W.I.T.C.H. Part 3: A Crisis on Both Worlds

New story arc! This first volume begins with some daily life stories, then it's off on a new adventure. 

The first issue gives me exactly what I asked for: an Irma story. Irma's father is a cop and she has to take him a folder at work. While there, she meets an old Native American man named Jewell who was taken hostage by a man doing illegal betting. Irma's dad is going to drop Jewell off at a homeless shelter before heading home with her. While Irma is in the backseat with him, he says odd things and she believes he's psychic. He tells her things about her friends, which she then tells them and gets in trouble for it. Granted, Irma's not the most gentle with words, but there's no nice way to tell Will not to get close to her father or Cornelia that ice-skating will help her get over Caleb. 

Taranee confronts her mother about the case against Will's mom, leading Mrs. Cook to go talk to Mrs. Vandom. Probably not the best idea if she still plans on judging the case, which she does. Is this even realistic? They're friends. I don't think she could actually be the judge on this. 

Jewell visits Irma and leaves her a book, which contains the legend of water shadows, elemental creatures made of water. She's concerned about him because the bad guy is out on bail and Jewell has disappeared. So she rallies the girls and they go to the rescue, but who they find is a man named Benjamin Crane, who looks exactly like Jewell. He tells them he's a fisherman who was caught in a storm and saved by a water creature which then took his form. He learned about water shadows and said they can only transform once, so he named the creature Jewell and in return for living with him, Jewell used his psychic abilities to tell Benjamin where to fish. But this caught the attention of the bad guy, who kidnapped Crane and forced Jewell to use his powers to aid the bad guy in his betting. The guardians find the bad guys and Jewell, but he falls off the side of the lighthouse with the head bad guy. Irma catches the bad man's wrist, but Jewell keeps falling, so she's able to use her powers to return him to water, which is what he wanted her to do all along. 

Oh, and the two detectives from the first story arc make a reappearance, talking to another investigator that specializes in weird cases. He's interested in the guardians and he turns up at their school as the new computer science teacher. So he won't be going anywhere anytime soon.

This was a really good and much-needed issue for Irma. She shows how much she cares about people, even though her communication skills are a bit lacking. 

The second issue is all Will drama and it's pretty big drama. Her father has a custody case against her mother and it turns out he's willing to accept a lot of money in exchange for dropping the case. The guardians decide they have to step in, because not only does this involve Will but there are pictures of Will's mom and Taranee's mom talking, so that brings Taranee into it as well. Taranee and Will pay a visit to Kadma, because she knows so much about Will's history. It doesn't go well because Kadma wants nothing to do with anything related to Kandrakar anymore. Cornelia, Irma and Hay try to get their hands on the originals of the photos in the office of the seedy PI guy Will's dad hired, but they fail. Then a call comes in and Will's dad has dropped the case. Turns out Kadma did care after all. She paid him off and he disappears again. Will, her mom and Will's pet dormouse head out in celebration, but the dormouse is hit by a car. They rush him to Matt's grandfather's veterinary clinic/pet shop, but the news is bad. He has to put dormouse to sleep. Will says goodbye and yep, I totally teared up. This is the thing that brings Will and Matt back together, but I really think they could have done it better than having her pet die. I mean, come on. 

Things start to get heavy in the third issue. The school is offering an exchange program with Redstone, a school so far away that it's night there when it's day in Heatherfield. There was a test and Cornelia, Taranee and Hay are going, but Irma and Will are not. The issue has the girls prepping for their departure. While at Cornelia's younger sister Lilian's birthday party, Taranee realizes her former near-sightedness has turned into beyond perfect vision. The girls take a quick trip to Kandrakar to ask why and the Oracle tells them all guardians bear the gift of Xin Jing, the nymph who created the guardians. Constantly changing forms is taxing on the body, so it's basically an enhanced healing power, but it also corrects natural deficiencies in the body, such as Taranee's weak vision. Now I would be grateful for anything that fixed my terrible sight, but Taranee is pissed. She's mad there's yet another thing the Oracle neglected to tell them and what's worse is that this one physically changes the girls. Taranee declares herself on break from being a guardian while she processes things. Again, I feel she's being ungrateful. I do think they should have been told, but it's not an easy thing to have poor vision. Maybe hers wasn't really that awful but I'd love anything to fix mine. It just seems a strange gift to get super pissed about and I don't love her for doing this. I do like that she has enough balls to do it though. 

