Sarah Rees Brennan

Elliot doesn't want to fight, keeps saying the wrong thing, and is definitely the grouchiest human in fantasyland.

In Other Lands

Fucking amazing I could read this a billion times and never get tired of it and pick up new things each time

Drew Crespo

brianna

Georgia Peach Award Nominee Florida Teens Read Award Nominee ABC Best Books for Young Readers Bank Street College Best Children’s Books of the Year A Junior Library Guild Selection Hugo & Locus award finalist The Borderlands aren’t like anywhere else. Don’t try to smuggle a phone or any other piece of technology over the wall that marks the Border — unless you enjoy a fireworks display in your backpack. (Ballpoint pens are okay.) There are elves, harpies, and — best of all as far as Elliot is concerned — mermaids. "What’s your name?" "Serene." "Serena?" Elliot asked. "Serene," said Serene. "My full name is Serene-Heart-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle." Elliot’s mouth fell open. "That is badass." Elliot? Who’s Elliot? Elliot is thirteen years old. He’s smart and just a tiny bit obnoxious. Sometimes more than a tiny bit. When his class goes on a field trip and he can see a wall that no one else can see, he is given the chance to go to school in the Borderlands. It turns out that on the other side of the wall, classes involve a lot more weaponry and fitness training and fewer mermaids than he expected. On the other hand, there’s Serene-Heart-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle, an elven warrior who is more beautiful than anyone Elliot has ever seen, and then there’s her human friend Luke: sunny, blond, and annoyingly likeable. There are lots of interesting books. There’s even the chance Elliot might be able to change the world. In Other Lands is the exhilarating new book from beloved and bestselling author Sarah Rees Brennan. It’s a novel about surviving four years in the most unusual of schools, about friendship, falling in love, diplomacy, and finding your own place in the world — even if it means giving up your phone.

Janice Hopper

I am not the target audience for this book. I read most of the first few chapters and lightly skimmed the rest, just so I would see that what I KNEW was going to happen would actually happen.

It's a portal fantasy. It's 4 years in the lives of kids in a training camp on the other side of the portal from our world. One of the kids, Elliot, is from our Earth. He is clever and smart and an asshole. He falls in love with an Serene, an elf maiden, right away. Their constant companion is Luke, the bestest, nicest, strongest, prettiest warrior in camp. (Yes, eye-rolling here.)

They start growing up and falling in love with each other and/or other people. Elliot as a kid is better able to negotiate treaties with various non-human species than any adult in sight can. Serene and Luke are sword-sisters. Elf society just inverts human gender norms, so that women are the warriors and men are the nurturers. It's funny for about 50 pages. Everybody starts growing up, mostly.

I have most of the same issues with this book that I had with The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. Those issues start with things that SHOULD be good. Everybody's sex-positive. Which person you want to have sex with doesn't really matter. You're a boy who likes boys? Yay! You're a girl who likes boys? Yay! You're a boy who likes boys and girls? Yay! 

But you know what? It's BORING. I don't read fan fiction, but this is what I imaging fan fiction must be like in a lot of places (I know, #notallfanfiction) because of all the references I see to various non-canonical pairings people seem to want to write about. I DON'T CARE ABOUT THEM. If you want to write about Hermione and Snape getting together, that's fine, but I DON'T WANT TO READ IT. It's just NOT INTERESTING to me. I don't like kissing books or most romance. That's ME, not the genre. 

So why did I read this, you ask? It was engaging enough for the first few chapters. It's obvious we're supposed to like and/or feel sorry for Elliot even though he's an asshole, because Nobody Ever Loved Him Before. I guess that was part of it. And then, like I said, just to see if it was going to be as totally predictable as it looked like it was going to be. 

I hate being right about stuff like that. 
 
Many other people love this. I'm happy for them. Its just not for me.

sophia n

what. is. there. to. even. say. ABOUT MY MOST PRECIOUS CHILDREN??? ABOUT THIS ABSOLUTELY PERFECT GIFT OF A BOOK????? WHERE DO I EVEN BEGIN??????? apparently nowhere, read this book or we're not friends and i'll never speak to you again.

jess

In Other Lands was just an all-around pleasant surprise, because I didn't know much about it going in, and now I'm just yearning for more. This book was very reminiscent of other fantasy, such so that it was almost a satire of a lot of other fantasy novels like Narnia and Harry Potter, but it was somehow better than so much fantasy I've read. 

