AMERICAN GIRL: Melody

 
Well, this has certainly been a long time coming. I intended to add Melody to my AG historical reviews years ago, but I never got around to finishing her mystery. And because I never finished Melody, I also never finished Julie, so I have not one but two AG mysteries I've never read! Time to fix that. 

I just finished rereading No Ordinary Sound. It's definitely a powerful book and it made me emotional a few times. I'll do a quick cast list before moving on to the plot synopsis. 

So we've got 9-year-old Melody, whose varied interests are singing, gardening, flower arranging, and cars. It's only mentioned a couple times briefly, but Melody is really into cars. Well, she IS from Detroit. Heh. 

Melody's mother is a teacher and her father is a factory worker. I'm not sure what exactly he does. He was a really good mechanic as part of the Tuskegee Airmen, but even in 1964 Detroit, better jobs for black people aren't plentiful. 

Melody's grandmother was a singer, who now teaches piano and voice lessons. Her grandfather owns a flower shop. 

Melody has three older siblings. Yvonne is in college down in Tuskegee, where both her parents went. Dwayne is supposed to go to college but wants to pursue a Motown career. Lila is the family scholar. She's good at math, science, reading and basically anything academic. 

Then there are Melody's cousins, two parents and their daughter. The mother Tish owns a salon and her husband Charles is a pharmacist. Thier daughter Val is Melody's best friend.

Her other best friend is named Sharon. Then we've got her rival Diane, who also sings.

We've basically got most of the book featuring the daily life of this extended family. Melody gets a solo in the fall church program. Yvonne comes home for the summer and is refused a job at the bank because she's black, so badass Melody marches in and closes her account, saying exactly why she's doing it. Yvonne ends up kicking ass in sales at their grandfather's flower shop, so he hires her. Dwayne struggles with his parents wanting him to go to college when he has Motown opportunities. He moves out right before an audition, which his group does well enough at to go out on tour. Melody's cousins move to Detroit from Birmingham due to all the race-based violence. 

There are several incidents of racism throughout the book. Yvonne's failure to get hired at the bank, as I mentioned. Dwayne and Melody being profiled when they're just trying to shop. The cousins having trouble finding a home to buy because of racists in the neighborhoods. All of the men struggle with job-based racism. 

Inspired by MLK, who she got to hear speak, Melody finally figures out which song to sing for the fall program. She practices and earns the respect of Diane, her now former rival and new friend. 

Sadly, then the Birmingham church bombing happens, and Melody is profoundly affected by this incident and the death of four little girls. Medically, it would have to be coincidence, but she develops laryngitis the same day she learns of the bombing. After she recovers, she freezes on the steps of her church and can't go inside. She loses her voice again, not from medical reasons, but because she's so utterly freaked out by the bombing that she's terrified of her own church and overwhelmed by her feelings. 

With the help of her friends and family, Melody regains her voice and is able to sing for the four little girls who no longer can. 

I really enjoyed this book and all of the characters. It can be hard to read at times, but that is how historical things are. It's important to tell these stories and not shy away from the truth, in hopes that someday we'll be better. I really wish I could say things were a lot better now than in 1964, but the same problems still exist in ever-shifting forms and that's what makes these stories hard for me sometimes. 

Melody's second volume is mostly more light-hearted. On her New Year's Day tenth birthday, the pastor encourages his congregation to help make positive changes in their community in the new year. Melody eventually decides to help clean up her neighborhood park. She and some of the other kids form a Junior Block Club and set to work on their project, which takes up most of the book.

Val's family finally gets a house. 

Everyone participates in a protest against the store that profiled Dwayne and Melody in the first book. 

Melody sings backup for her brother on his first song to be recorded on vinyl. 

Melody, her mother and grandfather, and Val all take a trip to Alabama to visit the old family farm, which Melody has never seen. It's mostly gone, but there are memories. Then they visit her grandfather's older sister and it's there that they learn Yvonne has been arrested. She's been working with the Freedom Summer campaign to help black people get their chance to vote. Naturally, groups like the KKK don't like that. Three students were murdered and the book references that incident, though they're still missing in the events of the book. It's mentioned in the notes at the end though. Yvonne broke her wrist during the arrest, but her mother and grandfather got her out of jail. She doesn't want to stop working for the cause though, so she'll be getting right back to it. 

This one was good, too, but not the emotional roller coaster of the first book. 

I really want to like this. I do and I don't from different points of view. 

Melody accompanies Val and Tish to a meeting of the Fair Housing Committee on Belle Isle, a big island in the Detroit River. There she meets Leah Roth, a 14-year-old Jewish girl whose mother is also on the committee and friends with Tish. Melody is instantly wowed by Leah because she's very fashionable, but she's also nice. Val isn't a fan, though she won't say why. 

Melody starts a friendship with Leah, though it causes a rift between her and Val. Val won't ever give a concrete reason as to why she doesn't like Leah. Her excuses have a million holes. I think it's basically because she doesn't want to share Melody, but she already shares Melody with Sharon and Diane, so what's one more person? The whole Val doesn't like Leah plotline was pretty weak. 

