The Search For WondLa by Tony DiTerlizzi

Only a couple of chapters into this book, I fell in love. Hard. The Search For WondLa features such a curious, adventurous heroine and such a whimsical, weird world for her to explore. Thanks to the gorgeous illustrations (also by Tony DiTerlizzi), the characters and scenery felt tangible. Every time I picked up the book, I was swept away to Eva's world, which is wondrous and terrifying at the same time. You have Wandering Forests, giant tardigrades, terrible oxygen-sucking plants, plus robots and hovercraft. What's not to love?

The Search For WondLa begins with twelve-year-old Eva Nine, who lives in an underground Sanctuary with a robot called Muthr (Multi-Utility Task Help Robot), who is charged with Eva's care and upbringing. Eva is being prepared for survival outside of her Sanctuary, in a world that seems to be much like ours. But when Eva is forced to leave the Sanctuary early after an intruder attacks her home, she realizes that the world outside is nothing like the one she was prepared for. Her Omnipod doesn't recognize any of the plant or animal life, though it notes that some of it is similar to microscopic life forms like tardigrades. As Eva tries to make sense of this unknown world, she manages to make a friend (or at least an ally) with the lone widower Rovender Kitt, and finds out that she is being hunted by a brutal bounty hunter called Besteel.

Zombies Vs. Unicorns, Edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier

Something terrible has happened. I was totally Team Unicorn going into this book. I just really wanted to read about some awesome killer unicorns. And there were indeed some awesome killer unicorns. But I found myself completely seduced by Team Zombie! All of my favorite stories from this anthology are zombie stories.

As you have probably gathered, Zombies Vs. Unicorns is a short story anthology in which editors Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier pit their respective supernatural creatures against each other. Sadly, these two ladies (who are two of my favorite authors) did not write stories for this collection. However, they did write introductions to each story, which are full of smack talk about each others' teams and help bind the stories together.

Holly Black leads Team Unicorn, which includes Kathleen Duey, Meg Cabot, Garth Nix, Margo Lanagan, Naomi Novik, and Diana Peterfreund. Team Unicorn presents us with some traditional unicorns with healing powers, some ironic hearts-and-rainbows unicorns, and lots of killer unicorns goring people with their horns. My favorite unicorn story is Meg Cabot's "Princess Prettypants", which takes a kind of traditional coming-of-age story and adds a humorous unicorn who glows and farts flowers, and then helps the protagonist get revenge on the boys who have hurt her and her best friend. I also love Diana Peterfreund's story, "The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn", which takes place in a world in which unicorns are going extinct, but they are considered nasty, bloodthirsty monsters.

Heading up Team Zombie is Justine Larbalestier, and shambling behind her are authors Libba Bray, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Cassandra Clare, Maureen Johnson, Carrie Ryan, and Scott Westerfeld. Carrie Ryan's story "Bougainvillea" is my favorite of the entire anthology. I guess this shouldn't be surprising, since as the author of The Forest of Hands and Teeth series, Ryan is the zombie queen of YA right now. I love how she uses dual timelines to introduce us to the protagonist, Iza, and jump into the action simultaneously. The best part is the way she subverted the romance novels that Iza loves to read into an ending where Iza is a kick-ass girl who rescues herself instead of needing to be rescued by a man. Alaya Dawn Johnson's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" is a funny, sexy zombie story, which is something I never thought I'd say. And "Prom Night" by Libba Bray is a very clever take on a typical teen trope. In Bray's story, the adults have all been infected with the zombie virus, so the teenagers have driven all the adults out of town or killed them, and are running the town by themselves. It's a bittersweet story that takes place on a night when most teens want nothing more than for their parents to go away.

Zombies Vs. Unicorns comes out on September 21. Go Team Zombie!