Author: Brandon Sanderson
Publisher: Tor
Rating: WORTHY!
Well I was just starting this one, but my son stole it right out from under me! Don't worry, I will steal it right back when he goes to sleep and really get started on it tomorrow! Meantime, I will just give you this much of the book blurb (which I hate to do, but blame my son! Yeah, that's it. It's all his fault!) "As the son of a lowly chalk-maker at Armedius Academy, Joel can only watch as Rithmatist students study the magical art that he would do anything to practice. Then students start disappearing — kidnapped from their rooms at night, leaving trails of blood."
This is book one in a series, and this is one heck of a weird tale, but you have to admire that Sanderson took an ostensibly limp, even stupid idea: that kids' chalkings on the sidewalk can come to life, and he ran with it and made a really awesome story out of it. This novel is part steam-punk, part dystopian future, part science, part magic, but its not like any steam-punk or dystopian, or magic or sci-fi novel I've ever read. It's set in what seems to be the future, but it's a weird and distant future where all memory of our life and times seems to have disappeared. There has apparently been some serious global warming and the USA is now a series of Islands, named vaguely after the current states, but not quite (for example there's East and West Carolina islands, not North and South Carolina states, and it's not the United States, but the United Isles (and actually would probably have been more aptly named the Confederated Isles). These isles are linked together by a monorail - but the trains run on clockwork as does everything else in this world.
The male protagonist is Joel, who dreams of being a Rithmatist - that is someone who, from an early age, was inducted into and trained for the Rithmatic religion, and can make chalk drawings come to life. But these are not just any drawings, they are defensive and offensive battle lines. There is an art and a science of drawing protective chalk circles which will defend you whilst you launch your chalk line attacks. But defend from what? Attack who? Chalklings!
In the isle of Nebrask, there are wild chalklings: two-dimensional "creatures" made entirely from chalk lines, which will swarm you and literally take you apart piece by piece if they get near you. Right now they are contained by the efforts of the valiant Rithmatists who, fighting from behind meticulously and rigorously constructed chalk line defenses, can create and launch their own "tame" chalklings which will attack the defenses of others and attack other chalklings according to your chalked, symbolic instruction set.
Joel was not accepted into the Rithmatists, and because his father, a renowned chalk maker, died in a horrible spring rail accident, he is only able to attend the most famous Rithmatist school because of his father's reputation and his mother's appallingly hard work-schedule cleaning the school. But even so he cannot attend actual Rithmatics classes, only the regular classes. During his free-time he reads everything he can about Rithmatics (even though he's not allowed to take out books from the Rithmatics library). He is dreaming of becoming something in the field of Rithmatics even though he would not be a Rithmatist per se.
To his complete delight, Joel manages to wangle himself a position helping his favorite professor - Fitch - for the summer, and despite the fact that he also has to be around Melody, a particularly ornery Rithmatics student who is having to spend the summer under Fitch practicing drawing her defensive circles. Melody is a complete novel in and of herself. I adore her. She isn't a bad Rithmatist - she can draw amazingly intricate unicorn chalklings which roam around with great animation - she's just a really sloppy defensive Rithmatist. But she and Joel together make quite a formidable team. And it's just as well because suddenly, students from the academy are showing up missing - yes indeed-y. And the person put in charge of trying to figure out what, exactly, is going here is none other than the professor under whom Joel and Melody are studying that summer....
This novel was amazing, and I highly and unreservedly recommend it. It's a brilliant idea, and it's beautifully written. It has mystery, and adventure, and Joel is a truly worthy main character. If you want to learn how to write YA "romance", then read Sanderson. He nails it completely. The relationship between Joel and Melody is a complete yet bottomless joy to watch unfold.