Melody meets Leah's grandfather, a Polish botanist who was trapped in the ghettoes during the Nazi invasion. He managed to get to the US with a clipping of a rare lady's slipper orchid, but his ill treatment ruined his health forever. He's only 68 but he isn't doing very well, and Leah is very upset about his health. She's found a doctor in New York who might be able to treat him, but it's expensive and her grandfather isn't willing to try. 

There's a flower show at the conservatory on Belle Isle and Melody's grandfather is taking part. The guy in charge comes across as racist, so of course when some rare orchids are stolen, this asshole points the police to Melody's grandfather because he'd caught the two of them in the orchid room and been pissed about it. 

Melody and Val go to the party that night determined to look for clues to clear Poppa's name. Leah and her grandfather are also in attendance, because he's giving a talk about orchids. He's brought his very rare orchid and Leah is all worked up about it. She ends up knocking it over, the conservatory guy tries to rescue it, another guy tries to steal it, and both Leah and Melody try to stop him. Everyone gets carted off to the police station, where Leah's story comes out. The thief is related to the man that helped Leah's grandfather get to the US with the rare orchid. He's an unscrupulous plant dealer. He sees how Leah cares about her grandfather's help and it's him that shows her the article about the doctor in New York, trying to get her to help him steal orchids so they can split the profits. She assisted him in the theft of the first ones from the conservatory, but she tried to stop him from stealing the lady's slipper. Her grandfather basically tells her he's lived a full life and he's ready when the time comes, so she needs to accept it. Melody's grandfather's name is cleared. 

From a character standpoint, I really liked this. Leah is likeable when she's not being a thief. Her grandfather is awesome. I liked how they told about Jewish people helping black people with civil rights issues. All of that was done well. Val is out of character and her storyline really doesn't add anything to the book, so it felt unnecessary, but everything else character-wise was good. 

Oh, one thing that I didn't like. This book is clearly set a year after her second book. Melody turned 10 in that book, yet she's said to be 10 here. She isn't. She's 11. Work on your math better, author.

As a mystery though, this is terrible. It was very apparent from the second time you saw this red-haired thief that he was gonna be the bad guy and that Leah was involved. Once Melody learned the grandfather's story, it was equally apparent what Leah's motivation was. It was too obvious. 

Overall, I enjoyed Melody's books a lot and I'm glad I finally got around to finishing them. 

Daughter of Sparta

This is not one of those ancient Greece set books where women behave as they actually would have had to, so if you can't set that sense of disbelief aside, this one is not for you.  

The Spartans really don't seem like the type that would ever let an outsider female learn their warrior ways, so right off the bat, this book is unbelievable. That's the main premise of the beginning. Daphne and her two older brothers are outsiders, adopted by one of the politicians of Sparta, so they're raised somewhat privileged. The eldest is married and a stick in the mud. The younger brother you barely get to meet, though he comes across as irresponsible. Daphne herself is your typical feminist protagonist that feels very anachronistic. She wins a duel against a male warrior and then is allowed to compete in this men-only super important race when her second brother doesn't show up. If you can make it past these scenes without being completely taken out of the story, you should be good for the rest of the book. 

Daphne plows into the nearby woods, tracking the deer whose neck she must get a wreath from, alongside her maybe crush and some other dudes. Separated from the others, she runs into Artemis. The gods make their presence known very early and don't ever go away. Artemis is threatening and scary. She gives Daphne the Midas Curse, which means liquid gold runs across her skin constantly and it allows Artemis to have a hold on her. Artemis wants Daphne to help Olympus regain nine things that were stolen from it, because the loss of these things is draining the power of the Olympians. She turns her brother who never showed up at the race into a deer to really convince Daphne she's got to help her. 

So Daphne leaves Sparta alongside Apollo, who also is on this quest for reasons that are layered and don't get revealed until nearer the end. Lykou, Daphne's maybe crush, follows them but is caught by Apollo and turned into a large black wolf. It is mentioned a few times that maybe the gods should stop turning people into animals if they want their help. 