Asshole Uriah decides to steal the plane tickets for the trip and there's a whole bit with the girls getting them back. Or rather, making him give them back. 

Then the girls part ways. 

We get our first glimpse of Redstone, which is seriously amazing, in the fourth issue. Then the girls are summoned and given their next mission. They must go to a world called Arkhanta, which has been taken over by a man named Ari. His wife died in childbirth and his son is a quiet loner, so he captures a banshee to try to help his son. Banshees here are more like djinn with the ability to grant wishes. When she can't do it, Ari uses a wish to bind her to him and she has to keep granting wishes. He uses her powers to change his world and take it over. He's angry with the Oracle for not helping his son, so he wants nothing to do with Kandrakar and the Oracle sees this as a threat. So he's sending the four guardians (Taranee refuses to help) and their new team member, the catlike warrior Orube, who was Luba's best pupil. The trip does not go well. Orube impulsively acts and Ari won't have anything to do with the girls then. Will questions why they're even doing this, as Ari's people seem to think he changed things for the better. They're forced to return to Kandrakar a failure. The Oracle gives them the key to Ms. Rudolph's house, where Orube will now live in the guise of college student Rebecca Rudolph. The goal is to bond her to the other girls so they'll be more successful. Orube has no idea what it's like to be human...or apparently even what food is...so they've got their work cut out for them. 

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

Definitely some order-changing here. Cornelia didn't get to do too much, but she's still my favorite. Though I didn't care for her questioning magical creatures in the Irma-based issue. It felt out of character, since they've seen so many magical things. But it's not enough points off to budge her from the top. Hay didn't do much either, but she's still Hay. Irma's great showing in that first issue pulled her ahead of Taranee and Will, and she did a great rescue in the last issue. And Taranee's lack of gratitude dropped her into a tie with Will for last place. Will did have a strong showing, especially in the last issue, but if I remember correctly, I do tend to go back and forth on liking her. 

In the first issue here, Orube is not adjusting well to life on Earth, while Cornelia, Taranee and Hay deal with adjusting to Redstone. Cornelia has a popular boy as an admirer, but she's still thinking about Caleb, who we see in a short scene from Meridian where he's talking to Elyon. The guardians and Orube go back to Arkhanta and end up helping out at a festival, but Yua the banshee sends a tornado that destroys a lot of the small village. Orube is still refusing to do teamwork with the others and Irma blames her for their failure. Back in Kandrakar, the Oracle says her assistance wouldn't have changed anything, but also says that the guardians' strength lies in their mental and spiritual unity and that Orube has a long way to go. Back in Heatherfield, Orube is affected by her mistake, but it fuels her to stop hiding in her house and go out to experience Earth. 

The second issue is similar. Will and Irma are helping Orube learn about Earth, while in Redstone, the others are trying to find out more about Sylla, who they know is watching them. Taranee struggles with Cornelia and Hay's astral drops, who clearly have minds of their own, while the others are in Arkhanta again. This time, Orube finds herself possessed by Yua. Taranee ends up using her powers on Sylla to help Hay's astral drop. After being freed from her possession, Orube and Will have some bonding time back on Earth and Orube gives some backstory that explains why she's the way she is. 

The third issue is still dealing with the Sylla problem and Taranee returns to the fold, admitting she was wrong. The six of them go to Arkhanta, where they accidentally find Maqi, leading him to run away. He ends up stumbling into Yua's chambers and she captures him, but Irma gets him back. Yua twists things so Ari thinks the guardians tried to hurt Maqi and they flee back to Kandrakar. 

In the fourth, the Redstone trip is over and everyone is home. We've got a lot more Sylla drama. Taranee also says Nigel told her that they can't see each other anymore but won't say why, and later it becomes clear that Taranee's mom has something to do with it. Sylla and his superiors, one of whom has mental abilities, are watching over the guardians. The guardians and Orube go to a party and there's a huge final confrontation with all the agents that have ever been after the guardians. The Oracle has to intervene, teleporting all the agents and Will's astral drop to Kandrakar, where he erases any memory all the agents have of the guardians. He sends Will's astral drop back, knowing there's going to be a problem there, too. 

