Mother-Daughter Book Club 1

I've briefly reviewed the first three of these before. Can't remember if I ever did any more. 

This series. Sigh. I've tried rereading it at least three times. This time, I'm determined to actually get through all seven books. 

The good premise is there. Four mothers decide to start a book club for themselves and their daughters. Unfortunately, the girls don't think it's a good idea. Emma and Jess are the only two that are friends. Megan is one of the school mean girls. And new girl Cassidy is a sports nut. so you've got the four very different girls stuck together with their four very different mothers, trying to get through Little Women in the span of a year. 

Yeah, that's the most unrealistic part to me. They have A YEAR to read ONE BOOK. Way too long to really be feasible. 

I've described their personalities before, but I'll give it one more quick rundown. 

EMMA: Bookworm, "chubby" and really needs to learn to stick up for herself. Her mother is a librarian and her father a freelance author, so reading and writing is in her blood. She wants to be a writer. Her parents are my favorites in the series. Her dad is hilarious. 

JESS: Emma's best friend. Lives on her farm which has been in the family since the Revolutionary War. (These books are set in Concord, MA, so there's a lot of history around.) Jess is a gorgeous blonde but she's called "goat girl" by the town mean girls because she's so busy helping on the farm that she carries the scent around sometimes. Loves science, nature and animals. Incredibly smart. Excellent singer. Might want to be a vet. Crush on Emma's older brother Darcy. She's even more shy than Emma though and also needs to learn to have a backbone. Jess's conflict is that her mother, who used to be an actress before her father inherited the family farm, returned to New York City to work on a soap opera. Her parents are not getting divorced, merely living apart, but the situation is weird and hard for a 12-year-old. I like her dad. He tries so hard. And her mom is cool, too.

CASSIDY: The tomboy sports character. Her mother is an ex-model who still commands a lot of star power. Her older sister looks like their mother, but she looks like her recently deceased father. Cassidy wants to play hockey but there's no girls' team, so her new friends help her try out for the boys' team and she makes it. With the backing of Emma's mom, who's my favorite of the mothers. This causes some tension and Cassidy and her mom end up getting therapy. The doctor says her mother is afraid of what could happen to Cassidy because she feels out of control after her husband's death. She eventually chills out about this, but the doctor had them sign a contract to promise to get along, which Cassidy's mom uses as a weapon a little too often. Don't force your daughter into dresses if she doesn't want to wear them. Nice pants exist. I do love Clementine, Cassidy's mom, overall but her insistence on following gender role stereotypes is annoying. Cassidy is my least favorite of the four because I can't relate to her at all. I don't hate her. She's just usually angsty or sporty and it gets boring.  

MEGAN: Megan is Chinese-American and as far as I can tell, her family are the only non-white characters. Sigh. Nice to see some East Asian rep though, I guess. Megan is basically Claudia Kishi for the modern age except she's into fashion design instead of all types of art. She's not a great student, but she's not as bad as Claudia. She does deal with her cause-loving, environmentally-conscious mother taking ages to get behind supporting fashion as a possible life choice for her daughter though. Megan's family recently became wealthy. Megan is a confusing character because she starts out as one of the mean girls, but then feels left out when the other three book club girls start hanging out without her. She and Emma used to be friends so I guess she misses that like Emma does. She eventually stands up to mean girl leader Becca but never fully breaks ties with her. Megan isn't a horrible person so I can't understand how she can find anything to like in someone as nasty as Becca. 

Becca Chadwick and her mother are the book's bullies. You can definitely see where Becca gets her nasty attitude from. My biggest problem with these books, and the reason I've never finished the entire series, is that so frequently there are events that have no repercussions. The books are divided in a very unique way. They're split into four sections, one for each season, and each girl gets a chapter. So sometimes we jump to a month later and all this time has passed, so events never get properly dealt with. Becca is a terrible bully. There's one incident where she steals Emma's journal and reads one of her love poems aloud in front of Emma's crush. The other mean girls, including Megan, don't try to stop her. Megan says, like, one sentence. That's it. Becca is caught red-handed by Emma's mom, but you get the clear feeling she's never punished. Then later, envious of Jess playing Belle in the school play, Becca sets loose Jess's pet goat on the stage IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PLAY. Becca and friends are kicked out of the play, but even Megan doesn't show much remorse about this in the aftermath. And the poor goat had just been released from the vet so it could have gotten hurt. Just because we understand how Becca can be such a bully, because her mom is the same way only less little girl petty, doesn't mean it's okay for her to constantly do shit like this without serious consequences. 

I'm maybe 1/3 of the way through the second book and I had to stop. Cassidy is being angsty again and once again Becca is being a huge bully and all the adults are letting her. Because the mothers had the bright idea to let the Chadwicks join the book club. Who in the fuck understands why, because Calliope Chadwick is just as nasty to them AND their daughters as Becca is to the younger girls. 