I'm going to sum up the action fairly quickly and spoilery. Daphne and Apollo travel to see Prometheus, who gives cryptic prophetic advice only to Daphne. Then they're off to Knossos, because Minos has three of the nine things. They meet Theseus there and he joins their group. Daphne battles the minotaur and wins. She frees the three things that were stolen and it's revealed that they're the Muses. The group is then off to Thebes to stop the "plague of Thebes," which anyone with any myth knowledge is going to know is the Sphinx. On the way, they get captured by asshole centaurs and fight them alongside Hippolyta of the Amazons, who briefly is part of the team. The Sphinx scenes are my favorite of the questy battle-type scenes. There are a lot of other monsters captured by the Sphinx and Daphne frees them all. Many of them promise to come to her aid in the future, though that is never played out in this book. I'm hoping the author remembers it and we see at least one of them in the sequel. Three more Muses are now free. With the Sphinx defeated, Theseus could go on to rule Athens but instead chooses to complete the quest and he's killed by Minos in the next scene. Minos has been stalking them so the group has to battle him, as well as Phobos and Deimos. After killing them all, the group moves on. They go to Eleusis to hopefully catch Persephone there and they do, so we meet her and Demeter. Then it's down to the Underworld with Persephone guiding the way. At the Styx, Apollo trades his passage for the freedom of two more Muses. Daphne is on her own from there on out. She battles Arachne and is fatally poisoned, then faces Ares and Hermes, who have both been helping the big bad who stole the Muses in the first place. Daphne stabs them both, thinking she killed them, but she didn't. They're out of the fight though. Then Daphne has to fight the big bad herself: Nyx. She can see the sky in the Underworld, so she reaches up and plucks Artemis's bow from the crescent moon. Apollo explained a few times earlier in the story that he and his sister each have a bow with a single shot. Artemis's can kill, Apollo's can resurrect. So Daphne uses Artemis's death shot to kill Nyx, though only her body, and at the same time, Apollo appears and uses his shot to resurrect Daphne. She wakes in Olympus and meets almost all the gods. Zeus makes her promise to become the Storm of Olympus and battle for them again in the future. She agrees, but only after making him swear to keep her family and friends out of it this time. Then she heads for Sparta, alongside a restored to human Lykou and Pyrrhus, the brother that Artemis turned into a deer. 

If that giant paragraph is a mostly quick summary, you can see how much stuff goes on in this book. And those were only the major plot points. One of the book's best features is that it is absolutely action-packed and mostly fast-paced. The hits always keep coming for poor Daphne. 

Let's see, where to begin now that we've covered plot? 

There are a lot of mythological aspects to this, though none of them are accurate. I think even the Goddess Girls series does myth more accurately than this book, but I warned about that from the start. Obviously, this is the myth of Apollo and Daphne, but the only thing replicated here is that Apollo constantly flirts with Daphne. She's not a river nymph. He's not spelled by Eros. She does flee from his advances, but she's not physically running away. And she does give in a few times. Their romance is an okay aspect of the book. You can see her feelings progress over the weeks they're doing this quest, though his are there from the start and you wonder alongside Daphne how much of them are real. She keeps her distance because she knows the myths of Apollo and doesn't trust any god very much. So they kiss a few times, but it goes nowhere really. Maybe poor Lykou has a chance after all. Other myths covered are the ones involving Theseus and the minotaur and the sphinx. Again, nothing like the myths. Ariadne gives Daphne a map of the labyrinth and she doesn't give a shit about Theseus. And Daphne is the one to best the sphinx. 

The language in the book takes some getting used to because it's peppered through with Greek words. There's a glossary in the back but zero pronunciation guide. Authors, if you're going to continually use words from other languages, DO include pronunciation in your glossaries! The majority of people who read this book are not going to have taken ancient Greek like I did. 

Daphne is a mostly likeable character. She's a bit on the Mary Sue side. Like she already broke boundaries by being a female Spartan warrior, but she also has to be the one to kill the minotaur AND the sphinx? And beat Minos, Hermes and Ares? And Arachne? And a lot of others? I get that the author is going for some girl power heroic thing here, but it comes across as a little bit too much. Flip the myths on their heads, but if you get too superheroish, it gets to be too much. Daphne's backstory is interesting because her mother died in childbirth and there's a lot of mystery going on here. It's revealed over the course of the book that water can restore her (though it doesn't always) and that she has ichor in her veins, so she's not human. She's some sort of demigod. Her father remains a mystery at the end and her mother isn't well explained either. There's this whole thing with Princess Koronis, a human that Apollo fell for, but she loved another, so he and Artemis basically destroyed Koronis's kingdom. He got into a fight with Zeus over it and Zeus eventually punished him by making him protector of the Muses, which is why he's along on this quest. But it's said the Koronis thing happened a very long time ago, yet it also seems hinted that she's Daphne's mom because Daphne looks just like her. It's confusing and it needs a lot of work. But Daphne is definitely some sort of demigod and she has powers that she'll eventually learn. This somewhat helps with her ability to constantly survive and win all these big fights, but without any big reveal of her heritage, it's still frustrating. But yeah, she's pretty likeable. 

Apollo is okay. I didn't believe in him as the love interest because I had the same reservations Daphne did. His constant flirting gets annoying, but he holds his own in several scenes. I felt the same way about Theseus. The male characters aren't nearly as fleshed out as Daphne. It's clear she's the sole focus in the author's mind, but that weakens her supporting cast a lot. I cared more about wolf Lykou than Apollo or Theseus. 

The other gods you don't see much. Demeter and Persephone were both great. Hades is, too. Persephone explains that she wanted to come to the Underworld, so you've got the nicer version of Hades/Persephone here. Hypnos was the other standout, as he helped Daphne a couple times, even though he's Nyx's son. Hermes betrayed Olympus because he wanted to take over while Ares just wanted constant war. Aphrodite and Hera both dislike Daphne because of the Ares thing. 