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

Things remain pretty much the same in this volume. Cornelia is still awesome. Irma's gotten stronger and is holding her place in front of Taranee, but only just barely. I do really like everyone though, so don't think because Will's last it means I don't like her. She's shown a lot more improvement since she stopped being so angsty all the time. And Orube, who I won't ever count in this list, is improving with every issue. I really love her. She's my favorite secondary character, ahead of Elyon by quite a bit now.

The first issue finally wraps up the Arkhanta storyline with teases for two other storylines: troubles with Nigel and the revolt of the astral drops. The guardians fight Ari and defeat him, then free Yua the captive banshee, who kidnaps Ari's son Maqi. The guardians then team up with him to rescue Maqi, who falls from very high and is injured. The guardians band together and give him their healing gift, which honestly seems like a really stupid thing to give up. (*cough*Taranee, you fool*cough*) Why not try only one of them giving it up first? But this healing gift also makes Maqi verbal and happy again. Not the greatest message there, that it takes magic to heal a mental illness. This is by far the weakest of the early storylines, though I do love the introduction of Orube. 

In the second issue, we get into the astral drop crisis. The drops are beginning to creep forward and affect the girls when they're combined. Will spends a good chunk of the issue blowing off the problem only for it to be revealed that that's Will's astral drop, not her. The real Will had to go on an emergency trip with her mom. When Will returns, the crisis is at a head and the girls are in trouble with the school and various parents and friends. It's all so petty. Yes, the girls abused the astral drops and didn't treat them like they were real people, but the drops didn't try very hard to communicate their issues, instead resorting to petty tricks and stealing. They don't care who they hurt, even Orube, who never did anything to them, so it's hard to find them remotely sympathetic. Meanwhile, Nigel's older brother is back in town and that's why he's been acting like a little asshole. At the end of the chapter, the astral drops have stolen money from Matt's grandfather's store (via a naive Orube) and boarded a train. 

Third issue finds Orube tracking the drops because her senses can detect them. They're in another city, spending the last of their money on a breakfast of hot dogs after spending the night in a park shed. Cornelia's drop aims for the mall, where she's recruited as an emergency fill-in for a short fashion show. The director of the show just wants her to have shorter hair, so we get to see how cute Corny looks with much shorter hair. Unfortunately, Cornelia has been recognized by a former security guard from the bank where her dad works, and that guard got fired for possibly being the inside man in a robbery. There was no proof, but he was the guy after all. So of course, he goes after Cornelia. She and Taranee are kidnapped, but Orube shows up shortly after. She finds the other three drops, while the kidnapper calls Cornelia's house to say he's got her...and tells the real Cornelia, who answered the phone. Using Will's ability to talk to electronics, the W.I.T.C.H. team learn the location of the kidnapped drops and teleport to the rescue. So they've got Taranee and Cornelia's drops, but Orube lets the other three go, moved by their story of wanting to be their own people. 

The final issue of this third part of W.I.T.C.H. opens with a conflicting scene. Cornelia and Taranee's drops are with Orube but suddenly she's mad at them and trying to get them to say where the other three are...but she's the one who let them go at the end of the last issue. The other drops have returned to Heatherfield (with what money?) and are trying to make a plan. So their plan, of course, is to cause more nasty chaos. Will's drop tells Matt that Orube/Rebecca stole money from the shop and he calls the real Will about it later, making her think there's something between them. Irma and Hay's drops just want to rescue the other two, but Will's drop is out for blood, causing problems with Will's coach and her mom. Irma and Hay's drops get themselves caught by Orube, while Will's drop goes to Will's house, where she's now grounded. They fight and the rest of W.I.T.C.H. answers Will's telepathic call. They take the problem to Kandrakar, where the girls agree to free the drops from their bond. The oracle sends them somewhere else, giving them new appearances and new lives, but he does mark them with each girl's elemental symbol, saying that one day he'll call them back to Kandrakar to make a final decision. The issue closes with Nigel going to Taranee's to apologize to her and her family, saying he'll pay for any damages from the vandalism he and his brother committed. Taranee forgives him. 

