Going Bovine by Libba Bray

Libba Bray’s Going Bovine is a seriously cool and funny story about a sixteen-year-old boy who is dying of mad cow disease.  It is a mindbending road trip meditation on the meaning of life, and might have been gimmicky and nonsensical in the hands of a lesser author.  Fortunately for us, we are in Bray’s very capable hands, with skillful allusions to Don Quixote and Norse mythology, both of which the author weaves through her narrative.

From the beginning, Cameron Smith is an authentic teenage voice, complete with snarkiness, melancholy, and attacks of adolescent mortification.  His relationship with his parents and sister is strained by the monotony of daily life – his parents are work-obsessed and going through the motions of a relationship; his twin sister Jenna has abandoned him for the popular crowd – early in the novel, Cameron remarks that the family didn’t go on vacations any more, because who wants to vacation with strangers?

When Cameron increasingly finds himself having physical and mental episodes that cause him varying degrees of embarrassment and trouble, he discovers that he suffers from the terminal Creutzfeldt-Jakob syndrome, or mad cow disease.  After his diagnosis, a punk rock angel named Dulcie presents him with a mission to save the universe from the mistake of a mad scientist who opened up a worm hole into a parallel universe and let in dark matter in the form of fire giants and the sinister Wizard of Reckoning.

What happens throughout the novel is kind of trippy, with ruminations on music, cartoons, pop culture, and science fiction fandom that calls to mind the author’s Rocky Horror Picture Show story in Geektastic, last year’s short story anthology from Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci.  Gonzo, Cameron’s dwarf road trip companion who becomes his best friend (ahem, Sancho Panza), sums it up well by saying, “This is a stoner conversation, and we aren’t even stoned.”

Ultimately, a more serious thread runs through this farcical and surreal story, so in addition to being really entertaining, it also grapples with the idea of what it means to really live.  Cameron’s adventures with Gonzo and Balder (a yard gnome who is the Norse god Balder in disguise) explore the nature of friendship, love, and viewing the world around you with both clarity and hope.

Changeless by Gail Carriger

I opened Changeless eagerly anticipating a re-visit to the steampunk world of Gail Carriger begun in Soulless, the first Parasol Protectorate novel set in Victorian England.  Elements of romance, mystery, action, fantasy, and science fiction are skillfully interspersed into this comedy of manners, providing the greater narrative arc and emotional thrust to the novel.  It is replete with fantastical new inventions and a further delving into werewolf pack dynamics, as a strange affliction renders supernaturals mortal and, in the werewolves’ case, changeless and fixed in human form.  The novel’s main character, Alexia Maccon, is now adjusting to her roles as new alpha of the Woolsey pack, muhjah to Queen Victoria,  and wife to Connall Maccon, her formidable werewolf husband.

In fact, Changeless inspires clipped, multi-syllabic adjectives like “formidable” and “veritable” – imagine sharing a tete-a-tete with a droll and wryly funny friend, or at least a good acquaintance – one who shares sharp-edged witty asides behind a suppressed grin.  In more than one scene, the author treats you to those mental asides of Alexia that frequently elicit out loud laughter  – in short, understated bursts, of course.

Alexia continues to be the barbed observer of every scene, while her friend Ivy Hisselpenny plays a foggy foil  – as pleasant and bland as a blancmange.  The secondary characters are by turns loopy and sharp, and provide a great contrast to Alexia.  Alexia responds to most situations – death by dirigible, werewolf army encampment on the lawn, unavoidably unpleasant family relations, possible spies among her party  – with an iron will and admirable sangfroid.  At times, I found Alexia to be almost too self-possessed and emotionally remote, but she is at her most accessible when she loses her iron-clad control and indulges in a bit of emotional vulnerability in the cliffhanger ending.  Over all, Changeless is an elegant and fun book that I was hooked into the most when there were big issues at stake.