Book of the Day

The planet Pern has a major problem: every few hundred years Thread falls, obliterating all living matter that it touches. Luckily, the first settlers managed to adapt indigent fire-lizards to become huge dragons that can fight the Thread threat. Now centuries later, the original settlers have lost their original technology, but retain the dragons.

Menolly is a young girl living in a Sea-Hold. Her community revolves around fishing and the sea. Her own private life revolves around music. But girls are not supposed to be Harpers, so she has no encouragement from anyone around her. When the home situation becomes unbearable, she flees. But in a hidden cave surrounded by the near-mythical fire-lizards, she is still in great danger from the Thread. Can she survive? And will she ever be able to play music again?

Like many books written for young women in the seventies (another obvious example would be the Lioness Quartet by Tamora Pierce) the gender equality issue is far more blatant and pivotal than is generally found in modern books. Contemporary fiction tends to pit girls in far more subtle gender battles, fighting to balance their femininity with nontraditional roles or taking on the challenge of defining what it means to be female. We can easily forget that this generation can make these subtle distinctions because they are building off of their grandparent’s uphill battle to simply be included as equals. It is, therefore, a bit of a time capsule to see a book where the protagonist is so straightforwardly simply challenging the status quo’s traditional gender roles.

Ever since her best friend and exboyfriend Lawrence came out of the closet – thereby breaking up with her – Viola has felt like the Invisible Girl. She has friends, and people acknowledge her, but she doesn’t feel like she belongs anywhere. Not the way she belonged when she and Lawrence were dating. The intensity of her wish to belong summons a jinn, ready to grant her three wishes, and impatient to return to his world. But Viola isn’t sure what she should wish for, and the more she procrastinates, the more Jinn starts to doubt whether he truly wishes to leave her…

This was a fun story, and I highly enjoyed it. It was a sweet, if slightly predictable romance. That being said, it made me a bit uneasy how utterly destroyed Viola was at the thought of being alone. There are a few moments were Lawrence or Jinn try to convince her that she is not “broken” just because she doesn’t have a boyfriend, and by the end of the book Viola admits that she is a whole person all by herself, but the vast majority of the book showcases Viola’s intense sense of being a non-person simply because she is alone. When she gets a boyfriend who is completely wrong for her, she realizes that he is not good for her sense of self but stays with him anyway because the alternative, to be alone, is simply to horrifying to contemplate. She only dumps him when another love appears on the horizon. The last chapter or two show Viola alone and self-confident (at least for awhile), but the rest of the book does not. Yes, it’s just a silly romance novel, but the message to young women should still be mentioned.

In another area where I’m probably over-analyzing the messages in the book, is with Lawrence’s sexuality. He claims that he has purposefully avoided dating anyone so as not to cause Viola more grief, but this seems to be an unhealthy response to Viola’s neediness. Later, when Viola is happy and confident again, he doesn’t seem to be dating either. The most we see out of him is a few glances at boys at a fair. This seems to fall a little too closely into the stereotype of the “gay best friend”. And it is a bit disturbing that Jinn says that wishes can’t “change who you are” (so no becoming a mermaid), yet later SPOILER SPOILER a possibly unfriendly ifrit changes Lawrence to be straight. (Don’t worry, Viola makes the choice to change him back again.) How is that not changing an essential part of what makes Lawrence himself? END SPOILER Yes, it’s very dramatic and potentially angsty (and I saw it coming miles away just for that reason) but it seemed inappropriate to me.

In any case, I really did enjoy the book, even if I feel compelled to pick apart its undertones after finishing it.

The Duchesne school in NYC, despite being one of the ritziest, most exclusive schools in the country, still has its cliques and scholarship students. Schuyler Van Allen, one of the latter, and her best friend Oliver are definite outcasts, though this is something of their own choosing. Mimi Force and her twin brother Jack, on the other hand, are clearly the school rulers. The fact that they are all vampires is a something of a shock to Schuyler.

The Blue Bloods have existed for centuries, immortal creatures who trade old and decrepit bodies for new lives as babies. As adolescence approaches, the memories of their previous lives start to filter into the Blue Blood’s consciousness, they start craving blood, and become full-fledged vampires. But this transition process is a vulnerable time, and something ancient has begun to prey upon the teenaged Blue Bloods. What is it, and can they stop it in time before more of their friends are killed?

This was an interesting take on the vampire mythology. I very much enjoyed the concept that the Blue Bloods were immortal but changed bodies from lifetime to lifetime. However, I didn’t see any need for them to be vampires, other than to cash in on the current craze for all things vampire. They could easily have simply been a new kind of supernatural creature. I have not read the rest of the series yet, so it’s possible that the need to drink blood will arise as a point of importance later in the storyline. Otherwise the Blue Bloods don’t share any of the typical vampire characteristics.