The three main characters - Elliot, Luke, and Serene - were all really well-written. Honestly - I found Elliot annoying at the beginning, and while he did not necessarily stop being annoying, it definitely grew on me as he developed as a character. And Elliot developed so much that it almost makes me emotional, and his ability to annoy everyone around him had reasons behind it. Elliot's relationship with his father was heartbreaking, and it gave a lot of context behind Elliot's behaviours. It was the kind of insight into neglect and abuse that I wish I'd seen in other fantasy novels, and I loved seeing Elliot evolve as he grew older and grew to rely more on himself and his friends than parental validation. 

Seeing the contrast between Luke, Serene, and Elliot was also great because they had a lot of cultural differences that made a lot of their interactions really interesting and hilarious. Furthermore, there were a lot of character differences that made them clash, but also really lent a lot to their friendship. Luke's Family Issues were a lot different than Elliot's Family Issues, but both of them were portrayed very well. I lived the matrilineal society of the elves, because it really pointed out the effects of the patriarchy on our world in the funniest way. 

Another thing I liked, actually: there wasn't a huge, overarching plot. Elliot was not a chosen one. There were no villians, really. It was just a slice of life through five years of school, and even though in some parts, this made it really slow and somewhat repetitive concerning all the treaties and expeditions, it was just so nice to see all the characters grow during the years. In Other Lands portrays a magic school so well and what we as readers usually do to suspend our disbelief in most fantasy novels. 

I loved In Other Lands a lot, and I have been missing the characters since I read it.

Elliot Schafer is caustic, sarcastic, and far too smart for his own good and he'd rather make that clear from the get go rather than wait for someone else to make a point of it. When his teacher brings a bunch of students to a random field to see whether he can see a wall, he's media savy enough to know what's up. As he makes his way into the magical Borderlands, he thinks he knows exactly what he's going to meet. Turns out he's wrong. Fantasy fiction doesn't do nearly a good enough job to prepare him for the lack of plumbing and centralized heating, the warrior society training child soldiers, or the utter disregard for the council tract and using diplomacy to end wars before they being. That's not gonna stop him from dragging the Borderlands kicking and screaming into the most lasting peace he can manage though.

Elliot has the (sometimes half-hearted) support of Serene-Heart-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle, an elfin warrior that Elliot instantly falls in love with, and Luke Sunborn, the rising star of the first human family to settle in the Borderlands. Luke's presence is a byproduct of Serene's and not super welcome at the beginning, but eventually grows into a one-sided friendship and love.

Easily the most entertaining aspect of this book (besides Elliot's nature as a sarcastic little shit) is how thoroughly trope savy the book is. It's exected that you'll be aware of how portal fiction and Chosen One stories work and will recognize when those tropes are being twisted. Moreover, Elliot's awareness of those twisted tropes means his reactions are more nuanced than other fantasy heroes who doesn't realize when they are and aren't working on script. 

Elliot's self-awareness in other aspects of his life leads to scenes with amazing poignancy. His recognition that he wants a truly reciprocal love, that he wants to be chosen for himself - faults and all - was so wonderfully poerful. Especially since that applies not only to romantic love but also to his parents. The acknowledgement that you don't have to seek a relationship with your parents and continually try to fix things - that you can walk away and do what's best for you - is so important.

And of course, I love how casually, wonderfully queer this book is. Both in the attack on gender roles that elfin culture implicitly provides and with the queer relationships of both main and side characters. Brennan even addresses the multitude of ways that biphobia shows up in both the straight and gay communities.

In Other Lands is, without doubt, one of the best books I've ever read and I simply cannot recommend it highly enough.

Arden Kowalski

Vera Sokolyanskaya

I admire beautiful systems and structure. In any fantasy book, well-thought universes fascinate me, I love how little details, plot points, character actions all fall into one big picture that makes sense and has a purpose. I love stories that are taking me somewhere. I don't like stories that are wondering around not sure where to go as if completely lost. I have abandoned this book at about 40% but the fact that our FYA book club discussion questions didn't have a single question about the book plot tells me that there just isn't one. 
I also just finished re-reading Harry Potter, you can blame Joanne Rowling for creating a book that is too perfectly structured.