I honestly can't explain what it is about these books that I keep coming back to. There's something I love here, despite the giant glaring flaws and my inability to read more than basically one before needing to switch to something else. I'm going to try to bitch my way through the entire series this time. I'm just going to make myself stop after each one, write the review, and then read a different book from cover to cover before coming back to the club.

Thunder Girls 4

Man, I took forever to get back to this series. Sorry, Skade. You're still my favorite. 

I reread books 1-3 right before this and man, these can be repetitive. I feel way moreso than Goddess Girls. How many times to we have to mention the Ragnarok button or list off everything Loki did wrong? We can remember what he did wrong because he's literally the source of the problem in every single book. 

Well, maybe not this one. I'm only half done. But I'm willing to bet he does something. 

So! Skade is the goddess of skiing in this series. We open with her doing some dancing for the first time in her history class. Only apparently, she can't dance. She's completely unaware of it and thinks she's doing fine, but she overhears Njord making fun of her and boggles this kick thing all the students were trying to do. Then the teacher takes her aside and accuses her of mocking tradition. She explains that she wasn't doing this on purpose, but he doesn't believe her. 

I'm gonna stop right here and complain. The teacher is completely wrong here AND I find it to be an unrealistic situation. Dancing doesn't come easy to everyone and from Skade's description, this isn't an easy dance. 

Also, Njord is a dick, but the normally bold Skade is too embarrassed to stick up for herself, which reads as both out of character and letting a bully get away with bullying. We've got Loki and Angerboda in this series. Did we need another asshole? No.

The book did win some points though because it's mentioning way more new students than the first three. We got the names of a light elf and a human in the third book, but this time, we've got Ull and Balder. Then three frost giants arrive and they get names and descriptions, so this book is slightly redeeming itself. 

The frost giants invite a team of nine skiers to a weekend competition. Odin is a bit hesitant, but eventually agrees. 

After the last classtime is cancelled, the students hit the snow. Loki causes an accident between Angerboda and Skade, and then the two learn Odin is watching and judging who will be the nine chosen for the team. Angerboda starts being fake nice. Skade worries about the things Odin is looking at: athletics, attitude and academics. Naturally, she's concerned about her lack of dancing ability being a problem. She tells the other girls about it and they try to give her a lesson, but when she's practicing on the way to dinner, she overhears Njord and Loki making fun of her again. 

I swear, if the authors have Skade just suddenly like Njord after he's bullied her like this I will be pissed. At least she's showing signs of liking Balder, who's really nice. 

And look, there are the girls at the table. Romance-obsessed Freya notices Njord looking at Skade and of course HAS to say something about it. She can be even more annoying about this than Aphrodite. Instead of telling exactly what Njord has been saying to her, Skade just says he's been annoying her and teasing her. So OF COURSE Freya writes it off with the typical "boys tease girls they like" bullshit. I hate that. It can confuse younger girls into what like-teasing is and what flat-out bullying is. Stop making excuses for boys and start teaching them to communicate their feelings without being mean. It's not that hard. I don't like that Skade has an understand of Njord's words as mean-spirited but refuses to tell her friends. They already know about her dancing trouble. They'd think Njord was an asshole, too, if she would just take a second to fucking explain it. 

I love Skade, but she deserves way better than this plot. I'm so disappointed. 

So Skade is hoping she can show her teacher dancing improvement the next day, but then Odin comes in and says he's chosen the team members. Skade is named as the alternate to the confusion of the others. I think it's another bit of bullshit that bitchy Angerboda was chosen but Skade wasn't. Odin tells her after that it was her dancing and her attitude because when Angerboda went to hug her on the slopes earlier Skade backed away. Anyone as observant as Odin wouldn't be fooled by Angerboda's fake nice girl show. At least Skade mentions this. Odin gives her a little pep talk about being confident even in the face of scary things.

Balder comes to talk to Skade and she asks why he's been yawning so much. He tells her about nightmares in which giants keep bothering him. She, Thor and some others go with him to tell Odin about it. Odin has the idea to extract a promise from every possible thing that could harm Balder, a promise that they won't hurt him. 

The team travels to Jotunheim and Skade leads the way. Freya had flown all their equipment there in her kittycart. She'd wanted Skade to come with her but Angerboda took over that invitation. Angerboda suggests Skade, the lowly alternate, take all their belongings to the igloo dorm the frost giants have made for the teams. While doing that, Skade encounters the giant Skrymir, who she doesn't like, and sees some terrifying fire giants for the first time. 

After that, Skade gets some skiing in and then there's a surprise girls-only aerial tricks competition that even alternates can participate in. Skade does and wins. She, a Vanir and a human are the three winners who will each pick a male skier to compete with the next day in the same event. 

At dinner, the Asgard team (joined by Loki because of course they are) learns that Balder is protected by a force field, which accidentally begins a food fight. Skade stops the fire giants from being pissed by explaining that good fights are fun, and by doing so, she's as good a friendship ambassador for Odin as are Balder, Freya and Yanis the light elf. 

