I had high hopes for this book after being delighted by Gail Carson Levine's previous fluffy YA fantasy stories, Ella Enchanted and Fairest. Alas, I was doomed to disappointment, since this book features neither the well-drawn and likable heroines nor the uplifting thematic content of those two books.

John Perry is a war hero who signed up to fight for the Colonial Defense Force when he was eighty years old--and received a new body to do it in. His wife, Jane Sagan, is a genetically-engineered Special Forces soldier; and their adopted daughter, Zoe, is the child of a mad scientist and is something like a goddess to an entire alien race. But now they're living quietly on the colony world of Huckleberry, where John has nothing more to worry about than disputes over goats. Then one day an old friend of John turns up and recruits them to lead a new colony.

At the start of this fresh, fast-paced YA fantasy, middle-schooler Julie thinks life is pretty tough. She's just not seeing eye-to-eye with her mother Rapunzel (yes, that Rapunzel -- she runs a hair salon in our world), and she's never known her father...or why her mother won't speak of him. Plus, she has to contend with the Wild, an ominous mass of greenery which is confined to the space under her bed. But then Julie's problems get a whole lot worse -- the Wild escapes Julie and Rapunzel's control, and starts to take over the city.

In the near future on Earth, a second message has been received from aliens on Sigma Draconis, in a system only 19 light-years away. Dr. Sarah Halifax, who decrypted the aliens' first message 38 years ago, is asked to work on decoding this second message as well. Only problem is, she's 87 years old.

Henry York is a timid, sheltered 12-year-old who finds himself uprooted and transplanted to a small Kansas town in the middle of nowhere to live with his aunt, uncle, and three girl cousins. Then Henry discovers 99 small and mysterious cupboards under a layer of plaster on the wall of his new bedroom. And following good, old-fashioned fantasy tradition, the cupboards each appear to lead to a different place...places which range from mundane to terrifying.

When I first started reading books by Jim Butcher last summer, I told myself that his books were good bad fantasy -- you know, cheesy brain-candy that's just well-written enough that it's a lot of fun to read. But midway through Cursor's Fury, when I found myself tensely turning pages in order to find out whether a certain secondary character was going to survive to the end of the book, and realizing that I was going to be upset if he didn't make it, I suddenly began to wonder: could it be? Is this book in fact good good fantasy?

Movie trailers have made the phrase "in a world" cliche, but that's exactly how a description of Mainspring has to begin: in a world where God is literally a clockmaker, and the Earth orbits the sun on a bronze track; where Christians worship the Brass Christ and pray "Our Father, who art in Heaven, Craftsman be thy name"; where Queen Victoria and her airships rule almost all the world north of the Equatorial Wall; in this world, an angel appears to Herthor, a young clockmaker's apprentice in New England, and delivers an alarming message: the Mainspring that moves the Earth is running

In this second volume of the Looking Glass Wars trilogy, Alyss is just becoming familiar with her new role as Queen of Wonderland -- and trying to sort our her feelings for her childhood friend, the guardsman Dodge. Her enjoyment of the peaceful state of her kingdom is short-lived, though, because King Arch, the passionately misogynistic and extremely arrogant king across the border in Boarderland, is out to remove Alyss from her queenship.

It seems like there's never enough time nowadays -- no time to talk with family, enjoy a sunny day, or play music, and the buses are always late. J.J. Liddy and his family are definitely feeling the lack of time, along with the rest of their small town on the west coast of Ireland, so when J.J.'s mother says she wants more time for her birthday, he sets out to find it for her. Even if that quest takes him to Tír na nÓg and (hopefully) back.