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Amulet 8: Supernova by Kazu Kibuishi
Baddawi by Leila Abdelrazaq
The Benefits of Being an Octopus by Ann Braden
Bluecrowne by Kate Milford
Bluff and Bran and the Snowdrift by Meg Rutherford
Cloudette by Tom Lichtenheld
The Doughnut Fix by Jessie Janowitz
Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire
Echo's Sister by Paul Mosier
Elementary, She Read by Vicki Delany
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Hold The Cream Cheese, Kill The Lox by Sharon Kahn
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How to Say Goodbye in Robot by Natalie Standiford
Lavender Lies by Susan Wittig Albert
The Legend of Korra: Turf Wars Part Two by Michael Dante DiMartino and Irene Koh
Louisiana's Way Home by Kate DiCamillo
Lowriders Blast from the Past by Cathy Camper and Raul III
The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl by Stacy McAnulty
No Fixed Address by Susin Nielsen
Once Upon a Spine by Kate Carlisle
The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall
Personal Demons by Nimue Brown
The Reader by Traci Chee
Secret Coders 4: Robots & Repeats by Gene Luen Yang
Shade by Jeri Smith-Ready
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
Sodom Road Exit by Amber Dawn
The Shadow Cipher by Laura Ruby
24 Hours in Nowhere by Dusti Bowling

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Cybils Update (November 06)
Cybils Update (November 13)
Cybils Update (November 20)
Cybils Update (November 27)
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (November 05)
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (November 12)
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (November 19)
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (November 26)
October 2018 Sources
October 2018 Summary

Road Essays
FFCC99: FF99CC and FF9999: orphans in the wildlands by maze and labyrinth
FF9933: orphan wildlands blue highway
From 00CC33 to 33CCCC: a road narrative analysis of Haunting of Hill House, book and Netflix television series
A Map to the Road Narrative Spectrum
Road Narrative Update for October 2018
The three faces of Eleanor

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Bluecrowne: 11/08/18

Bluecrowne

Bluecrowne by Kate Milford was originally kickstarted in 2014, right around the same time as Greenglass House. It was written as an Easter egg for fans willing to let her experiment with her world. The success of Greenglass House and Ghosts of Greenglass House created a need for the publisher of those books to reissue her Kickstarter.

Bluecrowne and The Left-Handed Fate tie together the far ends of her universe: The Boneshaker and The Broken Lands to the Nagspeake / Greenglass House books.

Milford says in the afterword that Bluecrowne serves to explain why the original family chose not to live in their beautiful house. In this regard, I am reminded of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (and the recent ten episode adaptation for Netflix). Lansdegown is like Hill House, except that it is happy. Both are impossible to navigate places. Both are haunted. Both are ever vigilant. Both are self aware. I will write more on these two houses at a later date, once I have finished re-reading Jackson's novel.

For the road narrative project, I debated with myself over how to best describe the protagonist. For the majority of the book, there are two: Melusine, aka Lucy, and her half brother Liao. While they do the majority of the heavy lifting in this novel, their ultimate success wouldn't be possible without Xiaoming Bluecrown. In this regard, like Bruja Born (2018) by Zoraida Córdova, strength is found in family.

With family being key, this novel falls into the 33CCFF category: family, uhoria, cornfield. The Greenglass House books both fall into the home and maze categories but this novel takes place more in Nagespeake and the land and water between the town and the house. Napspeake as it sits on the water and bleeds into the woodlands on shore, counts as a a cornfield (in the Canadian, tkaronto, sense). The uhoria aspect comes from the Kairos Mechanism. Namely, Nagspeake and the people who live there have ties to other places and times that are nonlinear (or if you will, Ozma time instead of Oz time).

Five stars

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