Freya tells Skade that she learns the aerial girls will pick their male companions blindly. The boys will stand behind a curtain, revealing only their boots. Wanting to pair with Balder, Skade goes to the boys' igloo to try to see what his boots look like. She notices Loki acting suspiciously and the next morning, Balder is suddenly out of the competition. Loki put mistletoe in his boot and somehow also tricked Odin's ravens into not securing their protection promise from mistletoe. Loki knew Balder was allergic to it and with his toe swollen, he's out of commission. Loki wanted into the competition to impress Surt, the lead fire giant with a badass flaming sword. But the others aren't having it and Skade is in all the events now, not just the aerial tricks. 

However before knowing about Balder, Skade did choose her partner by his boots, but didn't realize Balder had loaned his boots to Njord, who'd only worn a new pair that weren't broken in yet. She ends up stuck with Njord, but he apologizes to her not once but twice in the course of the book. They end up making a good team after all.

The first event is an obstacle course. Skade spots Ratatosk there and realize her team has to wear the ugly reindeer antler beanies knitted by Frigg. She talks everyone into putting them on because she knows Ratatosk will mention they weren't wearing them. When she falls on the ski slope, she realizes the beanies are actually spelled to be protective headgear. 

The competition itself is crazy. The frost giant Skrymir used magic to create illusions that mess with everyone except the frost giant skiers. Pissed off, Surt uses his flaming sword to fight them, which sets trees on fire and melts enough snow to create an avalanche...of water. 

Once the reach the end of the ski run, a message acorn tells Skade and Njord that Balder is missing. And he's in Helheim of all places. So off they go down the treacherous Helrun ski run to get to Helheim and rescue Balder. Hel in this series is an older woman/monster who is forced to babysit the spirits of the evil dead. She liked Balder's voice and soothing personality so she gave him nightmares that eventually led him to come to Hel, where she's got him reading stories to the evil dead. Hel makes a deal that she'll free Njord, Balder and Skade from Hel if they can make one thing living and one thing dead cry for him. Skade herself cries and then she gets Njord, god of the sea, to bring salt water from the rock itself, creating a waterfall and pool. Hel is thrilled because the evil dead have a cool place to swim, so she lets them all go. Freya came to pick them up in her kittycart, saying that the rest of the competition was cancelled, but then they all realize a lot of these events are the same as what's been predicted to lead to Ragnarok. So then it's a race back to Jotunheim to stop three roosters, gifts from the fire giants, from crowing. Freya's giant cats scare the roosters and save the world. 

Once everyone is back in Asgard, there's a celebration and Skade finally gets over her fear of dancing. She invents some goofy moves and some ski-based ones that others like. She and Njord are officially okay in my book now, but she also realizes she's not crushing on either him or Balder, though maybe someday she will. Even Angerboda is more helpful and happy. 

The second half of this book really improved upon the first, though the plot is all over the place. I assume the authors knew this was the end of the series. There hasn't been a fifth Thunder Girls and it's been almost two years. I think that's why the Ragnarok plot got shoved in there at the end. The redesign of the death of Balder myth would have been enough on its own otherwise. Not a bad quick ending to the series though. I do still like Skade best, even if elements of this book weren't to my liking. 

From Shadowed Places

Just finished the second of two single-author anthologies I tried out on Amazon's suggestion. This one was far better than the previous. 

From Shadowed Places contains 13 tales. Once again, there were several editing fails, but they were mostly typos and tense switches, not truly distracting things like the last book. 

I'll be putting spoilers in the review below.

58 Minutes: A man brings a dying woman into a diner. She's the victim of a hit and run. It doesn't take long for the diner's occupants to turn on one of the patrons and basically tear him apart with their bare hands because they think he's the killer. However, the woman returns to life and she and the man talk about a bet that he's won. Their names are Adam and Eve...and they're demons who set up games like this to test humanity and then eat souls. Not sure why Adam and Eve are demons, but it's a decent story.

Fate Always Knocks Twice: An old carny woman visits the home of a couple who she recently learned were the people who ran over and killed her grandson four years ago. She offers them a choice to save either their daughter or their son. The couple fight each other, each trying to save the child of their choice, only for the woman to say, as they lay dying, that she never intended to hurt their children...only them. Not sure we needed two hit and run stories in a row. I would have put this one farther into the book. But it's not bad. 

Down the Road: Post-apocalyptic setting. Man travelling with his son and the reveal is that the son has been dead for days. The man finally buries him and lets him go. Not bad, but not unique in any way. 

The Battle at Dayton Hill: Vengeful ghost. Not the best story. 

Sacred: Meat-packing plant on Native American burial ground. Nothing interesting really. 

Perfect Circles: Man doodles a circle and it opens up into this black void. He experiments with it and sees creatures in the other dimension it seems to be a portal to. The entire story is him experimenting with the hole and becoming increasingly dissatisfied with humanity. He ends up using his inherited riches to create a giant hole that will let the creatures from the other dimension through, causing the sixth great extinction, because humanity doesn't deserve to keep on. This one's not bad at all. It's definitely got a King feel to it. 