Oh, Hippolyta. She was awesome. She got better characterization in a few pages than the males did the entire book, I thought. I think she'll be back in the sequel, as she mentioned Penthesilea and the second one covers the Trojan War. 

I also liked this version of Ariadne and wished we saw more of her. 

Again, it's clear the author gives more thought to her female cast than male. I get the intention behind it, but when you're dealing with a co-ed ensemble cast, it's not the best approach. 

All in all, this wasn't a bad book. A little YA flowery in some places, but on the other hand, for fuck's sake, if you have the money to buy horses and food constantly, buy some clean clothes. I got tired of Daphne saying how dirty she was. It wasn't too heavy on the romance and definitely went more for the action and story, which I agree with. I'm hoping the sequel is the same but we clear up some of Daphne's backstory mystery. I also hope she doesn't end up as the star of the Trojan War and Troy will somehow win just because she's there. Make her a little less heroic, please. We get it. Women can be written as heroes in Greek myth, too, but take it down a couple notches. 

Reality Check

Ah, early Jen Calonita is not great. This one was written a little after Sleepaway Girls, which I think is the only other non-series book of hers I've reviewed. I really enjoyed Belles and her later work, but you can tell she was finding her footing as an author with these early ones. 

I don't remember much about Sleepaway Girls, but from my review, it seems I liked some of the characters. That's more than I can say for this one. 

Reality Check is about four teens from Long Island. Apparently, they're from the more small beach town side than the richy rich side. Main character Charlie (Charlotte) is working in the small cafe in town when she's discovered by a tourist that turns out to be a reality TV producer. Said producer wants her and her three besties to star in a cute, down to earth reality show about small town life on Long Island. 

Yeah, that won't end badly. 

The girls start fighting almost immediately. Charlie's love interest doesn't want to be on camera. One of the girls pulls away from the others after catching the attention of the rich girl she's always wanted to be like. Then the girls start to realize that they're being manipulated by the execs and forced into dramatic scenes and fake dates. They team up with their producer, who's the underling of the one who discovered them, and mastermind a live show, then use that as a platform to expose how they were treated and how scripted reality is totally fake. 

A quick look at the cast and then we'll be done with this review. 

Charlie: She's a Type A who loves to organize things, but she's also a goody-goody. She's likeable but also pretty bland. Black hair. 

Brooke: She's a farm girl obsessed with people not thinking of her as such. Social climber. Wants designer clothes and gets them at outlets. Wants equal screentime with Charlie and can't stand the fact that Charlie was picked to be the star and she wasn't. Once they're filming, she catches the attention of Marleyna, the Paris Hilton-esque rich girl Brooke has always idolized, even though Marleyna was a bully to her when they were kids. Brooke is a thoroughly unlikeable character and drops her friends in favor of reality TV and how she thinks it can get her away from the farm forever. 

Hallie: The gorgeous boy-crazy one. She's tan and brunette. I feel like they wanted to make her more than just white but didn't. She waitresses at her parents' popular seafood restaurant on the water. She really has zero character aside from this. She's likeable, but you don't get to know much about her. 

Keiran: The blonde. She has younger siblings she's forced to babysit for a lot and the execs want her off the show because they say her life is too boring. She feels like the smart one, except I do think she's a pushover when it comes to her free time. She's making several thousand per episode. Pay for a goddamn babysitter yourself and have some alone time. If your parents are too busy to parent, they shouldn't have had that many kids. I liked her the best of the four, but like Hallie, you don't learn much about her. 

The most likeable character in the book is Zac, Charlie's love interest, who's smart, funny and not interested in fame one single bit. 

Overall, this book isn't good. It's not a total waste of time, but it's not well-written, the characterization is weak, and there are rookie mistakes like putting Hallie in a totally different outfit two pages after she was described wearing something else. The outfit descriptions are unnecessary and don't work as well as they do in series like The Clique, It Girl and Poseur. They're clunky here and they tend to be repetitive. It's not horrible, but I've read a lot better YA girl drama books. The best thing about it is that they used Pullips as the cover models. 

Goddess Girls 28

The 28th Goddess Girls book finally gives Artemis her third focus book. Her last was #7! 

This one retells the obscure myth of Alpheus the river god and his unwanted pursuit of Arethusa the sea nymph, as well as the variant where Alpheus pursues Artemis herself. I love that they're getting obscure with the myths. 

Artemis is protector of the nymphs, so they come to her for help, though she thinks they could try a little harder to solve their own problems. Arethusa drank from Alpheus's river without permission and he took her special cup, which unbeknownst to him, increases any magical powers the bearer has. To get her cup back, she has to agree to go out with him. She's devastated by this and four other nature nymphs call upon Artemis to help her. 