When Rainey signs up for a school-sponsored hiking trip across Canada, she expects the trip to be exciting, but not necessarily life-altering. Her father will be at a conference all summer, and she’s not thrilled with the idea of staying alone with her stepmother. Her own mother walked off when Rainey was only a baby, and Rainey is more than half-convinced that it was because the darling baby girl was missing a leg. Armed with a state-of-the-art prothesis, Rainey is not worried about keeping up with her classmates on the trip. But after a summer of first love, bear attacks, and a sudden invitation from her birth mother, Rainey’s life is turned upside down.

The characters in the book were mostly strong and realistic. I particularly like the relationship Rainey had with her stepmother, and the ways in which it was both simpler and more complicated than Rainey had initially thought. Her romance was fairly straight forward by the standards of the genre, but it was enjoyable. I also enjoyed that as much time as Rainey spent coming to realizations about herself, she also started to realize that her companions on the trip are more complicated, with their own problems and lives, than she’d originally been willing to give them credit for.

Rainey’s meeting with her birth mother felt reasonably real to me as well. I liked that the mother had at least one ulterior motive to meeting her long-estranged daughter, which helped me to empathize with the mother’s more emotional reasons as well. Stories of estranged parents suddenly changing their minds decades later are simply too good to be true, and the mother’s slightly selfish overtones felt more realistic and in character.

All in all, this was a satisfying book that, while not flashy enough to be destined for the bestseller lists, will hopefully be enjoyed by a wide range of readers.

When Laurel’s back suddenly erupts in a wing-like, petal-like protuberance, she is left completely unprepared. Laurel was finally feeling like she might be able to fit in after moving away from her adopted family’s ancestral farmland, but this new development throws her for a loop. With the help of her friend David, she desperately tries to discover what is happening to her. But it isn’t until she revisits her old home – which is in the process of being made ready to be sold – that she stumbles across the truth…and another “person” who claims that both he and she are faeries.

I really liked this book, and absolutely love the cover. The title on the other hand … “Wings” is so generic, and in the end completely misleading. I don’t want to give too much of the plot away, so I won’t reveal what my alternative titles would be, but I can think of several that would be equally engaging and more story-specific.

The story itself is intriguing, although there are a few plot holes (for instance, and trying to be vague, if the solution involving the sale of the house that is achieved at the end of the book was so easily effected, why did they not just use that method from the very beginning? Other than that there wouldn’t have been much of a book otherwise…) However, it was a refreshing take on faeries that I had not seen done in quite that way before. Unique depictions of faeries – and in particular girls who unexpectedly discover that they are faeries – are become increasingly rare these days.

The tension between whether Laurel will choose best-friend David or enchanting-faerie Tamani is resolved in such a way that I will be very surprised if author Aprilynne Pike is not already planning a sequel. If so, I’ll be in line to read it.

Updated to add that the author’s website states that Wings is the first of four books about Laurel.

Beka Cooper’s days as a Puppy for the Guards are over, but now that she is a full-fledged Dog she is still struggling to find her place. All of the partners she has been paired with are slackers or corrupt, and most quickly ask for Beka to be transferred to someone new. She is between partners when two unexpected events happen: she is suddenly put in charge of caring for the scenthound Achoo and she is paired with her training mentor Clary to be part of a clandestine mission to unearth counterfeiters in a neighboring city.

I am a huge fan of all of the Tortall books, so I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of this particular installment, set several hundred years before most of the other Tortallan series. I enjoyed it very much, though it is far from my favorite of Tamora Pierce’s novels. There were simply too many convenient plot devices: the friends they make during the riot just happen to be deeply involved with Port Cayne’s rogue, Beka just happens to obtain a scenthound that is so well-trained that no one blinks when she wants to take the dog everywhere yet no one seemed to care or notice when the dog was being abused, Beka’s cat friend Pounce just happens to be called away elsewhere.

Not having Pounce along for the ride forced Beka to grow in ways she might not otherwise have done, but it just seemed too obvious that that was why the author sent him away. I kept expecting that the issues Pounce was dealing with would be explained, or have an impact on the rest of the book, but no. He leaves at the beginning of the book, and comes back at the end of the book. I realize that he’s Above all the petty human stuff, but it still felt contrived.

I also didn’t entirely care for the abrupt ending of the romantic subplot, which I won’t give away for fear of spoilers.

All that being said, I want to emphasize that I really did enjoy the book, and fans of the first in the series should definitely get their hands on this second book about Beka. The pacing is excellent, as always with Ms. Pierce’s work. The characters are believable (with the possible exception of Pearl, whom the other characters even seemed to think was over the top.) I was especially interested to see not only gay characters who are accepted for who they are, but also a possibly transgender character who, despite allusions to previous conflict and keeping secrets, was accepted completely by the main character.