Nightline: Female cop sets up her partner as the serial killer they've been hunting. She's supposed to have been the killer, but the final scene has her getting the killer's signature pre-murder phone call. Not the best. 

A Devil of a Deal: Typical devil tricking a dumb human story. It was okay.

Dread: Rich guy murderer has his estate caretaker turn on him and leave him at the mercy of the ghosts  formed from dirt that his victims come back as. Meh. 

I Am Dimension: Set in 1938, the descendants of Poe and Usher (from his story) in a sci fi-ish tale with a portal to other places and times. It was okay. 

It's That Thing About Death: Reporter for a paranormal magazine interviews a woman whose husband is a ghost but still lives with her in a benevolent way. He gets creeped out by the helpful ghost, attacks the woman when trying to flee, and then the husband kills him. Not bad. 

Red Hour: Asshole night security guard at a museum gets his hands on a spellbook from Salem. He tries the spells and learns they work. One of his supervisors comes after him, knowing he's a descendant of the witches because only one of them could work the spells. Guard kills him but then accidentally curses and kills himself because he's a fucking idiot. I liked this one. I'm a sucker for asshole museum guards getting their comeuppance. 

From Shadowed Places: Four college friends run their car off the road in a snowstorm and end up with an older couple at a farmhouse. One friend is near death from a bad fever. Then a guy comes in from the blizzard and passes out, but not before saying his patient tried to kill him. This is a large cause for concern and the body of the story is the main two friends trying to save their sick friend while worrying about the mentally ill guy on the loose. The strange man predictably is not the doctor at all but the patient who killed the doctor. The main guys are able to kill him and their sick friend's fever breaks. Very commonplace and predictable story and the female character was an obnoxious bitch. 

Not a bad assortment of tales but once again very amateurish compared to what I prefer. I think I actually liked the subject matter and handling by the female author of the first collection better, but her lack of editing made her stories almost unreadable. These were far more readable, but ultimately quite predictable and even dull at times, though there were some standouts. I really need to pay more attention when I order anthologies and make sure they're not small press by single authors!

Vicious Traditions

Sometimes I try books Amazon suggests and it works out well, sometimes not, and sometimes it's somewhere in between. This is one of the latter times. 

I love horror anthologies. You all know that. And occasionally I just don't pay attention when I'm ordering them. I tend to stay away from collections by a single author, just in case I don't like their style. Well, this past order, I managed to get two anthologies, each by a single author. 

My overall impression of this book is sadness that the world of publishing has changed so much. In the past, you'd see an infrequent typo in a book. However, nowadays as happens with these small press pieces, the entire book needed massive edits that never happened. It is extremely distracting from the flow of the story. Typos all over, word repetition, run-on sentences galore, and one mistake that repeated in multiple stories that I'm not sure if it's that the author doesn't know the correct usage of the word or if it was some kind of "find and replace" editing error. 

In case you were wondering, the term of exemption is "save for" not "safe for." Everything was missing, SAVE FOR the box on the table. This same error was in at least three different stories. 

I tried to give this a shot and I read it all the way through. Typos aside, I feel like the writer found a list of horror themes or tropes and wrote stories going down said list. I'm going to make my own list of the stories included here and I'll let you all be the judge of whether you agree with me. 

Boys of Summer: Straight up Lost Boys fanfic. Not one single name is used that was in the film, but this is clearly set in the world of The Lost Boys. I have zero problem with this. I actually was into it when I first started, but the heroine is dull and the story doesn't explain itself very well. so your theme here would be girl becomes vampire.

Fields of Blood: Vengeful female ghost.

Baby Teeth: Mother kills her baby because she's convinced the child is possessed. Kills therapist at the end, convinced that the baby's possession transferred to her. This one had an anti-goth bit I hated. The author mentions goth a few times like she's aware of it, but I didn't feel the prejudice here was necessary to the story or even fitting of the subculture.

One for the Money, Two for the Show: Couple goes to horror-themed drive in only to realize they're the stars of the show. 

Red Snow: Woman returns to family cabin to see ailing mother one last time. Is forced to confront the tragedy that happened two years ago, only for the reveal to be that the killer was her. Both Baby Teeth and this story mention a "Pierrot the Clown" doll, which I actually found more intriguing than the stories themselves. It's an odd thing to be repeated. (I like pierrots, so it caught my eye.)

Driver, Surprise Me: Killer girlfriend gets a ride from guy with a bunch of dolls in the backseat and ends up transformed into one of them. This one was extremely short, but it was actually one of the best. I didn't care for the previous ones, but I hoped this might be a turning point in the book and things would get better. 

Silent Ivy Hotel: And they did. I liked this one, although I'm not sure I agree with the protagonist's view that women start aging that seriously at 30 and that 30 is the death age for female actors in Hollywood. A lot of actresses thought of as conventionally beautiful are well over 30. And I'm 43 and have no sign of it in my face. So the premise here is aging starlet visits witch to rejuvenate her beauty. I liked the gorgon theme a lot. Not often one used in connotation with beauty. This one reads like a Tales from the Crypt episode, which is definitely a compliment coming from me. 