Artemis has difficulty bargaining with Alpheus though and she gets a bit in over her head with this one. He cheats during a contest and then she's the one who's supposed to go out with him. She asks why he's so dead set on a date that he's relying on trickery, but he won't tell. With the help of the other GGs and the nymphs, Artemis comes up with a plan, but ends up skirting around it so Arethusa ends up voicing the same idea herself. Alpheus said he liked Artemis so much that he could pick her out of every girl in the world, so they gather fifty nymphs and the four GGs, all dress in nymph chitons, hide their hair under leafy caps, and smear mud all over themselves. Alpheus tries a couple tricky plans, but the girls stop him and he guesses incorrectly, though he ends up choosing a nymph that actually does like him. He's relieved that he's still himself and Artemis learns later that Poseidon decided to trick him. He told Alpheus that Zeus decreed every boy had to get a date before his 13th birthday or he'd turn into slugs. It's pretty stupid and Alpheus seems to clever to fall for it, but he did. 

The B plot is that Artemis and her crush Actaeon have a fight. They make up at the end and it's he who tells her about Poseidon's trick. 

The C plot is the other GGs finally helping Artemis clean her damn room. Considering the clean clothes spell Aphrodite did took literally seconds, GG 'verse Artemis is honestly pretty gross. I'm hoping she sticks to the organizational system her friends helped her with because ew. Artemis deserves better than to be represented as such a dirty being. 

Definitely not my favorite one, but I do appreciate the obscure myth and I liked seeing a lot of older characters like Echo and Minthe. And meeting new nymphs. We meet Syke (fig tree), Karya (nuts), Pitys (pine tree) and Britomartis. Britomartis is interesting because I'd never heard of her and apparently, she was like the Artemis of Crete. In myth, she's also called Dictynna/Diktynne, the goddess of Mount Dicte/Dikte, where Zeus was born. In this book, Britomartis hates her name and wants to be called Dicte. I liked her character because she was a bit on the negative side yet not a bad character. So yeah, all in all, a good addition to the series. Next up is Elpis (hope). 

Goddess Girls 27

I swear, one of my worst reading habits is letting new Goddess Girls books sit for like a year before finally finishing the previous year's one right as the current year's one comes out. Artemis just got a new book that should be arriving later today, so here I am, finally finishing Hecate's today. 

I'm honestly not even done with it yet, but I had thoughts I wanted to get down. 

Hecate is one of my favorites, so the reason I ended up setting this book aside is that the authors turned her into an overly anxious scaredy cat. I think they're going for some sort of portrayal of anxiety, but Hecate is just so powerful to me that it doesn't ring true for a younger version of her. 

Hecate is a witch that attends the Hexwitch School on Earth. She's a mortal. And she's definitely got some description disjoint. According to the text, Hecate has dark eyes while the cover shows her with green. She wears a black chiton. Okay, that matches. Then she wears red and white-striped stockings and boots. Outfit disjoint. I wish Hanson had left her with dark eyes, but I do prefer his more Greek and less modern take on the uniform of Hexwitch. She doesn't need stockings and boots. Oh, and a hat. They wear pointy black hats. In ancient Greece. No. So the authors created a more stereotypical witch look and the artist turned her into something that actually fits with the Goddess Girls world. However, I wish they'd talked about this, because my biggest issue is the hair. Hecate is described as having long black hair that is "messy" because "she rarely combed it." Witches are supposed to have messy hair in this world. It's mentioned twice in the first half of the book. I have a feeling the authors envisioned a gothy, pale, stereotypical witch look and Hanson turned her into a more elegant black witch. The problem is that no one would look at that cute afro on the cover and think it was okay to describe it as long, messy and wild. So you've got to get over the disjoint between the cover art and the text version of Hecate, because they very much do not match. I find it very annoying. 

Anyway, the appearance disjoint and her being scared of everything are what slowed my reading down. She's turning 12 the next day and she hasn't been paired with a broom yet. Most witches her age have flown for a couple years but her anxiety holds her back. A witch's broom is a sentient being that a witch is matched with for life, so there's the matter of finding just the right pairing, but Hecate's fear is really what her problem is. 

She deals with some bullying from bitchy, overly competitive witches that like to see others fail. But Hecate is no real threat because she only does well in one single class. To combat her anxiety, she collects facts and writes them on those small pieces of paper hanging around her neck on the cover. Random facts. Let's call them...trivia. Now this I like. Hecate is known as Trivia or Hecate Trivia due to her connection to crossroads. She's also frequently depicted with three faces/selves all melded together. Turning this trivia into our version of trivia amuses me. 

So Hecate has a lot of anxiety and fights it by collecting trivia. If it was only this and her broom issues, it wouldn't be so annoying. But then...they made her scared of animals. Hecate who is often shown with dogs. And ghosts. A witch scared of creepy things. She's got too much going on and it works against her when it comes to her being a likeable character right away.  

After her flying failure, her class goes to the cemetery at midnight to do some gravestone rubbings. There, she stumbles upon the pet cemetery and meets Melinoe, the other girl on the cover. Melinoe is a daemon, not a goddess, and she desperately wants to be the goddessgirl of ghosts, but after getting a prediction from Cassandra, she knows Hecate will be, not her. So she schemes against Hecate and curses her somehow. The pair work together and invent trivia in the form of a question with three answers to choose from and Melinoe's curse seems to be related to that, though it's not been revealed at the midway point where I am now. Melinoe has a bunch of ghost animals that she helps cross the Styx and of course, Hecate is afraid of them because not only are they ghosts, they're animal ghosts. 

