Continuing my reread of the rewritten versions of the series.

I remember being really excited for Adriane's books when I was little. She always came at the end of the "trilogies" in the series. And climaxes are always full of fun. But I guess I forgot how much of a letdown they were, too.

I understand that the books originally began as two six-book long plot lines, and that each trilogy didn't really wrap up a plot line. But still... I find it hard to come out of this book thinking that anything really happened.

There are a lot of reasons that the first plot thread in this book - the discovery of a pack of living mistwolves - was done, in my opinion, rather poorly. We had this thread in the first book where Storm tells us that she is the last of her kind. We have no real explanation for why she thinks this. Even if her pack was killed, there's no evidence that she was a member of the LAST pack of mistwolves, from herself or the other magical creatures. So I could have more easily accepted that this new pack of mistwolves is a shock... if Roberts followed up on that. Were the mistwolves notoriously extinct? Are they from a different world than Aldenmoor? Were they involved in a mass genocide? No, not really. They were collected... and that's it. So the arrival - even of a different pack - particularly in such a sudden and unexplained manner, is anti-climactic, at best. Like, oh, she's not the last anymore. Well.

This wouldn't be so silly if it weren't imitated laster in the book with the magic cats. Now I don't LIKE animals being killed into extinction. I don't want these characters to be alone. I care. But... we were also of the impression that LYRA was the last. And well... she's not. Huzzah? Could we get some more excitement here? Maybe certain species aren't as extinct as we thought? Emily was keeping tallies last book. Surely we could do the same system here?

I think Roberts tried for some sort of parallel/subversion in the book by using Zach as a foil for Adriane. He's the stereotyped fantasy hero: mysterious boy of mysterious origin with a magical steed, wields a sword (with some Elvish origin to boot), unafraid of combat, with warrior spirit. Adriane, on the other hand... is female. She doesn't carry weapons around, ready to jump into combat. She talks to people, goes for diplomacy first rather than combat. She makes friends easily. She doesn't reach for her weapons - her magic - whenever possible.

Except... wait. Didn't I just describe Emily? The Adriane we have come to know HAS calmed down a bit. But she was excited, ready to jump into action. And we get some of that Adriane. If anything, this is a book about an Adriane already changed. She's calmer, more open to diplomatic options. Sure, she broke the glass cage in prison, but she attempted to comfort the other animals first, not attack the cell doors or reach out for the guards or attempt to attack the Sorceress from a distance.

The point of the foil is that we're shown how Adriane is not a genderbent version of the stereotyped Campbell male hero. She's her own hero, using narratively stereotypical feminine ways to deal with problems - diplomacy, healing, and friendship, with a complete lack of typical weapons, like sharp things made of metal. And I can appreciate that, and I can appreciate that Adriane isn't at the end of the journey, since there are nine more books to go, but I would have liked to have seen Zach save Adriane a BIT less. Like a lot less. Because while I think that all those things above about Adriane's "attack" style, I think the 'Warrior' should show off a bit more of her 'warrior' side, because otherwise what's the point of the warrior? The ability to move boulders and trees slightly? What was she learning before Kara showed up in book 2? We have yet to really see that spell she showed off be USED for anything. Has she been watching videos on physical combat? Learning survival techniques? Writing something on survival in a magical world like the Ravenswood Preserve?

I'm also STILL confused on how Scorge knocked out and stuck Adriane in a sack and apparently didn't realize she wasn't the drake egg until he got to the palace. I didn't get it when the book first came out - I actually reread the section a few times back when I got the book to see if I'd missed something - and I don't get it now. If he was faking it because he hoped the Sorceress would be satisfied, that's one thing. But he doesn't seem to be. He seems to have legitimately thought that Adriane was the egg. And she obviously wasn't. Which implies that either he or someone else captured Adriane, stuck her in the sack, and she was given over to Scorge to take away. This could mean that SCORGE knocked her out, or the orcs knocked her out and for some reason gave her to Scorge. Which is odd, given that there's no real reason for him to. Unless the orcs didn't communicate properly and just delivered whatever they caught to Scorge and he, for some reason, didn't bother to check inside the sack, even though he should have only expected to see a simple stone. Yeah, it's stereotypically "funny" in that "oh, what a stupid henchmen getting his just desserts" or whatever... but it doesn't make any sense with the information we're given.

This also bothered me. The pictures were again, by and large a pleasant addition. But the book's climax is between the manticore and the manticore's serpent guards and an army of mistwolves, a diverse group of magical animals, two humans and a baby dragon. I respect that this is very difficult to draw, given the amount of detail required, but instead of anything resembling even a small part of this scene, we have a generic picture of the Sorceress swiping her hand out doing something generically magical. She wasn't even IN the scene, physically or telepathically or by giant floating image in the sky. I mean if you're not going to depict the scene, why even add this picture? It's just off-putting, particularly since I kept expecting the Sorceress to show up and she never does.

Overall it was an okay book. Things get a lot more interesting when the girls learn how to use their stones better, so I'll keep going. But a bit of a disappointment, anyway. ( )

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12541460

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