Comets Tear the Skies: Aliens, but they worship a goddess named Scylla, who's voracious like the Greek myth Scylla. I liked that bit. This one was pretty good. 

Green Gloves: Roma curse. Male writer becomes obsessed with waitress who wears green gloves. She tells him about a baby raised by wolves because it had been cursed. The twist at the end is a bit clumsy, but I enjoyed the story overall. 

Across the Woods: Girl runs through the woods on her sixteenth birthday because it's family tradition. Her boyfriend follows her and she kills him, because that's her initiation into her family of witches. Very short story and it doesn't work this time. It feels too amateurish compared to the others, like the author spat it out in ten minutes.

The Invasion: Aliens again only reversed. Humans were conquered by Plutonians and the twist is that the lead character who is different is still human. I liked this one. 

My Tears Ricochet: Ghost of teen girl watches her own funeral then kills the boyfriend who killed her. 

Lake of Sin: Italian lake kills a ton of people every year, including the lead's brother. She trains in swimming and scuba so she can search the lake. Finds it full of ghosts of people the Nazis forced to drown. Lead ghost is Roma and cursed the lake. Main character frees her and breaks the curse. Another Roma curse seems repetitive, but this is also a good story so I don't mind so much. 

Good Sister, Bad Sister: Muslim girl envious of older sister gets attacked in woods. Spends rest of story changing into what I'm assuming is a werewolf, though it's never specified. Kills boy after he rapes her older sister, then turns into badass. I liked this one. The lead's little edgy makeover at the end was cute and made up a bit for the anti-goth bull in the baby story.

Now do you see what I mean about the tropes? In horror, it's hard to do truly unique things these days. You kind of have to take the tropes and try to do the best you can with them, but a lot of people are really, really good at that. This book just wasn't. There are decent stories here, but they still feel like the author is doing some sort of horror writing challenge and posting a story a week on a blog or something. 

I do like that almost every main character is female. Green Gloves was the only male protagonist. I like that a lot of women are either badass or the killers themselves. I do think Nox has promise, but she isn't quite there yet. And dear gods, PLEASE find an editor! That would help so much.

Don't Turn Out the Lights

 
This anthology is a tribute in the frame of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. The 35 tales are mostly short. Well, they're all short, but some run a little more like a standard kids' short story while others are only a couple pages. 

The illustrator, while nothing near as creepy as the original, does a good job. 

The stories themselves are hit or miss, like any anthology. Very rarely do I come across an anthology that just knocks it out of the park with every story. 

My favorites: The Funeral Portrait, The Carved Bear, The Neighbor, and The Tall Ones.

I recommend picking it up if you like Scary Stories. It's only $6.99 on Amazon. 

Disney's Twisted Tales: Conceal, Don't Feel

I'm not a big Frozen fan, but there are definitely elements in the story that could have made for a good twisted version. 

However, what we got is so watered-down and weak that it's just as kid-friendly as the movie. Not what the twisted tales line should be about. 

In this book, when they're kids, Elsa messes up the troll's spell. Her powers are locked away and Anna is spelled to be unable to be near her sister. The closer she is physically to Elsa, the faster she freezes. The screwy spell also makes the entire kingdom forget Anna exists, save her parents and the nice couple who are given Anna to raise. (The woman in the couple is the girls' mother's BFF.) So Elsa grows up in a lonely, solitary, studious life, while Anna lives in a small town in the mountains, being the happy, friendly, creative daughter of the town bakers.  

Time passes and Elsa's powers reveal themselves. Her parents leave for their doomed journey. Anna realizes that Freya, the friend of her mom's who visits every couple months, is actually the queen. She and Kristoff journey to Arendelle to help Elsa, because Anna feels she's in danger. Elsa, who has been courted by Hans for a year, flees a few moments before her coronation, after finding a letter from her parents that reveals she has a sister named Anna who's alive and living elsewhere. Hans goes after Elsa. Anna still saves her sister from him. The sisters are reunited and the cursed spell is broken. There's more here that I'm skipping, but the book is basically only the slightest twist on the movie and everything ends up the same. It wasn't awful but it was far from good.

W.I.T.C.H. Part 7: New Power

Now this is what I've been waiting for and it did not disappoint. I stopped importing the W.I.T.C.H. magazines somewhere in this storyline or possibly before. I was reading them online for a bit, too. But it's been so long that I can't remember. 

