good books!
So, I decided to give myself a lazy Saturday morning, and finally got to Flora's Dare in my TBR pile.  Flora's Dare, subtitled lengthily as : How  a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room).  If the subtitle doesn't charm you, stop reading.  This book is not for you.

Which would be a terrible pity.  This is an amazing book.  It is a sequel to Flora Segunda (also lengthily subtitled, but I'm too lazy to type it all in) and I suggest reading that one first--hardly a loathsome chore.  I enjoyed the first book--since her world is very vivid, very distinctive, and rather complicated.  Wilce does a nice summation of the first book in the first chapter of Flora's Dare, so you might be able to skip the first book, but why would you want to?  Wilce gives Flora such a crazy, distinctive voice that it's a pleasure to read. 

Flora Segunda was crazy fun, a nice start to a series.  Flora's Dare is amazing.  This is a book written exactly for the squeehappy part of my brain.  It involves a girl who has magical abilities learning to use them, giant squid, Spring-Heeled Jack, secret family history, and oh. . . the dialogue.  I have a particular fondness for an old-fashioned style of language, where the character names themselves for effect, claiming nicknames, and making others up on the spot, all to make themselves more impressive.  There is a particular term for that but I've forgotten it--if I've ever known it.  I've been crazy for it ever since Cyrano de Bergerac.  And Wilce does it up right; I had goosebumps. 

If all of that doesn't entice you--what's wrong with you?--there are bird-headed quetzal guards, flayed aztec sorcerers, houses run, maintained, and protected by daemons, loud music, a girl named Tiny Doom, and revolutionaries roaming the night clubs and streets. 

C'mon, a girl named Tiny Doom!

Go read it.  It's in your bookstore waiting for you.  Unaccountably in YA.