So this third arc was definitely not my favorite. There were some strong moments, mostly the growth of Orube and Irma, but overall, it wasn't great. Taranee's rebellion was stupid and the astral drops' rebellion, while it made more sense, was filled with petty garbage. I'm glad it's over.

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

ESTHER FRIESNER PRINCESSES OF MYTH 3

As Friesner herself compares in her afterword, among the Princesses of Myth, Maeve is most like Helen. Nefertiti and Himiko were historical figures, but Helen and Maeve are in the realm of myth and legend. 

Deception's Princess is a wild ride of constant changes. Set around 1st Century Ireland, Maeve is the sixth daughter of the man who becomes the high king shortly after the book begins when she's only five. Her father offers her and her sisters five cows apiece if they'll get along while he's gone on a cattle raid. Maeve decides to choose her own cows, then determines to have her father's prize black bull. She does end up marking the bull by cutting off part of its tail hair and is almost killed while fleeing the enraged animal, but is saved by luck and her removed dress untying itself from around her neck and flying into the bull's face. Thus, Maeve becomes her father's favorite. Though she never does get the bull.

As she grows older, Maeve's sisters leave for fostering, which is some bizarre practice where other royal households raise your kids and you raise theirs. Yeah, I don't get it. Maeve's father keeps her at home though and she comes to realize it's because she's his prize. As she calls it, she's the true "hero's portion," the biggest reward her father will give someone in the future because she comes tied to the kingdom of Connacht. 

There are several plotlines that take place over the course of the book. I'll highlight the main ones.

Young Maeve wants one of her father's men to train her in fighting. During a gathering, a wolfhound belonging to one of the high-ranked men attacks a hound's puppies and the pregnant girlfriend of Maeve's fight trainer. Maeve steps in to save the girlfriend (she's a maid of some kind) and wards off the dog until one of her father's men arrives and kills it. Naturally, there's undeserved punishment going on because it's never the highborn asshole's fault. Maeve's fight trainer ends up having to reveal himself and shortly after ends up dead in what was basically a duel. His girlfriend and their child don't survive childbirth. Maeve is heartbroken by all this. 

Then a druid and his son arrive. Maeve is drawn to the son, who enjoys rehabilitating wild animals more than learning to be a druid. (I almost typing "learning druidity." Just gonna make up words.) Maeve is unhappy to see the level of power the druid wields over her father and the growing relationship between Maeve and the son leads to a huge conflict. This culminates in the asshole druid following the pair to the area they've set up as a rehab and he just kills animals in cold blood, including the pet fox his son had for years. And the repercussions? Zero. Because Maeve's father is a huge pussy. I actually dreaded rereading this book because of that animal slaughter scene. It's not graphic but it is terrible to read. I'm still hoping she somehow gets revenge on that fucker, but I have a feeling she won't. Sigh. Points off for killing animals as a plotline, Friesner. It's always weak. So Maeve's faith in her father is seriously shaken, the druid and his son leave, and Maeve is lost. 

Her mother is pregnant and then gives birth to triplets. Therefore Maeve realizes she's no longer the hero's portion. Stupid incidents lead to her being sung about badly in bards' songs and the friend of the family bard goes off to the kingdom of the guy who started the worst of the rumors in an attempt to squash them. He ends up being taken prisoner and a messenger comes to Maeve's father saying he wants to take her in fosterage in exchange for the bard's life. This guy's been working against her father for a bit now and Maeve's seen through him the entire time, so she's off on her own to team up with three of her father's men and use trickery to capture the bad guy, rescue the bard, and save the day. And she totally pulls it off in a fairly realistic manner. However, one of the men is the guy who killed her fight trainer way back when and she's never forgiven him, but she sees how tortured he is by what he'd done all those years ago. She gets him to tell her the whole story. Basically, her father was so angry that her fight trainer agreed to train her which gave her skills that would put her in danger that he forced this man to set the fight trainer up in a duel and kill him. So here's yet another way her father now looks horrible to Maeve. Once she meets up with him again, he offers her a reward for saving the day and she chooses fosterage. 

