Book Review: Wings by Aprilynne Pike (edited)

Short book reviews first:

Witches of East End, by Melissa de la Cruz
Miss de la Cruz's first adult novel, Witches of East End is a funny, easy going mixture of witchcraft, myths, romance and mystery, nothing too brilliant but still an enjoyable book to read.

Lament: the  faerie queen's deception and Ballad: a gathering of faerie by Maggie Stiefvater

As always, I borrowed the books from the public library, but unexpectedly something really sad had happened: after I finished with these two books: I lost Lament on my way home and so far I still haven't recovered it, which means I'll have to give the library a punishing fee for losing the book.=___=

The first two books of A Gathering of Faeries series are highly enjoyable, the two main characters of the books: talented young music students Deirdre Monaghan and James Morgan, are both likable characters, and the unlikely love affairs they developed with two different fairies and the deadly circumstances these romances brought would definitely hold your interest.
Miss Stiefvater is very creative and she managed to use different elements in the sidhe myth skillfully to drive her plots, the endings of both novels also come with clever plot twists. But I must confess when reading Ballad, I seriously started to dislike Deirdre a great deal because she had allowed herself to become such a lovesick weakling who was unable to put herself together once her love interest left her. Alright she wasn't a particularly strong girl in book 1 neither; still it's a disgrace for her to allow herself sinking so low after losing the boy she loved.  I'm royally pissed. Hey, girl. Move on for your own good just like every other people who also lost their loved ones!

But still, I'm looking forward for the finale of the series to arrive.^_^

Review: Wings by Aprilynne Pike
The story begins when a homeschooled young girl, Laurel moves to a new town with her parents and starts going to highschool for the very first time, later she discovers something isn't quite right with herself and she must get to the bottom of the mystery of her own origin with the help of David, her new friend.

I must confess, Wings by Aprilynne Pike is one of those annoying, formulized YA novels which I can't bring myself to finish. But I really should have known better when I saw the recommendation from Stephenie Meyer on the backcover. =__=

Alright, I know that Stephenie Meyer has the right to enjoy good books like everyone else, maybe I shouldn't be too judging when I saw books with Meyer's recommendation on them, but the all-too-familiar settling of an awkward new girl in a new school, the same-old, same-old love triangle, and the Mary Sue 'heroine' in Wings, reminds me too much of the poorly written soap opera that is Twilight.

A lot of YA novels have 'new student in a new school setting' and love triangle, still the characters in Wings are so poorly constructed that I feel absolutely nothing for them.

The heroine Laurel is too perfect to be neither likable nor realistic--when I said 'perfect' it's in an extremely narrow and mainstream sense. What the author had projected in her 'heroine' is just a very shallow kind of 'perfection' based mostly on appearance. Look, see. Laurel is outstandingly beautiful, she's smart, she self-learnt how to play a guitar without being taught, she moves with dancer's grace even having taken no lesson (a description which I, as a person who had danced regularly for years, found hilarious), she doesn't even have a single acne upon her skin, she captures a nice, handsome boy's interest the very first day she goes to high school, she doesn't need to worry about gaining weight because she doesn't even have to eat anything but a few mouthful of vegetable! Oh come on! Of course heroines can be beautiful, smart and graceful but by making a heroine so 'flawless' like Laurel does, is ways too cliché and unrealistic. Give me a freaking break!

Furthermore, for 15 long years Laurel never once realize she doesn't have pulse, heartbeats and the color of her blood is different from normal human being. Oh my goodness, dear Miss Pike are you kidding me!?

The author tells us Laurel used to be homeschooled by her mother but I found her to be unreasonably sheltered and ignorant. Okay, I have never met anyone who was homeschooled but I guess being homeschooled surely doesn't mean you are isolated from other kids and have zero interaction with them, right? But from Miss Pike's description, it looks like Laurel had not a single friend back in her hometown, her entire childhood was spent being a shut-in and David is the very first friend she had ever made. I also found all these details hard to believe in.

Plus Laurel also dislikes her new school because the halls have no widows, people are talking loudly and students are making out at lockers. Oh, what a delicate princess. Oh, what a whiny.

*plot spoiler warning*

Laurel's love interest, David is just as much a cardboard cutout. He's nice and caring, but there's nothing more about him. It also looks unrealistic that when Laurel tells him she has massive flower petals growing down her back like a pair of wings and she might be a faerie, he just accepts all these without any second thought? It is never explained why he can accept all these supernatural things so calmly, if it were mentioned that, for example, David is a fan of Sci-Fi or fairy folklore, then it might be the explanation for his accepting attitude, but no, we are given no explanation.

As to the other love interest, Tamani; I have little to say because by the time he shows up, I had already lost interest. And Laurel is smitten with him during the very first time they met because he is SO beautiful, sexy and mysterious. Oh……I think I'd seen the same YA's sentimental love at first sight mumbo jumbo for far too many times.