FIRST ISSUE: A dark seed flies up to Kandrakar and takes root. Yan and Himerish tell the others that Kandrakar is threatened but they don't know any details, so Himerish wants to seal it away from everything. Yan doesn't like this, as it will keep her from Hay. A very determined and forceful Himerish goes to the Vault of Powers and sets loose the elements in their purest form. Meanwhile at night, a stranger enters each girl's room and takes her power away. A very familiar stranger. What the hell is Matt doing? And how? The next day, the girls realize they're no longer magical to a mixed bag of feelings. Cornelia, ever level-headed, is thrilled to no longer be responsible for so many lives. She can just live a normal life now. Irma is distraught because she no longer feels special. At Taranee's, Peter is moving out, while Hay doesn't realize her magic is missing thanks to a series of coincidences. Susan keeps trying to tell Will something, but Matt appears outside and as always, Susan must wait. Or just stop dragging her feet telling her daughter things. She always does this. Matt is completely unresponsive to Will and says they'll talk later. Then why did you go over there? Ugh. At the bookstore, the girls all finally see their powers are gone. We cries. Upstairs, the shop is being turned into a restaurant. Himerish seals Kandrakar off, but Yan leaves a spot open where she can see Hay but not talk to her. Susan blurts out to Will that she and Dean are pregnant and Will runs through a bunch of emotions before settling on happy. The girls all go to Jensen Dance Academy, because for some reason, they're all auditioning together. I don't get why. They're not exactly dancers. They perform their routine for a bitchy new teacher. Beneath the Earth, we meet our big bad for this arc: the Dark Mother. She looks like a pissed off dryad or something. At the end, the girls see five lights shooting through the sky. 

SECOND ISSUE: Cornelia dreams of being a little girl lost in the woods, who found comfort in a circle of pebbles. In the present, the pure elements find their girls. Cornelia isn't happy, but I am. I love the new outfits. They're far more tactical because there's way less bared skin. Cornelia's already long skirt is longer and Hay's loincloth is now a full split skirt. Poor Hay always flew with everyone looking up her tiny skirt. Irma's skirt is longer, too, and all these lengths of fabric are now prehensile. I think Will's sleeves might be, too. Will and Irma sport long black gloves and Hay and Taranee have short ones. Cornelia's top also completely covers her hands. She has zero bare skin except for the neck up and there's something very elegant and Cornelia about it. Their wings have gotten huge, too. Anyway, they look great. They quickly realize they're stronger than ever. Taranee looks like the Human Torch. Matt appears and says they can't control their powers. He says he's been with them a long time, has always known their secret and was instructed not to tell them. That's a pretty big bombshell. Matt's from Kandrakar or at least works for it. Odd considering he had a few solo scenes where he didn't seem to know anything. I wonder if there was a mind block or something. He doesn't explain anything about himself, just says that Kandrakar has sealed itself off, so the Oracle sent him to take their powers and wait for the pure ones to find them. The girls have no control over their abilities. Cornelia is balking but Matt says everyone needs W.I.T.C.H. I think people might wonder why Cornelia is my favorite when she does stuff like this, but while it would not be my choice to be normal, I understand why it would appeal to down to Earth Corny. She's in character. And when she does what she knows she needs to, she's also in character. Matt says he's going to be their coach "of sorts" even though he's afraid of their power potential. Will starts to ask something and Matt says "the past will remain safe in our hearts." And that's all he'll say. Poor Will. Oh, the prehensile, sentient fabric is called...lamia. Interesting name choice. Errrrrr. The next day, the girls struggle with containing their powers. Will goes to the doctor with Susan and learns if they're having a boy or girl. Later, they meet with Matt in their HQ. He's already there. Another thing he already knew. He tells the girls they need to find the root of their power and master it, and thanks to Cornelia's dream, she's first. They go on an underground adventure, fight with Dark Mother's roots and her worm-like hunters and win. While the others have to come back through the sewer, Cornelia is transported to the woods where her dream younger self finds her. She says she feels complete after and her parents overhear and tell her that actually happened when she was little. Matt gives Cornelia the symbol of her power, as she's mastered it. She should be happy but on the way home, she sees her mother with a strange man and they touch hands. The others go to the dance academy, where the teacher accepts them all except Hay. She tries to audition again but the teacher says she lacks the flexibility needed. Hay says she's a costume designer and the bitchy teacher gives her an impossible assignment: to replicate a fancy dress by morning. At the end, Will reveals the baby is a boy. 

THIRD ISSUE: This entire issue is about the guardians' different vacations. The car breaks down for Will's family so they spend the entire vacation try to get somewhere they never reach. Irma and Hay are going to the beach where they meet a cool couple that they have fun with. Taranee is off to some school where she's bullied, meets a cute boy who doesn't speak much English, and conquers the bullies in the end. Cornelia stays at home, thinking she'll be able to be with Peter all the time, buuuuuuut Bitch Grandma. UGH. It's a filler issue but it's a really fun one this time. 

FOURTH ISSUE: This one's a bombshell. I'll skip the exact details, but Taranee learns she's ADOPTED. Pretty major secret for being 78 issues into the storyline. She's upset that her mom kept it from her for so long. She learns that she was rescued from a fire as a baby and Matt tells her this might connect to the root of her power and she needs to learn more. The girls go find the ruins of Taranee's original home, while Cornelia stays in her home and confronts her mother about the strange man she saw her with. Her mother tells her that was a high school boyfriend that she ran into by chance. Cornelia's dad overhears part of the conversation where her mother says he doesn't have as much time for her as he used to, but she told her ex that her family means more to her than anything. Dark Mother's roots attack the guardians, but Taranee masters her power and saves the day. Cornelia's dad whisks her mom away for a surprise vacation. Nice touch, Dad. The last page is Susan being loaded into an ambulance. Looks like she may have been in a car accident. 