One of the animals she and the druid's son helped rehab was a kestrel that she was particularly fond of. She had thought the druid killed her, but she learned from her bard that people train birds of prey and that in one realm, there was a kestrel with a bracelet made of red hair around its ankle. A bracelet made of Maeve's own hair, she realized. So Maeve requests to be fostered in that kingdom so she can find her beloved Ea once again. It helps that the kingdom is run by her mother's best friend's cousin. So that's what the second book is going to be about. 

This is the only book in the series I hadn't ever read before. I got about half through then took a few weeks' break, but now I've finished it tonight. 

Maeve's life in her new fosterage position isn't great. She's got to get used to being around girls her age and having less freedom, but she handles that rather well at the beginning. She also sneaks off to visit Ea and ends up befriending Kian, the "prince" of her new home. 

The new cast of characters ends up being mostly unpleasant. One of the three other fosterlings is an overweight, weak-willed follower of a girl. The other two are a haughty bitch who thinks she's better than everyone and the palace slut. Honestly, I'm not typically a slut-shamer, but in the olden days when you're looking for a husband, it probably doesn't help to be so desperate to find one that you screw half the warriors in the place. Things start out somewhat well with these girls, but when the fourth one comes back home, things go sour. She's the nasty ringleader who gets mad if anyone else gets a compliment. Worse, she's the sister of Maeve's childhood fight trainer. Their relationship is rocky at the start because this mean girl likes the prince who likes Maeve, but when the mean girl finds out Maeve is the one who got her brother killed, no matter how inadvertently, she uses her mean girl powers to make the others join her in making Maeve's life a physically and emotionally abusive living hell. It was really hard to read how these little bitches all ganged up on Maeve and then how the lady of the ringfort did jack shit about it. The only good characters in this place were an older lady and the prince himself. He's not the greatest, being kind of a stereotypical dumb guy, but he was better than the others. 

Maeve naturally ends up being pursued by both Kian, the prince, and perhaps more surprisingly by Conchobar, the son of the man Maeve's father killed at the end of the first book. She ends up with neither, as she's still focused on Odran, her first love. When Odran's father, the asshole who killed their animals in the first book, visits Maeve's new home, he begs for her forgiveness, though it's more because he feels a goddess is punishing him for what he did than for any real remorse. Maeve learns that Odran is sick and makes a spur of the moment decision to travel by herself on foot with the falcon to go see him. Not her best idea. She does make it there and has some solid alone time with Odran, but then Friesner goes all Louisa May Alcott and just makes them...not love each other. You'd think after all the time they spent together in the first book and how heated their reunion was that they'd end up together, but no. There's really zero explanation for it. They try to use sex to continue to be together, but both of them realize they're not each other's person. Again, really weird and out of nowhere. I mean, it's like that sometimes, but there's usually a reason that's explained. Maeve decides to return home, which upsets Odran, even though he knows they have no hope. They end up journeying back with his father and Odran takes sick on the way. They get him to the nearest kingdom for aid...which happens to be Conchobar's. 

Then Maeve...just now...starts freaking out that she should have sent word to her father and her fostering father that she was alive. She goes to a big meeting with Conchobar and ends up foiling a plot against her father by making up a tall tale to save everyone's ass. And everyone buys it. Maeve's father decides she deserves her own realm to rule, so she goes back to get her things from her fosterage and tell the little bitches off. But it's not nearly as good as I wanted it to be. She takes the high road too often. 

So Odran returns to learn to be a healer and that romance is over. Maeve sets her falcon free and realizes she's free herself and she got there by her own hand. 

These weren't awful, but I'd say they're by far the least interesting of the series. Lots of elements in them that I didn't care for. 

Crush Stuff (Girl Stuff 2)

The second in the Girl Stuff series came out today and I read most of it before work. 

This one is definitely more about action and less about characterization. 

Fonda decides she hates the idea of the 7th grade overnight to a farm, so thanks to her feminist prof mom, she ends up going to the principal to try to change the trip to a better location. The problem is that popular boy Henry and popular girl Ava (I can't remember which one of the trio) are also in the office. They quickly agree with Fonda and she's thrilled...until each of them proposes a location they'd prefer. So Fonda's entire storyline is her campaigning for petition signatures and then making promises she can't keep. Her suggestion ends up winning, but the kids are disappointed when she can't follow through with what she promised. She gets lucky though, because they're so wowed with the place she chose that they forget she ever fucked up. But I can't think of a moment that was a real character-building thing for her. You already got the sense from the first book that she was a take charge type with the downside of being a bit of a social climber. She cares way too much what people think. 