Imagine then how happy she is to wake up the next morning on her birthday and find a ghost cat and dog have accompanied her home and won't leave her alone. She also sees a random bit of glitter on her skin that vanishes, so she thinks she's been cursed by Melinoe, who wasn't 100% nice to her in the cemetery. She goes to a witch teacher for help, but the teacher suggests she visit her grandmother, Ms. Hecate at MOA. 

I forgot to mention that part in chronological order. One of the bullies is making fun of her name in the cemetery and Hecate claims to be named for her grandmother. So everyone jumps to the conclusion that it's Ms. Hecate from MOA. That's how the authors are getting around the fact that they've already got a Hecate character in the series. They're not related. They only share a name. But Hecate doesn't correct her lie and it gets passed around her school. 

Off to MOA with Hecate it is. The trip is amusing because she uses a "whisk her" spell to transport herself but can only travel from crossroads to crossroads. I love that nod to her mythical role. She leaves necklaces with her trivia questions at each crossroads because they entertained some people at the first one. 

Upon arriving at MOA, she winds up in a classroom doorway. The four goddessgirls are there, along with Pandora and Pheme, making a card that will welcome Ms. Hecate back. Yeah, she's not even there after Hecate travelled all that way. Artemis's dogs start playing with Hecate's ghost menagerie, which has grown over the trip. Zeus is well aware that Ms. Hecate has no children so she can't have a grandchild, but the goddessgirls talk him into allowing Hecate to stay overnight.

In the cafeteria, Hecate drinks nectar and her skin begins to shimmer. She's a goddessgirl! The glittery part wasn't the curse from Melinoe. Athena tells how she didn't know she was a goddessgirl until Zeus wrote to her, so this isn't unprecedented in the series. After dinner, she bonds with the other GGs a bit. It was nice to see Pandora included for a while. She gets forgotten a lot, despite being Athena's roommate. She feels especially close to Persephone because she knows Persephone must have a dark side to like Hades and be comfortable in the Underworld. But Persephone has to head home and Hecate will borrow her bed in Aphrodite's room. Aphrodite wants to do a makeover, but Hecate protests that witch hair is supposed to be wild, and she borrows a black nightgown from Aphrodite and the two go to sleep. 

That's where I left off last night, so it's time to finish the book and see what happens. I do like Hecate much better than I did at the beginning. She's become mostly unafraid of the ghost animals and she's more comfortable talking to people than she was before. She spouted out a bunch of thunder and lightning trivia around Zeus, but who wouldn't be nervous around Zeus? And she even says "Sorry. You're a big deal. I'm kind of nervous." I liked that a lot. She's more in command of her anxiety and owns up to it instead of hiding it behind the facts and not explaining it. 

Okay, now I've finished the entire thing. A lot of time is spent in the middle with Hecate being badgered by everyone at MOA to simply sit and make more trivia cards. They all become obsessed with the game to the point of Zeus cancelling classes and no one stopping to eat. 

Demeter comes to the school because Persephone has gone missing. The night before, she took some of Hecate's new trivia cards to the Underworld to play with Hades, so Hecate grudgingly accompanies Demeter to the Underworld to rescue Persephone. Yep, just like in the myth of the abduction of Persephone. Heh. There's even a scene where Hecate carries torches. 

While in the Underworld, Hecate runs into Melinoe, who villain monologues. Her curse was to make the trivia game so engrossing that immortals would stop eating nectar and ambrosia and lose their immortality. And die. Yep, she actually says she wants them to die so she can take Zeus's thunderbolt and rule everyone. 

Hecate tricks her and ends up getting back to MOA to stop her from taking the bolt. She asks her ghost dragon to destroy Melinoe's bespelled charcoal that wrote all the cursed trivia cards. When it's destroyed, the curse is over and the spell on everyone is lifted. Including Zeus, who happens to be right there in the office to stop Melinoe, and Ms. Hecate, who is finally back from wherever she went. The ghost animal problem is finally addressed and Zeus names her goddessgirl of ghosts. Because she finally asked the ghosts if she could help them, they suddenly can talk to her and tell her what their last wishes are before moving on. 

Sadly, Melinoe doesn't get much of a comeuppance. She shows zero remorse, even when Hecate tries to help her, and it takes Zeus's threats to make her act a teeny bit repentant. But she gets a role as Herder of Ghost Animals, which is all she really wanted, some sort of title and power. She has to live in the Underworld, also something she wanted, and will take any ghost animals from Hecate once they've crossed the Styx and gone from ghost to shade. She doesn't get the huge amount of glory she wanted, but she still isn't punished for what I think is one of the worst villain schemes in this entire series.

