can't imagine anyone not being sucked in by this book. I can't imagine, either, a reader who would not be left breathless by the cliff-hanger conclusion.

I want Just One Year – the sequel – now. If there's one thing Just One Day compels you to believe, it's that life is short.

I want to know now what happens to Willem and Allyson. I want to delve back into their transformative world.

Gayle Foreman does that. She draws you in and then spits you out, leaving you yearning for more and leaving an indelible stain on your heart as she does so.

Interview: Maggie Stiefvater

Some of you may already have seen our reviewer Ben's interview on the Huffington Post but for those who haven't, read on! Thanks Ben for the great interview.

U.S. author Maggie Stiefvater has sold over 2 million books worldwide, with hits including the Shiver series and The Scorpio Races – YA stories with a fantasy twist. Not only that, but she lives on a farm, which she shares with her husband, kids and various livestock including a much-loved cow and some fainting goats.

I met her in a nice patisserie in London during a recent visit, where she wasn’t able to eat the cakes because of a flour allergy, but still managed to shoot her coffee all over me in a classic spit-take (the first I’ve encouraged) after I said something silly about cream.

All in all, she was cool and happy to chat about everything from selling more copies than the Bible (for a while) in Eastern Europe, to why the Welsh are novel-worthy.

You’ve sold millions of books. How does that translate from a fame perspective?
When I went to Lithuania, I was queen of the pygmies because the week that I landed my books were selling above all other books in Lithuania. There were paparazzi when I landed and when I went to dinner there were pictures of me and they were in the tabloids the next day, ‘Maggie Stiefvater eats Lithuanian food’ and it was very disconcerting. I’m like, “am I chewing with my mouth open?”

My first actual proper stalker I had to call the police about because she called and said she was going to kill herself unless I picked up the telephone. That was actually with my first novel. Stalking doesn’t go along with levels of fames.

Your novels have a strong fantasy element. When you do signings, are you like William Shatner having to answer very specific queries about scenes in episodes of Star Trek, with people asking complicated questions about sequences in your books?
I get that as well. All Star Trek questions (laughs). When I was at one of the school visits [in the U.K.], one of them asked how I got so evil. Another one asked me if I hated all people. They’re always quite happy about it.

So you have those kinds of fans…
I have a huge Italian male following, I don’t know why. 55% of YA books in the States are bought by adults for adults. So when I go and do a signing in the U.S., a lot of times there won’t be a single teen there.

Despite that statistic, you still find people compartmentalising YA books into being just for kids. Do you find that weird?
We have no problem as adults watching movies with teen characters, like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. That’s the best movie ever and if it was a book, it would be a YA book.

But what about when it comes to censoring books for younger audiences?
I write for the teen I was. I don’t change my content. When I wrote Shiver – because it’s got a sex scene in it, it’s very fade to black but it’s in there – I was asked by book clubs if I would be happy to do a version without that chapter so they could sell it in schools. I said no, because I thought it was ridiculous to have two different versions of the same book. It’s much easier to put sex into your book than put swear words into your books. I get much more flak about the swear words in Raven Boys than I do about the sex in Shiver.

When did you start writing?
I had 30 unfinished novels before I went to college. I’d write and then I’d get stuck and usually I’d have aliens come down and kill everyone! And then I realised I had to know how a book finished before I began or I’d just wander in the desert forever. I started writing a version of The Raven Boys when I was 19. I had a handwritten version of it. It’s terrible. It’s just been cooking my head all this time.

You like writing about Welsh mythology. Why?
I’ve been obsessed with Welsh mythology since I read the Black Cauldron series when I was a kid, which was all about that. And then I read Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series. That series made me the writer I am now because she was the first writer I read who took mythology and put it in the present day.

So what are you working on now?
My writing is very much a way for me of processing the world. Right now, technically I’m working on 3 novels. I just finished the second Raven Boys book and I’m drafting a middle grade novel. And this year, I am racing rally cars.

Maggie’s follow-up to The Raven Boys – The Dream Thieves – will be published by Scholastic in September. Follow her on Twitter @mstiefvater or via her website: www.maggiestiefvater.com

Review: Light

Title: Light
Author: Michael Grant
My Age Recommendation: 14+
Publisher: Egmont
Publication: March 28th, 2013
Rating: 4.5/5

SYNOPSIS
The sixth and final heart-stopping instalment in the bestselling GONE series. An exceptional page-turner. Escapism just doesn't get better than this. All eyes are on Perdido Beach. The barrier wall is now as clear as glass and life in the FAYZ is visible for the entire outside world to see. Life inside the dome remains a constant battle and the Darkness, away from watchful eyes, grows and grows ...The society that Sam and Astrid has struggled so hard to build is about to be shattered for good. It's the end of the FAYZ. But who will survive to see the light of day?

BEN’S REVIEW
And so it comes to an end. Six glorious books full of friendship, horror, sacrifice, idiocy, courage, weirdness and intelligence. Just like life, then. It was always going to be something of an anti-climax, the end of the FAYZ, simply because those of us who spent so much time in there had grown to love it, in a strange kind of way. And while there were brief thoughts that Grant might pull a Lost and do some kind of wacky supernatural ending, ultimately it came down to a bunch of kids trying to get home.