Drew's plotline once again revolves around her crush on Will. Drew is a really interesting character. She doesn't give a fuck what people think of her unless she really cares about you, and she's a skateboarding female who wants to be a nurse. She's got the potential for such depth, yet she keeps getting stuck with the boy problems plot. Her problem this time is that Will suddenly has this female friend named Keelie. And Keelie is kind of an asshole. So poor Drew is left wondering if Will likes her or if Will likes Keelie. She spends most of the book dealing with this, though she also tries to help Fonda by tricking her and Henry into getting along. She thinks they'd be good friends. Henry sadly doesn't get much of a character. Hopefully Lisi works on that in future books. I'm hoping we see more growth from Drew now that she and Will are established as "in like" by the end of the book. I hated that such an individualistic character had an opening scene where she got intimidated by Keelie and then went ut a bought a hat exactly like hers. Drew needs to believe in her own awesomeness. 

Ruthie's whole story is that she wants a smartphone like all her friends have. She talks her parents into it and they agree...if she pays for it. She ends up taking a tutoring job for a rich boy that lives nearby. He helped her once before by buying her entire stock of Girl Scout cookies. Eventually she learns that he's just as smart as she is and he faked needing a tutor because he wanted to hang out with her. They've got the set-up for being crushes in later books. This boy's name is Owen and he ends up with more character depth than Henry. I think I may actually like him best of the younger boys. (My favorite male character is Drew's older brother Doug, who helps her with boy problems.) Owen has so many devices that he just gives Ruthie a phone and even adds her onto his friends and family plan. She ends up addicted to it, forgetting to experience the class trip, until the phone is knocked into the ocean on the ferry to the island where they'll spend two days. She's very upset and then Owen sets up "finding" her phone washed up on the beach, but she instantly realizes it's his own. She refuses the phone, saying it wasn't good for her. 

The book's high point for me was more development for Sage. She's Ruthie's friend from the gifted program and she's a total intellectual snob, though she's getting better at being nicer. She's blunt, no-nonsense, ruthless and somewhat cold. She agrees to help Fonda and throws herself into the project, though her methods aren't the most honest. What's best about her is that we learn her mother was a famous musician who died young in a car accident when Sage was only two. Not that that's a great incident of course, but it gives Sage's character a lot of depth. Perhaps even more than the main trio has. I loved the whole scene where she tells Fonda and Drew this. 

I enjoyed the book a lot, though I think it was weaker than the first one. I'm still definitely looking forward to the third though!

Toil & Trouble

 

I do love a good anthology. When I saw this suggested on Amazon, I had to try it and I liked it so much that midway through, I ordered 2 more anthologies by the same editor (historical fiction they both are). 

The tone of this is sort of YA and it's in the YA category on Amazon, but not all the protagonists are teens. 

Every story in here is good. I don't even think I can pick out a handful of favorites that stand out. I enjoyed them all in slightly varying degrees, but honestly only slightly. Usually I have no problem finding ones that were the best or ones I didn't like, but this anthology is definitely a winner from cover to cover. 

Witches of Brooklyn

I saw this graphic novel suggested to me a few times on Amazon and then when I was on vacation last year, an ARC copy was randomly in the little free library box in the gelato/chocolate shop I was in. I decided it was fate and took it with me. 

It's a really cute story with fun art. Effie is an 11-year-old orphan, who recently lost her mother and never knew her father. She goes to live with her (much older than her mother) aunt and her aunt's best friend. She goes to school, makes new friends, and then her powers awaken from being around so much magic and she's revealed to be a witch. 

I love all the details of being a witch in the real world. The author makes it sound completely believable and realistic. All the characters are likeable. It was just plain enjoyable from start to finish. 

So today, I received the second volume that just came out on Tuesday. 