Whew! That was a lot. And all of it was good. While Dark Mother isn't an interesting big bad (yet?), the storyline with finding the roots of their powers is great and you can't do that without character development, which I always love. 

Order of Favorite Guardians: Cornelia, Hay/Taranee, Irma, Will.

Cornelia above all the others. She's my favorite by far. Taranee's adoption storyline catches her up to Hay, while Irma and Will remain behind. 

FIRST ISSUE: Post-car accident, Susan is fine. On Kandrakar, most of the inhabitants are enjoying the tree, but Yan reminds the Oracle of the tale of Meter, the queen of spring whose desire for power turned her evil. Yep, that's the Dark Mother. Yan suspects the tree grew from one of her dark seeds and shows the Oracle how the other people of Kandrakar circle and protect it. Dark Mother goes after Irma in her sleep, but she wakes up. Stephen is there in the morning. I can't remember if I've already covered this, but while I love the themes of these newer issues, it's so weird to see the old W.I.T.C.H. world eradicated. Since when do all of them have an interest in dance? How did Irma go from stringing Martin along and trying to decide about her feelings for Joel to being ready to be Stephen's serious girlfriend at the snap of fingers? The girls hear noises from their basement HQ and follow them to...randomly meet Stephen who introduces them to U18. That does mean under 18...feet underground. They live fully or mostly in all these spaces underneath Heatherfield. So we've got a crew of totally new characters to randomly take the place of some of the old ones. U18 leads W.I.T.C.H. where they wanted to go, then the girls are able to get rid of them before having to battle some of Dark Mother's minions. Irma finally gets to the place she's been led to and she's forced to choose between love and her magic. Irma chooses love and of course it was a trick, because that was the secret to finding the root of her power. After so many issues of Irma not being ready to be in love, it's nice to see her happy and finally figuring things out, but it still feels rushed because there was no groundwork for her and Stephen. (Another older boy. Sigh.) At the end of the issue, the baby is coming!

SECOND ISSUE: Hay goes to the dance studio to rehearse on her own. There never was a resolution to the bitchy teacher's costume challenge, but it's clear Hay was able to do it and also that she's persisted in keeping up with dance, even though said teacher thought she couldn't do it. There's a lot of comedy  over the baby's birth, but...they decided to name him William? Out of all the names, why pick something so close to Will's? At Taranee's, she sits down with her dad and they discuss the adoption. Taranee's mom looked into her birth family and she has info, but Taranee first asks her to sing a childhood lullaby. It's a cute family moment with some good characterization for Taranee's frequently absent father and in the past been bitchy mother. More comedy about Cornelia visiting Peter and the apartment being a sty. Hay and Laura, the teacher, have some nice bonding moments. She's not bitchy after all. More comic relief with Irma and Stephen. They are cute, but I still want to know what happened to Joel. Maybe I didn't catch something when I was reading. Laura admits she's seeing a dancer that's Hay's idol. (But why does Hay have a dance idol suddenly?) But distance has led them to not speak for a long time. Hay encourages her to call him and a phone rings nearby. Turns out he was coming to see her. The issue ends with everyone being happy and the girls giving a dance recital. 

THIRD ISSUE: The Hay-centric power root issue. She and her family are moving to the suburbs because they're expanding the restaurant and will need the living space. Hay isn't happy about it. Meanwhile, two hurricanes are converging on Heatherfield. The hurricanes arrive much more quickly than anticipated and W.I.T.C.H. take to the air to try to help. I find it funny that they all can finally fly. There were maybe a couple panels addressing that. Why in the world did they always have wings if only Hay could fly? But that's been fixed now. Hay takes on the hurricanes alone, while the others try to cut the power to the city, because that will help lessen the damage. Taranee is reluctant to leave Hay behind, which is really nice, even though she knows Hay has to face finding the root of her power on her own. Dark Mother managed to use lightning to keep the power on, so the guardians' efforts were for nothing. Hay finds the root of her power and creates a third hurricane, but this one sucks up the other two. Hay realizes she loves her new home, which is named Dragonfly, a theme that flowed through the issue. 

FOURTH ISSUE: Will's turn. Of course she's last. Dark Mother plans to lure her to her. At Will's, they're having a party and everyone keeps calling baby William "Will," much to Will's confusion. Then everyone starts calling her Wilhelmina, much to her annoyance. William was a really stupid name choice. Like seriously, why? Will spends most of the issue in a dream state, getting through that while in the real world, she's heading toward Dark Mother. Will finds the root of her power but that also frees Dark Mother and they briefly battle before Will flees. She runs into Matt and the others and everything is momentarily okay. 