There won’t be any spoilers here, don’t fret. Rather we should take time to marvel at a complex narrative which spanned 3000-odd pages and made readers come to terms with the sheer awfulness that can be perpetrated by children in a way which hasn’t been done since Lord Of The Flies, the benchmark for that kind of thing.

Fans of the series – and there’s no point in writing here for anyone else because there’s simply no way a casual reader can drop into Light – will be pleased at how Grant handles our so-called heroes. I think they’ll be even more pleased by how he deals with the villains. Not only that, but the tangled relationships continue to feel realistic, even as they bleed back into the real world.

There’ll be tears – at least there were for this reviewer, I’m not afraid to admit it. But then GONE has never compromised on sorrow.

I do have one small criticism. Even though I too was desperate to know everything there was to know about what happened to everyone at the end, it reminded me slightly of the third Lord Of The Rings movie, where there were about four different endings. As much as I would have inevitably raged about it initially, I could probably have handled one less epilogue.

But it’s a minor quibble. Some ends are tied up, others left brutally undone. And yet others, well, they’re quietly packed away and forgotten, like we all tend to do when we’ve done something we have no wish to revisit.

Epic, bold, terrifying, beautiful – the saga of Perdido Beach and its environs is a towering achievement. One that were it not given that slightly pejorative YA label, thus deeming it “for kids” and rendering it unreadable for a vast amount of the book-buying public, would be considered up there with the best of them. Be happy you’re a part of it.

And if you’re not? The first one’s called Gone and is about a boy called Sam Temple. One day, something happens…

Author Interview: Lauren Oliver

Lauren Oliver is the best-selling author of Before I Fall and the Delirium trilogy. The final book in the latter series – Requiem – has just been released. It wraps up the story of Lena, a plucky young woman who lives in a future America where love is classified as an illness and young people are “cured” of the disease.

I was very lucky to grab a sit-down in a busy London coffee shop with the woman herself to discuss Lena, Alex vs. Julian and the screen adaptations of her work. I also managed a good back and forth about whether you can be cured of the Cure. Don’t worry, no spoilers ahead for those who haven’t yet read Requiem.

Thanks to Lauren and our reviewer Ben for this great Q+A!

You’re finally done with the trilogy. How do you feel?
It’s probably similar to what people experience when they send their kids off to college. There’s a sense of real pride and there’s also a sense of real sadness and loss and a sense of relief as well!

After writing a hit in Before I Fall, people were a little surprised you did something totally different. How nerve-wracking was that?
One of the things I’ve tried to do in my career is really write different kinds of books, so I’m able to broaden people’s expectations of what I’m allowed to do. There was the anxiety of writing a book that was radically different from my first book, but I wanted to specifically do that so over time I would have the freedom to do anything. If I started to write avant-garde pornography there would be a problem.

I’m assuming that’s not on the cards!
Somebody actually wrote to me and said, ‘I think you’d be great at writing a book like 50 Shades Of Grey.’ And I was like, thanks, I’ll keep writing children’s books.

You also do something quite radical writing-wise by having the book told in alternating viewpoints between Lena and a cured Hana. Why?
I never intended that. But then I was writing Requiem and it was not working for me. And I realised so much of the book is founded on the fear of the Cure and we’ve never seen the Cure from anybody’s perspective except those who are resistant to it. I knew we’d have to go back to Portland. And being able to see Portland and see some of the characters from Delirium not just as a footnote at the end of the book was really important.

Without giving anything away, the ending of Requiem isn’t quite as comfortable as some might have thought. What’s been the reaction to that?
You don’t reach points in life at which everything is sorted out for us. I believe in endings that should suggest our stories always continue. For my readers in America, it’s very split. Half of them are very angry, half of them love it. I’ve gotten a couple of emails where it’s like I hated the ending and then I had to think about it and thought about it for a couple of days and now I understand why you did what you did.

A little bit of controversy never hurt anybody. If you’re not writing something that pisses people off a little bit, you’re writing Hallmark cards.

The Delirium trilogy is currently being made into a TV series, starring Emma Roberts as Lena. Why TV rather than a movie?
Even though it was originally slated for a movie, they wanted to do a TV show, because they felt the world was rich enough. If they make it to air, by episode three they will have exhausted the material in my books because TV’s so fast-paced. But the thing I love about TV is all those secondary characters, including the adults, they’ll not only get screen time, they get plot arcs.

There’s been some blowback online about the casting, especially Hana, who in the books is blonde, but the actress cast is brunette. What’s your take on that?
You could describe every physical characteristic of a girl and it wouldn’t give you any indication of how she looks. But if you say she’s the kind of girl who always smiles as if she’s swallowing back a secret, that also tells you something about who she is as a person. So Hana is supposed to be the kind of girl who around her, you feel a little bit less than because she’s so hot and confident. So blonde hair, black hair, Latino, not. The girl who was cast is hot who if you were around her, you would feel a little bit less than. So to me, she’s a great Hana.

Some YA authors get readers emailing them for school projects. Do you?
That happens to me! I don’t mind, it’s when they ask, ‘can you tell me what the themes in your books are?’ I’m like, you just want me to do your homework for you. Then I say no.

Requiem is out now in hardbook and ebook from Hodder & Stoughton.