Month: June 2021

Posted on

The Gilded Ones, Namina Forna

“No matter my origins, there is worth in what I am.”

Namina Forna, The Gilded Ones

Okay. First of all, can we just admire the cover of this book? I don’t really talk about the impact of a beautiful cover, but honestly I pick up a lot of books because of the cover. That was pretty much the case here. I also read the blurb and it looked interesting, but the cover was the first thing that drew me in.

The plot here is really interesting. It’s not anything super new or innovative, but it’s different enough to still feel fresh. In the land of Otera, girls are ritually cut at the age of 15 to determine the color of their blood. If their blood runs red, they are considered “pure” and are able to go on with their lives. If their blood runs gold, they’re considered to be the descendants of demons and are therefore “unclean.” There’s a nationwide death order for all “unclean” girls.

On top of all of this, monsters called deathshrieks stalk the land and kill tons of people. The emperor wants to eliminate the deathshrieks, so he allows the “unclean” girls to live so they can come and fight in his army. As the progeny of demons, the girls have some pretty intense magical skills. They’re faster and stronger than other people, and they’re almost immortal. Some good people to have on your team when you’re fighting monsters.

The protagonist, Deka, is a girl who is a bit of an outcast in her hometown, but who wants desperately to belong. As you can probably predict, her blood runs gold, and she’s given the option to fight for the emperor or die. But even as she avoids the death mandate, she faces the hate of her countrymen, who still consider her to be unnatural. Demonic. Evil. And for a long while, Deka believes it, too.

What I love about this book is the depiction of female friendship and loyalty. When Deka goes to train for combat, she’s put in a training camp with a bunch of other girls. I expected there to be a few who would be her friends and at least one who would be her rival. That’s sort of how things usually go in Young Adult fiction, isn’t it? Whenever you have a group of girls together, there’s got to be at least one who is nasty and competes with the protagonist. And to be honest, I’m sick of it. I was thrilled to discover that that’s not the case in The Gilded Ones. Namina Forna does an amazing job of creating this supportive group dynamic. The girls all watch each other’s backs. They take care of one another. There’s never any question of their loyalty to one another. When I see things like that in literature, I want to sing. Yes! This is how the majority of my female friendships have been, and I love seeing it reflected in fiction.

There’s also a love interest who brings zero drama. None. There’s none of that obnoxious “does he like me or doesn’t he?” that is usually present in YA. Keita is earnest, kind, and competent. I’m totally here for it. Love doesn’t have to be dramatic, and if it is it’s probably not going to last very long. Real love is stable, and I’m so happy that the author chose to portray it that way.

This book does have a few flaws. I felt that there was a lot character-wise that could have been explored, but wasn’t. Maybe Forna is going to get more into that in the next book in the series? I hope so. Otherwise it seems like a wasted opportunity to really get into the meat of these characters.

Also—fair warning—there’s a lot of violence in this book. There’s also discussion of sexual abuse and child abuse, though none of it happens “on screen.” If any of those things are triggering for you, I’d suggest skipping this one.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by this debut novel. I’m definitely going to pick up the next one in the series. It’s called The Merciless Ones and it’s supposed to come out later this year.

Happy reading!

Posted on

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, Kim Michele Richardson

“What I wanted most was to be okay as a Blue. I never understood why other people thought my color, any color, needed fixing.”

Kim Michele Richardson, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek

It’s been a long time since I posted, and I’m sorry about that. I’m going to be honest and tell you that my grandmother passed away kind of unexpectedly so I had to go home for the funeral and to help my mom. It’s been an exhausting couple of weeks and I didn’t have a ton of time to read while I was gone. But I’m back now and I just finished a really great book called The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek.

Have you ever heard of the Blue Fugates of Kentucky? I’d heard of them in passing a few years ago but I knew almost nothing about them. Basically, Martin Fugate and his wife both had a recessive gene that caused a condition called methemoglobinemia. Their blood doesn’t carry oxygen efficiently to the body’s tissues. One of the effects of this is blue skin. Out of Martin Fugate’s seven children, four of them were blue. If a person develops this condition it can be dangerous, but apparently it’s not a big deal when it’s congenital. The Fugates generally lived long, healthy lives.

In The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, author Kim Michele Richardson’s Carter family is based off of the Fugates. The protagonist, Cussy Carter, is the last Blue in Troublesome Creek, Kentucky. She’s also a librarian with the Pack Horse Librarian Project, a project that really took place in the WPA under FDR’s New Deal. In an effort to get reading materials into the hands of people in the mountains of Kentucky, the Pack Horse Librarians would carry books and periodicals by horse, donkey, or mule. They would deliver directly to the people in their homes.

For Cussy, books are an escape from a hardscrabble life and the loneliness of being the last Blue. She traverses the mountains on her faithful mule, helping her patrons find joy in learning and comfort in her friendship. The relationships that she develops with the people on her book route were really sweet, and I enjoyed the care the author put into developing each of Cussy’s friendships.

This book was also interesting in that it brought to light the prejudice that the Blue people would have experienced. It’s true that it would be surprising to see someone with blue skin, but it didn’t occur to me that they might have been persecuted in the same way that a Black person would have been in a Jim Crow segregationist society. Cussy isn’t allowed to use a “Whites Only” bathroom and she’s not allowed to attend social functions in town with the white people because they see her as something other than themselves. Her family is even subject to miscegenation laws. The whole thing reinforced for me, again, just how ridiculous it is to classify people based on the color of their skin. In Cussy’s case, her blue skin was caused by a medical condition, but people saw her as sinful and less than them, even though a simple medication was able to make her “white.”

The one thing I didn’t love about this book was that Cussy was a bit of a Mary Sue. She was too kind, too charitable, too forgiving. On the one hand, I love reading about good people who do good things. There were so many uplifting moments in this book. But sometimes it felt a little unreal, because few people are as saintly as Cussy Carter, especially in the circumstances that she endured. I almost wanted her to have a bit more of an edge. A chip on her shoulder. Something that was less Pollyanna and would make her seem like a real girl.

Still, if you want a feel-good book with insight into a fascinating bit of history, this would be a good one to pick up.

Happy Reading!