Hecate is offered a place at MOA and takes it, but still wants to attend Hexwitch. So she spends Mon and Tues at Hexwitch, Wed and Thurs at MOA, and then Fridays she helps the ghost animals with their final wishes and moving on past the Styx. 

She finally passes her flying test and one of the witches on the Broom Zoom team tells her she should try out, which is something she wanted to do. 

All's well that ends well, I guess, even if we have another villain not very well punished for their bad actions. 

One final thing, in the author's note at the end, they say how Hecate is called Trivia in Rome because Romans left small gifts for her at the crossroads, which she was the goddess of. They also exchanged news and bits of information there, so trivia came to mean "random, commonplace facts." However, trivia comes from trivium, which is the word for crossroads. So the explanation is only partial in that it never says trivia comes from the word for crossroads. Because it was the word for crossroads, it came to also mean the bits of info passed on by travellers at said crossroads. It all comes back to the crossroads she is the goddess of. 

This one obviously took a while for me to get into, mostly because I'm just a big Hecate fan and I'm picky about how she's depicted. I liked her character growth. She's not afraid of much by the end. I wish the middle hadn't dragged so much and part of it had been replaced with a couple pages of her helping one of the ghost animals. It's just mentioned off-screen that she helped six of the original nine animals. I think that would have been more interesting than many pages of characters making her write more cards. I also hope they work on communication about appearances better, because again, Cover Hecate and Book Hecate are not the same character. 

Angelology

Gah, this thing has been in my TBR pile for yeeeeeears. I can't even remember where I got it. 

It's set in multiple time periods. 1999 is the present day, though the book was written in 2010. That's the first chunk of the book, which introduces the main cast. 

Evangeline is a nun who is learning about her past. Her mother was murdered when she was young. Her father died a few years back. Her grandmother she hasn't seen in years. 

Verlaine is an art historian/professor working on a book about Abigail Rockefeller. He's the only main character to be referred to by his last name. There's only one other in the entire book, Mr. Gray, and he's barely in it. Verlaine is currently working for Percival Grigori. 

Percival Grigori III, his younger sister Otterley, his mother Sneja, and his father Percival II are all Nephilim. 

You see, the Nephilim never died out. They continued to live over the millennia and have taken part in some of the worst instances of human history, though never in the forefront. Like Hitler was human, but the Nazis definitely had backing from Nephilim. Humans developed angelology, the study of these creatures and the defense against them, as a protective measure. 

Verlaine meets Evangeline, as she's one of the librarians at her convent. They slowly work together to solve the mystery of what Abigail Rockefeller was doing writing to one of the past mother superiors. 

Evangeline talks with Celestine, an older nun ill with cancer, and Celestine tells her some of what she knows. She's a former angelologist. She also gives Evangeline letters from her grandmother that have come to Celestine one per year. They were supposed to be given to Evangeline at age 25, but she's only 23 now. 

The second part of the book goes back to WW2 when Celestine and Evangeline's grandmother Gabriella were students of angelology in France. This was a pretty interesting part, but it was also odd to move away from the main cast for such a large chunk of the book. There's a letter inside this part from before AD 1000. Can't remember the exact year. So there's briefly another time period, too. 

The third part goes back to the present day with Evangeline reading her grandmother's letters. Gabriella is still alive and soon enters the picture and things get even more action-packed. More angelologists appear and split up into groups to find the pieces of Orpheus's lyre, the thing both the angels and angelologists are searching for. Then there's a huge final confrontation and I won't give any spoilers for it. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this. It could easily be a series. I don't think it would work as well as a movie, but TV series are better suited for longer time jumps. Flashbacks are one thing, but Celestine's story would need multiple episodes, not just a few scenes. There's a lot of history and it tries to look at angels from multiple viewpoints, including scientifically. The cast is all likeable. The plot may seem to drag, but I assure you, there's a lot of important stuff going on in Celestine's story. I think this is worth reading.

Seven Deadly Shadows

This is actually not the first Courtney Alameda piece I've read. I read a short story based off her Shutter novel and then I read Shutter itself. I think she was in another anthology, too. I didn't review Shutter here, because I meant to reread it and take it apart, trying to find out what exactly I didn't like about it. I may still do that. I don't remember hating it, but it didn't work for me either. 

Seven Deadly Shadows is better than that. It's set it modern day Japan and the main character is a miko. She's 17, I think. Somewhere thereabouts. Her name is...Kira. Her name confuses me because her parents are traditional, yet I don't think of Kira as a traditional Japanese name. The authors could have chosen something better. It's my guess that they named her Kira after Akira Kurosawa, because a lot of the characters are named after the Seven Samurai, but it did take me out of the story a little bit and as the main character, her name is mentioned a lot.

The book starts off with Kira being bullied by the popular girls at her school. She's a scholarship kid basically and the school is mostly filled with spoiled rich kids. Then a few hours later, a bunch of yokai (assorted supernatural beings) attack the ancestral shrine where Kira works with her grandfather and other priests, including two guardian kitsune. Kira and her younger sister Ami are hiding under the floorboards where their grandfather hid them and get a sad, front row seat to his murder by an oni. Kira and Ami manage to flee after the yokai leave and the police are on their way. 

