strange and random happenstance: Caster Chronicles

Summer is that time of year when it becomes fashionable to read. Everyone has to have a nice big thick beach read for when they fall asleep to the lapping of the waves. While I personally believe that reading is fashionable all year long, I won't go so far as to say I am immune to this silly season and yearn for different types of books. Summer is the fun books, the series, the non-scholarly Olde English texts that are "improving" literature and have language you have to wade through (though I did spend one summer devouring Austen and another E.M. Forster). I want to curl up on my side porch and sway in the breeze on my porch swing while delving into Stephen King or re-reading all of Harry Potter. I have spent innumerable days and evenings just falling into another world while the cicadas sing and the lightning bugs slowly come out one after another. Angling my book just so so that I can catch the lights inside the house and read for a few more minutes before having to forsake my warm bower and go back into the chill house and reality.

While contemplating what I wanted to feature this summer on my blog I realized that the time had come to just revel in summer. To think back to devouring Harry Potter during these sultry months and try to recapture that joy. Today there are YA book series popping up like mushrooms after a rain and I have gotten woefully behind. With Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments Series coming to a close, as well as many other series having their final or penultimate book coming out I figured this summer I would revel in YA. Devote the whole of summer to YA Series that I have been meaning to pick up or to pick up again. To make the beach read of this summer the YA book series. I hope you will join me in curling up in a warm place, letting the sun shine down on you and catching up with a new or favorite series.

And now, a giveaway...

The Prize:
A lovely hardcover copy of the first book in Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl's The Caster Chronicles, Beautiful Creatures.

The Rules:
1. Open to EVERYONE (for clarification, this means international too), just because you haven't been following me all along doesn't mean you don't matter, you just get more entries if you prove you love me by following.

2. Please make sure I have a way to contact you if your name is drawn, either your blogger profile or a link to your website/blog or you could even include your email address with your comment(s) or email me directly.

3. Contest ends Sunday, August 31st at 11:59PM CST (Yes, I know it's a holiday weekend, so be sure to get your entries in early!)

4. How to enter: Just comment in the space below!

5. And for those addicted to getting extra entries:

+1 for answering the question: What is your favorite summer read?
+2 for becoming a follower
+10 if you are already a follower
+10 for each time you advertise this contest - blog post, sidebar, twitter (please @eliza_lefebvre), etc. (but you only get credit for the first post on each social media plateform, so tweet all you like, and I thank you for it, but you'll only get the +10 once). Also please leave a link! There's also a handy code on the side for your blog/website sidebars!
+25 if you comment on any of the posts during the YA Summer Series Celebration, with something other than "I hope I win" or a variation thereof.

Good luck!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: Beautiful Creatures, Cassandra Clare, Caster Chronicles, E.M. Forster, Giveaway, Harry Potter, Jane Austen, Kami Garcia, Margaret Stohl, Stephen King, Summer, Summer Series, YA

Beautiful Darkness (Caster Chronicles Book 1) by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
Published by: Little Brown
Publication Date: December 1st, 2009
Format: Hardcover, 563 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Ethan Lawson Wate dreams of the day he can finally leave Gatlin. The small town is suffocating him and his home life isn't the greatest either with his father being a recluse since his mother's death. But that's not Ethan's only dream. He dreams of a girl. He dreams of falling through trees with this girl. This nameless faceless girl whom he clearly loves. On the first day of school he meets Lena Duchannes, quite literally the girl of his dreams. Lena isn't like the other girls, and this draws Ethan to her. In fact she's not like any girls, she's magical, being a Caster. She feels like her entire life is living on borrowed time because come February and her 16th birthday she will either go to the good or the bad. Therefore it's very inconvenient that Ethan and Lena start to fall in love. But perhaps Ethan is what she needs to survive.

Back in December 2009 I had been blogging for about seven months. With my blogging I started to become more savvy about books in general. I became a connoisseur about my book purchases, not buying everything that looked good, instead seeing what other people said and relying more on my fellow blogger community. This of course was a two edged sword, sure I wasn't indiscriminately buying every book out there, but I was getting so many recommendations that, well, my book buying increased more then decreased. One book that everyone was excited for was Beautiful Creatures, and their excitement was contagious. Ironically not only did I buy the book but I won a copy from Little Brown! So I was all set to dive right into this series, and as is usually the case, I didn't get around to it for a few years. It was in fact the release of the movie that finally spurred me into action. Obviously I couldn't NOT watch a movie staring Emma Thompson, I suffered through that second Nanny McPhee movie after all. But the book had to come first!

What really struck me about Beautiful Creatures is it's exotic local. Yes, Gatlin, South Carolina is exotic, at least for popular YA. Usually YA likes to be set among the same popular cities as urban fantasy, laying in the shadows of New York or Chicago. Or it's dystopian and some future unknown ruin of a city. Or it's both, ahem Veronica Roth. But here we have a very recognizable southern US that brings with it all the baggage of the War of Northern Aggression (I should note that all my family fought for the North). There is a charming southerness to the book filled with Civil War reenactments and swampy cemeteries. This brings with it a certain Gothic romanticism to it that makes you think that magic isn't the most unlikely thing that could happen in this setting. Garcia and Stohl capture the town and the environment so well that it almost becomes a character in it's own right.

But despite it's southern hospitality there is still a small town mentality against anything "other." Even if Lena Duchannes wasn't a Caster with supernatural powers, her being an outsider, as well as a relative of the town's local recluse, would make her the subject of gossip. Add to that her "bewitching" Ethan, and there doesn't need a window shattering to make her an outcast. The window shattering just ups the whole situation to Carrie levels and there's more then just one or two hints to the Stephen King classic. Of course this being Gatlin they opt for liquid soap instead of pig's blood. Also Gatlin is a little more organized then King's small town and Lena is far more in control and aware of her powers to let the situation escalate. But there are several leaflets against Lena as well as a petition to have her thrown out of school, but sadly for them, the mean girls don't succeed.

Yet the Carrie undertone isn't the only undertone. To me there is a lot more of the Bewitched and Sabrina the Teenage Witch vibe then any other touchstone out there. I'd say in fact it leans very heavily on Sabrina, what with how Lena can't be raised by her mother, and that a Caster can go good or evil on their sixteenth birthday. It reminded me strongly of Sabrina and her evil twin. Yes, I love Sabrina and I'm not afraid to admit it. But despite all these great undertones and references and the atmosphere, there was just something missing. Beautiful Creatures lacks it's own identity. It becomes muddled between past and present mythology and it made the overall book quickly forgettable. Yes, despite reading this book fairly recently, I had to go and read a synopsis on Wikipedia to refresh myself as to what happened before writing this review. Because in all seriousness, if someone was to say what this book was about I'd say people running around in the south and there's some SCA fun. That isn't the book though, that's just my take away, and it's a lame one at that.