Photo credit: darkday. via Foter.com / CC BY
Stitching Snow was one of my favorite books that I read last year, so when R. C. Lewis came out with a new book last October, I rushed out to buy it right away. Of course, in typical me fashion, it took me almost a year to get around to reading it, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it.
I don’t know if anything can really measure up to the bar set by Stitching Snow, but Spinning Starlight came pretty close. The main character is another spunky teenage girl who is smart and resourceful and doesn’t take no for an answer.
In this case, the girl’s name is Liddi and she is set to inherit her galaxy’s largest technology company as soon as she turns eighteen. Her parents both died in an accident ten years ago and they bypassed her eight older brothers and decided to leave the company to her, knowing her brothers would fight with each other, but they’d all rally behind their baby sister.
But everything changes when there’s an attack on their country house while Liddi’s there alone. She manages to escape, only to find out all eight of her brothers have been missing for more than a week. When she puts the pieces together and realizes the one responsible is also the one in charge of the company until Liddi turns eighteen, the villain implants a device in Liddi’s neck that will kill her brothers if she speaks a single word. She then ships Liddi off to her country estate, thinking she’s safely out of the way, but despite having worked with Liddi and her family for a very long time, she apparently doesn’t know Liddi very well at all.
Liddi immediately starts doing research and ends up finding a portal to Ferrine, another planet she didn’t even know existed before finding herself there. Just when you’d think things couldn’t get any worse for Liddi, she manages to land herself in a political firestorm on Ferrine because portals are highly regulated and she did not have the proper clearance. Unfortunately, Liddi’s brothers are trapped in the portals, which means Liddi might have to do some very illegal things in order to free them.
As if that weren’t bad enough, Ferrine has written language, but Liddi’s culture had phased it out centuries ago so she can neither read nor write. I don’t believe written language will ever actually disappear, but it served Lewis’s purpose of preventing her main character from being able to communicate except via facial expressions and yes/no questions. Of course they immediately set about teaching Liddi to read and write and in the course of her lessons she falls in love with her teacher, Tiav, who just happens to be a cute guy about her age.
Not that Liddi’s about to let romance get in the way of saving her brothers. They never cease to be her top priority and she is constantly thinking about ways to free them, even when it means jeopardizing her new relationship.
My one complaint about this book is the fact that her relationship problems seemed to be solved rather too easily. She gets separated from Tiav for an unspecified amount of time (a couple weeks? Maybe a month?) and once they’re reunited, not only has he already realized he was wrong to accuse her, but his best friend, who started out actively working against Liddi, has also done a 180 and is now totally on their side.
I understand a lot probably happened with those characters that we didn’t get to see because Liddi’s the narrator, but I found it hard to believe the best friend had that drastic a change of heart that quickly.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter because the story is centered around Liddi trying to free her brothers and Lewis, like her main character, is careful not to get sidetracked. Together with her new boyfriend, Liddi manages to find a way to both rescue her brothers and solve a major crisis for her planets, as well as Ferrine.
I also want to give props to Lewis for creating a villain who honestly believed she was doing the right thing. She was misguided and misinformed, which meant she was actually making everything worse, not to mention murdering Liddi’s brothers, but I love it when the bad guys think they’re the good guys. Lewis does nothing better than create whole, well-rounded characters and that continues to be as true in this fairytale retelling as her last one.
What did you guys read this week? Any other “new” releases by a favorite author?