Later that night, Shiro, the younger of the two kitsune brothers who guard the shrine, comes to Kira's home and they make a plan to go to Tokyo (they're in Kyoto) to talk to Shiro's mom and Goro, the former kitsune guardian of the shrine. 

I'll pause a minute to discuss the characters. Kira and her grandfather can see yokai, which most humans can't, so there are some great descriptions of random ones throughout the book. The kitsune are both really hot guys with fox ears and claws that humans can't see. Ronin, the elder, has two tails. Shiro has none. Ronin is actually the one who betrayed the shrine and Kira blames him for her grandfather's death, as much as she blames the oni who actually killed him. Then there's also Shuten-dōji, the demon leader who is behind the entire plot. 

Kira's family sucks, both in character and in how they were written. Kira's mother and father are both business types who think the whole demon thing is overactive imagination. Her older brother is a completely useless dick who doesn't even seem to care about his grandfather's welfare. He makes one brief and painful appearance near the beginning and is never seen again. He was handled very poorly because he at least could have showed up somewhere near the end after everything was sorted out. Kira's younger sister Ami is cool for a child, but she also never gets an appearance after the initial attack scenes. I didn't feel that was realistic. She could have talked to Kira in school once or twice. Something. But no. The father is strict and honestly barely a presence. The mother ends up revealing that she, too, can see yokai but after a prediction when Kira was born, tried to shelter her daughter from the shrine life, thinking she could avoid the prophecy. Do not try to avoid prophecies. It never works. All of the family could have used some extra screentime in the aftermath of the final battle just to normalize themselves a bit and become better characters. But, again, no. So yeah, poor writing when it came to Kira's family. 

Excellent writing when it came to Kira and Shiro though. They're adorable. Their typical supernatural YA relationship really isn't rushed and they felt believable. I was on their side. Distracting name or no, Kira is a likeable lead, even though she does have some minor Mary Sue hints. She's doing magic way too quickly and also learns her sword-fighting a bit too quickly, too. She is shown as progressing at both things over time, but I don't think she should have been as good as she was after only like a month of practicing both things for the first time ever. 

Anyway, Kira and Shiro meet with O-Bei, Shiro's adoptive mom, who is a shinigami, a death god. They go around collecting souls, which appear in the form of butterflies or moths in different ways specific to each shinigami. Some of them appear to lead humans toward death, where others are more like merciful grim reapers. O-Bei agrees to help Kira, sending her main kitsune helper and a bunch of other kitsune to go rebuild the shrine, if Kira and Shiro can find a total of seven shinigami to stand as a cabal against Shuten-dōji. O-Bei wants to take over his role, though that's not revealed right away. She's clearly not a trustworthy character though and it's her fault that Ronin gave up being a kitsune and turned into a shinigami. 

Aside on Ronin: he is completely underdeveloped. He barely does anything, though a lot of that is because whenever he tries to talk to Kira and apologize or explain himself, she blows him off. So Ronin, the catalyst of all the death at the beginning, becomes barely a character and never gets any sort of resolution. Bad writing. 

Kira and Shiro start in Tokyo and then return to Kyoto, pretty much failing at all their tasks. They have very little luck finding shinigami because no one wants to cross Shuten-dōji or work with O-Bei. They also have no leads on the shard of the sacred sword hidden in the family shrine. That's what Shuten-dōji is after. He has all the other pieces. 

Slowly, shinigami come to help. They're all named after Seven Samurai characters. There's Shimada, the leader, who's very skilled at being a shinigami. His friend is Roji, who is shown as a young woman with short hair, gauged ears and tattoos, but her actual original appearance is more traditional. It's never explained but theorized that both had something to do with the sword long ago and were cursed to be shinigami. Roji is easily my favorite. I love her sass. The third is a cook named Heihachi. He only has one small white butterfly with him, clearly a child spirit, and he refuses to kill because of whatever happened with her. The fourth is Yuza, who was actually Shuten-dōji's best assassin, sent to kill Kira, but she was bested by the others and ends up flipping sides. O-Bei and Ronin are five and six. The seventh ends up being an oni who steals the pieces of the sword for them. 

The process of gathering all the shinigami and trying to get the sword (Kira and Yuza go to the death realm to look for it, not knowing Kiku the oni stole it already), while Kira is also still in school and trying to balance that and dealing with her bullies takes up like 95% of the book. It's a LOT of build-up to end in one rather short final battle. 

I think the authors did a decent job at it. I did like that Kira had to maintain her school life instead of the typical get out of real life while you're on your quest stuff that tends to happen to these YA heroes. I liked all the characters, except for the ones you're not supposed to like. The biggest failing is definitely the lack of character development for the family cast and for Ronin. 

It was an enjoyable departure from the usual YA religion/folklore stuff, which tends to focus heavily on Western. It's worth a read if you want something different, fun and fairly quick to get through.