The idea of faeries being a form of plants is supposed to be an original idea, but the way this idea is played out makes it look like a big joke. Faeries, a bunch of walking and talking humanlike plants, and they eat fruits and vegetable—namely other plants, for survival? This made me laugh so hard when I read it.

*end of plot spoiler*

The writing isn't so bad but there's nothing that keeps me interested. The rest of the plot is pretty predictable, so I couldn't stand the boredom anymore in the middle of the book and had to give in and jumped to the ending to know what happens in the end. I hear that there are three more books for the Wings series, but I don't think I will go near them anytime soon.

Review edited and enlarged at 13/08/2012, written after I finally brought myself to read the entire book.

The fairies are being stripped down to be the shallow, sparkling, airy, *unearthly beautiful* supernatural creatures; most of the other sidhe myth elements are just...gone. But I really dislike how the concept of fairies being treated like this. I mean, you can't present 'fairies' like this anymore than you can insist vampires don't drink human blood and would sparkle under the sun, not anymore than you can show me a piece of crap and insist that it's not crap but tasty chocolate.

*plot spoiler warning*

Later on, David and Laurel did an 'experiment' to test if Laurel really is a plant. David did it by holding his own breath than blowed it into Laurel's mouth, so when Laurel exhaled it back to his mouth, he could test whether she would exhale oxygen instead of carbon dioxide. Okay, I like the idea of David doing experiment to test what Laurel really is, but the way this 'experiment' is done, is a big insult to what we'd usually call scientific experiments.

The villains in the story is later being revealed as the evil trolls, why they want to attack Avalon (homeland of fairies) so badly? Simple. Because they wanted the treasures in it. Yes, it really is all about the treasures, and that makes the trolls a bunch of purposeless villains.

We are told that the evil trolls wanted to seize the land owned by Laurel's parents, because the Gate to Avalon happened to locate on said land. And what did the trolls do to seize the land? Oh well, they did it by offering Laurel's mom a lot of money to buy the land and poisoned Laurel's dad. (did I mention that the trolls' plan fails to sound frightening?) And what the fairies had done to stop this evil plan? No, the fairy's guards were so clueless about the whole land deal that they only realized something was wrong after Laurel and her parents moved out. OMG........I just need to facepalm. Those guards were supposedly protecting one of the most important gateways to their sanctuary, and they did such a terrible job! How can I take those fairies serious!? By the way, if the trolls can try to buy the precious land from Laurel's mom, why can't the fairies make a similar offer earlier on? Are they stupid or something?

It's also revealed that Laurel was sent to her adoptive parents as a changeling because the fairies wanted the couple to take her in so Laurel can be her parents' heir and then in turn inheriting their land when they die; to make sure the land would be in the fairies' hands in a long run. I must admit it is an reasonable plan, but the whole thing sounds too manipulative and self-serving, it also contradict the theory that the fairies are the 'good' guys.

Also, I found the characters in the story to be very stereotyped: every 'good' characters are slim, young and good-looking, on the other hand the villains are ugly, deformed and strange-looking. You know what? That kind of setting and morality looks like it's taken straight from Disney cartoons. Take Disney's The Little Mermaid as an example, Little Mermaid is fair-skinned, young, pretty, feminine and slim, the evil Sea Witch is old, fat, unpretty, dark-skinned and white haired; and do I have to remind you that The Little Mermaid is a cartoon from decades ago? It's difficult to believe a Young Adult novel published in the 21st century ( which  targets the teenage audience), can have such kind of backward morality (pretty=good, ugly=evil), without any criticism on the prejudice against homely looking people and our look-obsessive pop culture. *sighs* Instead of raising any criticism, the author seems to just go along with the prejudice. How very educational she is being.

Eventually Laurel's parents found out their daughter was a fairy, and they just okayed it? That's how people would react after they heard that their adopted daughter is from another species and the purpose of her being sent to live with them is to make sure she can inherit their land later on!? Wouldn't all these set off all sort of alarm bells in their minds?

By the way, the fairies saved Laurel's dad, then offered her parents a large piece of raw diamond in exchange of them making Laurel the rightful heir of the land. I have nothing against the fairies paying the humans off, but it makes me wonder, in the modern human society, if a person shows up in a jewel shop with a piece of large, *unrecorded* diamond, I'm sure instead of the shop owner handing out a briefcase of cash in exchange for the diamond, said person would more likely be arrested, under suspicion of stealing.

Things finally speeds up when Laurel and David got caught by the trolls, I like how Laurel managed to save herself and David from under the river.

*end of plot spoiler*

But the ending is just lukewarm to me. To sum up, Aprilynne Pike as a new author has some original ideas, but sadly her story isn't well excised: the characters are two dimensional at best, the villains are flat characters, the 'heroine' is an obvious Mary Sue, there's a lot of 'tell, not show' in the story, some of the characters' actions and decisions fail to make sense. But if you can overlook those flaws, you might enjoy this story, I don't know.