This is the third David Mitchell book I have read after Black Swan Green and Cloud Atlas . All three of these books stand alone but contain small references suggesting they are set in the same world. This book takes place between the mid 1980s and mid 2040s, with six linked narratives that circle around the life of Holly Sykes. Holly is 16 in 1986 when she runs away from home after an argument with her parents. What started as a fairly simple teenage rebellion turns deadly when she stumbles into a bizarre and hidden war. There are people in the world who do not die and Holly has come to their attention. This secret war will effect the lives of everyone in her family, including those not yet born. I've found my appreciation of Mitchell's writing has only deepened with each new book of his I read, which is probably why this one is, so far, my favorite.

I enjoyed this book, but with many reservations. The book's nine chapters were originally serialized as short stories and even with the addition of a frame narrative it felt more like a collection of related stories than a standard novel. I enjoyed the puzzle-like quality of the various abnormal robot behaviors and the detective work that went into solving each case. However, I quickly lost patience with Powell and Donovan, the field team sent to solve the problems. Both of them are frustratingly stupid and shortsighted. As a duo they are no Watson and Holmes.

Felicia Day's biography of being an odd-ball home school kid, a very precocious teen and a late bloomer in internet/TV/nerd success. She started college at 16, had graduated with two degrees and moved to Hollywood to start acting by 19. It was another 10 years before she began to create her web series The Guild and really find her place. I enjoyed this book through and through while realizing that many parts were under or over exaggerated- Felicia Day is more comfortable writing about her strangeness and failures than her successes. Happily, her successes speak for themselves.

I, Coriander struck me as the perfect YA companion book to Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel. Both books freely mix English history and fairy magic. Think of I, Coriander as Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel's precocious kid sister, if you will. Coriander grew up in a beautiful house on the Thames River, a house full of flowers and fairy tales from her mother and exotic goods from her merchant father. But a shadow soon falls over Coriander's life, heralded a mysterious gift: a pair of silver shoes to lovely to have been made by human hands. When King Charles I is executed, the rising tide of Cromwell supporters and black-clad Puritans begin to threaten everything, and everyone, that Coriander loves.

Rose Under Fire is the sequel to Elizabeth Wein's devastating WWII novel Code Name Verity. While Code Name Verity told of a young woman's experience in the years leading up to the war and is opening, Rose Under Fire comes just at the end of the war and explores its aftermath. Rose Justice is a poet and a pilot, and thanks to a highly ranked uncle she transfers to England to work as a civil ATA pilot. A streak of incredibly bad luck and cruel circumstance lands Rose in Germany, where she is shuffled into the Ravensbruck Concentration camp for its last months of operation. What she finds there is not to be believed. One of my favorite books of the year.

Code Name Verity is a very strong contender for my favorite book of the year. It tells the story of two young women and their powerful, exhilarating friendship in the midst of WWII. One girl works as a pilot (code name: Kittyhawk) and the other as a wireless operator (code name: Verity). A disastrous night mission ends in a crash landing in Nazi-occupied France. Verity is picked up by the local branch of the Gestapo almost immediately, and before the book has even started has broken under the interrogation. The novel is her written account, half confession, half memoir, of her work in the war effort and her friendship with Maddie, aka Kittyhawk. The audio version of this book is amazing. It's read by two talented voice actors, Morven Christie and Lucy Gaskell, who each take on one of the girl's parts. This book had me crying two or three times near the end. It's a very intense story and it doesn't exactly end happily. But the story is exquisitely well told, and I highly recommend it.

White Cat is the first book in Holly Black's Curse Worker trilogy. In this world, a small selection of people have one of seven types of power. These include the power to effect dreams, emotions, memories or luck or the power to kill or to transform with a touch. Curse working is illegal in the United States, and hence most curse workers on the East Coast end up with one of the five main crime families. Cassel Sharp is the only person in his family without a power- and the only one of his brothers not working for the mafia. Despite his lack of a power, he is not without his criminal talents and when his brothers need a third man in a dangerous operation, they turn to the very unwilling Cassel. An enjoyable urban fantasy- perhaps a bit darker than that Holly Black's usual books (or else the old ones have gained a rosy glow in my memory). The audio book is well read by Jesse Eisenberg.