As with the first volume, A LOT going on here. I continue to love the character development, but the jarring differences are still hard to get used to. Disappearing characters, unresolved relationships, a sudden team interest in dance. Not that that's a bad thing, but it's the equivalent of all the magical girls spontaneously being able to form a band.  

Order of Favorite Guardians: Cornelia, Hay/Taranee, Irma, Will.

Order remains the same with Hay and Taranee in a tie. Though Irma and Will are closer to the rest of the pack than ever.

FIRST ISSUE: Dark Mother sends out a hypnotic eye through television screens. The guardians run to U18 for help, knowing how tech-savvy they are. Stephen pulls Irma aside and he confronts her about how mysterious she and her friends are. She caves and tells him the truth. Irma then spends a few pages doing magic for him in some comic relief. Though that doesn't really  downplay what she did. The others kept their secret from their boyfriends, except for Will and that was mostly because Matt was the focus of multiple attacks. So for Irma to reveal it to her no legwork boyfriend is kinda wild. Dark Mother has created some giant flower that lets her get inside and turn into a perfume that travels to Kandrakar. That's...creative. So she does that and abandons all her followers. One of them has betrayed her and grown more flowers, so W.I.T.C.H. is able to travel the same way. They evaluate how strong Dark Mother is and decide to return to Earth via the flowers and strategize. Hay is against this and mad about it. Matt tells them they can only defeat Dark Mother if they learn to unite their powers. Will finally asks Matt what I've been waiting many issues for her to do: if he loves her. He still does and they finally reconcile. We still don't know Matt's backstory that totally came out of nowhere but at least this is finally resolved. 

SECOND ISSUE: Yan keeps repeating Hay's name in her mind and Dark Mother senses that there's one person she doesn't have control of. In Heatherfield, the no-longer-bitchy dance teacher Laura is randomly replaced by a nasty guy. Hay goes to visit Laura who is apparently...sick? There's a South Asian lady with her. I can't tell if she's supposed to be a maid or a nurse or what. Laura gives Hay a nice pep talk and then asks her to deliver a letter for her. The girls all get together in Peter's old room to study. They have both tests and a dance recital on the same day. Seems unrealistic, but sure, why not just keep inventing added pressures for these poor teens? Stephen, Peter and Matt provide annoying (to the girl they're not paired with) distractions. Will is taking charge and trying to organize everyone, but they're all tired by the end of the day. Hay suggests they all go deliver Laura's letter. It's to a capoeira instructor and the girls fall in love with it. After being given a book on the movements and some songs, they decide to try it out in Peter's old room. The next day, tests are done and it's time for the recital. The girls combine capoeira with actually displaying their magic, though it appears to be special effects. Not that anyone could figure out how they did any. Everything goes great. Except on Kandrakar, where Dark Mother created doubles of the girls to trick Yan into revealing that she's the one not fully under control. The next day, Hay learns that Laura has passed. Time flows oddly in these issues, because it's clearly been quite a long time, which we know from William's birth, but it still feels very sudden to have Laura there four issues ago and now she was so sick that she's died. Hay does a dance for Laura in Laura's garden and the issue ends. 

THIRD ISSUE: While the people of Kandrakar scream, the guardians fight because they're mad at Irma for telling Stephen. They go to meet Matt and are very cocky about their upcoming fight. I've never seen all the girls be this arrogant, but I suppose mastering your powers will do that. And yet when they go to Kandrakar and decide to split up, exactly what Matt said not to do, they're very easily defeated. Hay is the one left standing and she frees Yan, who yells at her and says she hardly recognizes her. Yan's pep talk wakes everyone up and they're able to join together in time for form a physical representation of their united power. This female figure takes on Dark Mother. She's able to capture Dark Mother in a ball and then turns herself and the ball to stone, forever imprisoning the dark earth spirit. The Oracle is devastated that he failed so badly. And again, I'll address this change. What happened to the triumvirate? Endarno is suddenly not there. The Oracle seems to be the only one with power. At the end, Will deals with baby William...who has wings! 

FOURTH ISSUE: Will is struggling to hide William's magic from his parents. Irma is hiding from Stephen because she suddenly doesn't know how to handle that he knows. Hay wants to be more independent. The guardians are summoned to Kandrakar, where they have to help remove Dark Mother's evil roots. They do so accompanied by Yan and five cables fueled by W.I.T.C.H.'s powers now hold up Kandrakar. Once they return, Himerish reveals that Yan is the new Oracle. They have a celebration and Yan does it with her typical humility and down to earth style. She gives the girls some interesting gifts and restyles Kandrakar with her powers. On Earth, Hay tells her parents she wants a job not in the restaurant, Irma and Stephen are cool, Taranee is the new assistant teacher at Jensen, Peter and Cornelia are cute, and Will is going to teach baby William about magic. Himerish leaves Kandrakar smiling. 

So that wraps up the New Power arc. Definitely one of the strongest ones in terms of character development. If only it weren't for the loose ends, it would hold up with the original two storylines as the strongest. 

Order of Favorite Guardians: Cornelia, Hay/Taranee, Irma, Will.