So we're at the last of the twelve mission books for the SD series. The next one is the first larger adventure that comes out on October 4th, which seems to be the first in a series of larger books.
The SDs are all writing a letter of apology to Lady Stella, because they realize they were wrong about her, but it keeps getting declined. They decide to tell Lady Cordial the good news, but she's about to speak at an assembly. The girls head there only to have Leona get mad because Vivica's band was asked to perform. I agree with her this time, because such a performance could easily influence the voting at the upcoming Battle of the Bands. Leona gets them earplugs, which is both amusing and, as she admits herself, childish, but it also turns out to save the day. Lady Cordial talks about the upcoming Starshine Day and each girl is given a committee assignment. None of the SDs are together, which is suspicious. Then Vivica and the Visionaries come out and Leona passes out the "ear shields." Gemma tries to talk her out of it, but finally goes along with it. Right after. everyone but the SDs is suddenly obsessed with Starshine Day, so it's clear there was some evil subliminal message in the song that Leona's childishness saved them from. Not clear to the SDs, but clear to readers. Sigh. They try to talk to Lady Cordial and she's semi-into the idea that Lady Stella is innocent, but continues with all the Starshine nonsense anyway.
The Starshine Day obsession continues and the SDs go along with their different committee activities. Gemma is worried about her wish orb, because she should be leaving any day now. Lady Cordial basically confirms that. Piper gets them all together for a meditation session, which is interrupted by Gemma's wish orb arriving. The orb looks different than the others and Lady Cordial won't even let Gemma touch it, which should have been some red flags, but nope. Sigh #2.
Gemma gets to be on Wishworld for Halloween, and her wish seems easy enough. There are two best friends, but one of them also wants to be friends with some popular girls. As popular girls in books always seem to be, of course they're not nice. Leona arrives to help out, even though Gemma insists her mission is on track. Gemma also says she expected her sister and she almost got her, but as they were strapping Tessa to the shooting star, Leona heard a voice telling her to go, so she shoved Tessa out of the way and stole her star. Gemma tells her about the mission and Leona questions whether a wish to be popular is a good wish and they soon find out it isn't when Gemma's wisher embarrasses her best friend to look good to the popular brats. Gemma's wish pendant sucks up negative wish energy and Gemma's wisher comes over and begs for help. At least she realized right away that she was wrong. Gemma then discovers that her talent is to turn back time, so she redoes the costume contest and everything works out right this time. She collects positive wish energy and she and Leona return in time for the Battle of the Bands.
Gemma is dragged into the maze by Vega, where she's surprised to see Lady Stella and Indirra, Sage's mom. It turns out they were trapped in a cave in the Crystal Mountains, along with some glowfurs. They taught the glowfurs a new song, which ended up being passed on to Cassie's Itty and she sang of two women trapped in a cave. So the SDs went to the rescue.
The Star Darlings play in the Battle of the Bands and then Lady Cordial makes all twelve girls go onstage...and introduces them as the real Star Darlings, telling all the secrets of what they've been doing. Then she pulls out Gemma's wish orb and blows glitter off it, revealing it to be a negative wish orb. Lady Cordial reveals herself to be Rancora and says she made Gemma grant a bad wish, thus turning the wish energy balance of Starland to negative. Lady Stella confronts Rancora, while Gemma holds out her hand to the wish orb. The orb changes into a good one, turning into Gemma's wish blossom and then producing her power crystal. Rancora laughs and says that doesn't negate the bad energy she collected and she adds that they need all TWELVE power crystals to do anything as the "twelve star-charmed Star Darlings." Yeah, they're missing Leona's. Rancora says she's the one who destroyed Leona's wish pendant, she's the one who made the star keychains on their Wishworld bags and loaded them with negative energy so the missions would go wrong, she's the one behind all the bad stuff. She thrives on negative energy. Lady Stella pulls out Leona's wish orb, saying she held onto it in the hopes it would transform someday. The orb floats toward Leona who pulls out her pendant and discovers the positive energy she and Gemma collected fixed the ruined pendant. Rancora fires negative energy at Leona, but a bot-bot jumps in front of her and takes the blast. Leona's orb transforms and she finally has her power crystal. The twelve crystals swirl together as the SDs join hands and the balance of Starland energy shifts violently into the positive. Rancora vanishes and Sage runs to the heroic bot-bot, who turns out to be her Mojo. He's okay though and Gemma realizes she and the others are all glowing brightly, forming a fabulous rainbow. The crowd cheers them on, but Lady Stella suddenly apologizes. A wind rips through everything and a shooting star crosses the sky, then the crowd acts very differently. Lady Stella erased their memories.
This is the part that bugs me. WHY? Why are we still being secretive about this? It's fucking ridiculous. Everyone on Starland deserves to know something so important is happening.
Naturally, the SDs lose the band contest, too, and Vivica acts like a total bitch. Lady Stella at least sees it this time and says they'll keep an eye on her.
Later, the SDs and Lady Stella are all together on the surveillance deck. Lady Stella tells Cassie not to feel guilty because their misstep caused the real saboteur to out herself. They're not going back to Wishworld right away, but will be working with the wish energy scientists on some things. Sage is happy because her mom will be there. Lady Stella also says they have powers that haven't even been discovered yet and because of them, Starland is now safe.
So that's it. I've been suspicious of Cordial since Leona's book, so turned out that was right. I'm not happy they still have to work in secret, because that seems both counterproductive and unfair to the population of Starland. And I wish Vivica would get a good helping of comeuppance. I see a team up with Rancora in her future, so maybe then.
3 comments:
Will you review Good wish Gone Bad and Stealing Starlight?
I never even read Stealing Starlight! It's on my pile. I should do a reread of these 12 before finishing the last books. I'm still mad they never finished properly.
I feel like the reason they still have to work in secret, is because if everyone knew they were saving the world, wouldn't that give them A LOT more enemies to deal with?
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