The book has many other flaws but uneven pacing and random events are probably the biggest one of them. Significant events start SUDDENLY and end abruptly after a page, the timing of events is hard to follow since the author is avoiding any mentions of time - months, weeks, seasons, days. Each chapter takes a year, go figure out the rest yourself.

Elliot is an arrogant jerk. As the story progressed we learn a little bit more about his childhood and the author makes an attempt at character development but the starting point is absolutely horrible, a 13-year old mean boy who is offending/hurting everyone around him, peers and military commanders, even people he likes and trying to be friends with. For no reason at all, out of nowhere. Since I didn't finish the book I can't say whether he becomes a likeable person, I think the author was really making an effort to do so but... the character development 

Serene is probably the only character that I liked in the book. She is turning all usual gender narrative upside down but to a point of trying to cover them all. In the end, this started to feel like a collection of feminist checkboxes for the sake of checking them all, some situations 

WARNING for people who expect to read a book about mermaids: at 40% I haven't met a single mermaid (other than human and elven characters talking about them a couple of times).

Alice

Some books are a category on their own. 

Ask me about the plot in In Other Lands and I'll answer "the what?
Ask me about the main character and I'll say "oh whew, irritating"
Ask me about the worldbuilding and I'll just twiddle my thumbs because ???

But ask me about the story, ask me about the character growth, ask me about the self-positivity and the love and the friendship and the acceptance and the sweetness and the humor and the life lessons, and I'll tell you "do yourself a favor and read this book".

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Tiffany Robinson

This one took me a little bit to get into, but I kept reading and I am glad I did. It turned out to be pretty enjoyable.

Jennifer

A cozy, witty, and humorous novel - unlike any other books that I have read. It's magical (mermaids, elves, harpies), organically portrayed nuanced LGBT+ relationships, and it's also uplifting. 

I found the characters likeable thanks to the A+ witty comebacks which left me cracking up at times. I really enjoyed how Elliot's relationships between Luke and Serene warmed up over the years. Elliot started out as an obnoxious yet clever protagonist but his character development through the chapters kept me engaged in his narrative and his search for his identity through these interpersonal relationships + his actions warmed me up. Similarly, Luke's character arc and the reckoning by the end of the novel also had me shook. So if there's something which stood out with regards of the characters, it's that they had their own flaws, yet they're also incredibly nuanced and well fleshed out.

Speaking of the backdrop - oh man, I love it so much and the writing style did a great job painting an enchanting image of the backdrop. It gave me this fairytale vibes but what makes it so much more alluring than the usual fairytale retellings - the novel deals with big human themes about love substantially. There are references to mythology and also mentions of the fioctional books / plays in the worldbuilding which enhanced the themes. So the thematic development results in an organic feel while reading a fictional world. It felt magical yet believable all the same. 

On a flipside, I had to get used to very long chapters when I first reading In Other Lands - so it took me a few pages before I started unpacking the plot. But once I fully immersed into the story (which didn't took me long), I felt a sense of satisfication. I love the feeling when everything just suddenly clicks together after spending a considerable amount of time disentagling a big chunk of challenging writing. It really left me thinking deep about all of the shades of love and sentiments coming from a wonderful represention of an LGBT+ character. 

So if you're into nuanced characterisation, some fairytale / magical elements, and a dose of humour - then I highly recommend this. It's challenging and rewarding all the same.

Kymberly L McNabb

I loved this story and I hope that it becomes a series! The genre is fantasy and this book is for fans of Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and the Neverending Story. This tale has reflections of them but is its own original story of love, friendship, adventure, and personal growth and acceptance. There is humor, heart, fun, and interesting cultural shifts. This is a must read for all readers!!

Ben Nathan

Updated review on reread: it's maybe the best book. So perfect so amazing so wonderful. I shall read it again in a few years when I want the world to be better. The progression from one of my recent favorites to all time favorite was great to experience again😃

A book about coming of age, self-discovery, understanding of sexuality, acceptance of yourself and others, racial tolerance...and all wrapped up in a really well written world of fantasy. I was not expecting this book to be this good, as I was only meh on it after the first few chapters, but it won me over in a big way and I highly suggest it.

Kimi 

The intrigue in this book was non-existing for me. It felt like you were following Elliot's around and it was kinda of boring. It was mainly a magical world political intrigue type of book. I guess if you like political type of books then this might be for you but I found this quite boring.

In Other Lands

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