Flora Segunda

As I commented on Wizards Wireless, I’m terrible at predicting Newbery and Caldecott winners. First, for as many books as I read, there are countless that slip past me. Second, the books I’ve enjoyed most that past few years haven’t seemed to attract those shiny gold and silver stickers. Third, because I wait to read books until they’ve arrived at the library, I’m always lagging a bit in my reading of new books.

But since the end of the year is galumphing toward me all too fast, I figure I may as well start rounding up some of my personal favorites now. Not books I think are destined to win shiny stickers, necessarily, but ones I got a huge kick out of, just the same. Here’s the first:

Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), A House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and A Red Dog
By Ysabeau Wilce (Harcourt, 2007)

Though members of House Fyrdraaca always go into the military, Flora, approaching her fourteenth birthday, has no desire to follow in her General mamma’s footsteps. Instead she dreams of being a Ranger like her hero, the mythical Nini Mo, focusing less on fight and might than on magick, cunning, and survival skills. But when Flora uses her magickal essence to help Valefor, the banished Fyrdraaca Butler, regain his former power, she finds herself in trouble way over her head. And that’s only the beginning!

Once I got through the somewhat overwhelming prologue and first chapter (lots of names thrown around), I was utterly enchanted by this unique fantasy: its haunting magical setting, its unexpected twists and turns, its odd combination of the familiar and alien, the modern and ancient. It also had many bits that made me laugh out loud. For example, in one of my favorite scenes, a disguised Flora enters a bar and gruffly demands a beer, only to discover it’s actually an ice cream parlor.

What I liked best, however, was its distinctly American flavor. This is not done-over Arthurian or Scandinavian folklore. The story takes place in a country called Califa, in what seems to be an alternative San Francisco Bay Area. Califa has a rather strained relationship with Huitzil, its neighbor to the south – a nation ruled by, we are to believe, blood-thirsty Aztec-esque warriors. Wilce draws on Aztec and Native imagery in presenting their different style of magick, but doesn’t chain herself to their mythology. In Summerland, Michael Chabon aimed to write an American fantasy, drawing on various American legends, and the result was a ponderous, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink volume. In contrast, in Flora Segunda, Wilce has created a fresh setting, characters, and story that ultimately owe allegiance to, it would seem, no one.

I recommend Flora Segunda for readers grade 6 and up. Fans will eagerly await the second volume, Flora Redux, on its way in August 2008. Finally, in the interest of full disclosure: I met Wilce at the First Annual Kitlitosphere Conference, where she graciously accepted my effusive, yet stuttering, praise.

Some Online Interviews with Ysabeau Wilce:

BookPage - "It's easier sometimes to use real details than to make things up—I know an awful lot about 19th-century military culture, and rather than let all that useless knowledge go to waste, I figured I'd recycle it."

Cynsations - "...I wanted to try to capture the feeling that you have when you are kid and everything seems so super important, and yet the adults around you are oblivious to this. When you are a kid, everything can feel so super-charged, and yet as adults we forget this and figure that nothing in a kid's life can possibly be that important."