Wings - Aprilynne Pike

Synopsis:

Laurel was mesmerized, staring at the pale things with wide eyes. They were terrifyingly beautiful—too beautiful for words.

Laurel turned to the mirror again, her eyes on the hovering petals that floated beside her head. They looked almost like wings.

In this extraordinary tale of magic and intrigue, romance and danger, everything you thought you knew about faeries will be changed forever.

My Review:

So I was hesitant as hell to begin to reading this since people compared it to Twilight and we all know how much we love the sparklies. But I saw it at the library and there was no way I could just stop myself from reaching out and grabbing it in my grubby hands.

To being with, Ms. Pike, as I’m sure lots of other people have said so, brings something fresh, something new to the faerie genre. I applaud her creativity and ingenuity. I won’t give away what it is because I don’t want to spoil you that much. Moving on from the laudable bits (okay fine, I concede, the plot was paced well, the book did not have any jarring narrative gaps, see I can be nice!), shall we move on to the bits that I had a wee problem with? Okay, you don’t have much of a choice since I”m writing this thing but anyway.

If you write, you will understand how important (and how difficult) it is to create characters who are real and resonate. Who have depth and complexity. Who may have serendipity but will have that cache of humanity because that is what will allow your readers to relate with them. I’m not saying that Laurel is not rela-okay fine, I don’t see how I can relate much to someone who only eats leaves and fruits (barely at that). What I mean to say that all of Ms. Pike’s characters are somewhat one dimensional. They lack depth but since this is a debut novel, I’m inclined to be more forgiving. The plot is sort of typical and apart from the innovation shown in approach to mythology, there is nothing special about it. The chemistry between the male and female characters is somewhat contrived or at least I feel that Laurel ended up choosing the wrong guy. It seemed like a safe decision and not one I appreciated. Also, I needed something more that the book just failed to deliver.

However, as I said before, it is a debut novel, the first in a series, and so I will read the second one to see if it has gotten better. The series has a lot of potential if the author can deliver.

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