In this one, Effie is introduced  to more New York witches and she deals with some friend drama. She has two best friends, one male, one female. Her female best friend doesn't return any of her calls over the holiday break and then turns up with a new girl on the first day back to school. I would definitely be pissed, as Effie was, though she directs it more at the new girl than at her friend. This drives most of the action of the book while the witches are also trying to solve a mystery. After things come to too big a head and Effie's friend is hurt, she and the new girl try to talk, only for them to each discover the other is a witch. This leads to them working together to solve the mystery and the new girl finding a place here in her new home. Effie and her friend finally talk things out, too, including the friend admitting she was horrible to not return Effie's phone calls. I was glad to see that finally handled, because I thought it was absolutely horrible that everyone kept telling Effie to be patient with her friend and this new girl when that friend had behaved really badly. That's not how you treat a friend! Come on. So at least they addressed that. I hate when characters get away with shit and it's never properly called out. 

This second volume is just as fun as the first, so I highly recommend both of these.

Cautionary Fables & Fairytales 4

This one was good, but I expected more of a variety. With the exception of a single story from Fiji, all the others are Hawaiian or Filipino. What about Samoa and Indonesia and all the other places? I'm thinking Australia, New Zealand, etc. will get their own volume, but still. I definitely was disappointed there weren't more locations represented. 

The two strongest stories for me were Hawaiian: one about the Night Marchers and the other about the rivalry between Poliahu (snow) and Pele (fire). 

It was enjoyable, but the Asian volume remains the strongest, followed by the African.

ESTHER FRIESNER PRINCESSES OF MYTH 2

 
I'm finalizing the book and doll arrangement for one of my historical fiction bookcases, so I'm working my way through some rereads (and a few first reads). I just finished My Story, so now I'm on to the Esther Friesner Princesses of Myth series. I tackled Helen of Troy months ago and then reread Sphinx's Princess here, but only just finished the sequel tonight. 

We know very, very little about the historical Nefertiti, so pretty much all of these two books is fiction. It was a fun read though. 

Sphinx's Princess begins with Nefertiti, who is very beautiful, leading her regular life. Her father is the brother of Pharaoh's Great Royal Wife, Tiye, and she sends for Nefertiti to become the wife to her son, Thutmose. 

Most of this series is palace intrigue. Nefertiti founds herself trapped in it. She and Thutmose don't really care for each other. Nefertiti's main friends are Henenu, the palace scribe who is a friend of her father's and became her writing instructor, and Nava, a young Hebrew (Habiru) slave. Nava's older sister saved Nefertiti from drowning but was killed for it by her master, so Nava ends up in Nefertiti's care. Eventually, Nefertiti and Sitamun, one of Amenhotep and Tiye's daughters, become friends. And then also Amenophis joins their little group. Amenophis is actually Amenhotep IV, who would become Akhenaten. 

The drama comes to a head near the end when Thutmose schemes to kill Nefertiti. She escapes with help from her friends.

Sphinx's Queen picks up with Amenophis, Nefertiti and Nava on the run. They're on their way to Thebes to get help from Amenhotep. So the first part of this book is adventure and rather fast-paced. The second half is right back into the land of palace intrigue. It drags on a bit too much. Amenophis and Nefertiti are in love, but Tiye still wants her to marry Thutmose, even though his multiple plans to kill Nefertiti have all failed. So Tiye schemes to keep everyone apart. Nefertiti eventually befriends Thutmose, though it isn't easy, and she, he and Amenophis end up as friends. Sadly, this doesn't last. Thutmose dies and it is only then that Tiye becomes human again. She wants Amenophis and Nefertiti to marry and even brings Nefertiti's family to finally see her after blocking their communication for ages. The book ends with Nefertiti and Amenophis happily married. Amenhotep is still alive, but Amenophis has plans for his eventual rule. There were hints throughout the book about the corruption of the priests and Nefertiti's constantly questioning religion. 

I enjoyed both of these and really loved the characters. Even Thutmose ends up decent, though the standouts to me are Sitamun, Amenophis, Nava, and Nefertiti herself. I do wish the plot had been a bit better in the second one though. I think they could have done more talking about Amenophis's plans and the corruption of the priests. Things that would have made it more clear that he planned major changes for Egypt. That would have been more interesting than endless palace intrigue. And it wouldn't have taken but a couple pages to make that improvement.