Saturday, November 20, 2010

StarCrossed review


Description: Digger thrives as a spy and sneak-thief among the feuding religious factions of Gerse, dodging the Greenmen who have banned all magic. But when a routine job goes horribly wrong and her partner and lover Tegen is killed, she has to get out of the city, fast, and hides herself in a merry group of nobles to do so. Accepted as a lady's maid to shy young Merista Nemair, Digger finds new peace and friendship at the Nemair stronghold--as well as plenty of jewels for the taking. But after the devious Lord Daul catches her in the act of thievery, he blackmails her into becoming his personal spy in the castle, and Digger soon realizes that her noble hosts aren't as apolitical as she thought... that indeed, she may be at the heart of a magical rebellion.

My thoughts: I’ve said this more times than I’d like, but my favorite part about this book is the strong females. In recent reviews, I’ve tried to avoid calling females strong. It’s gotten annoying. Lately, I’ve been finding that I and other bloggers seems to use that term loosely. So after trying to avoid the word for a while, I had to make sure that I really wanted to use it for the ladies of StarCrossed. There’s no doubt in my mind that these characters deserve to be called strong. Literally every woman that was in the book had a grace about them that radiated strength. Of course Digger is the favorite, because I knew her more.

The story is told from Digger’s point of view, so the amount of information you know about her world comes from her. Sometimes she misunderstood things, or didn’t understand connections between people. Many secrets are revealed in book 1, and at first you think you know who is good and who is bad, but then all of a sudden, Digger meets someone new, or runs into another complication, causing parts of the story to change constantly. Then you’re stuck being unsure about everybody.

The side characters were just as important and likeable as the main characters. Bunce does a wonderful job of building the people in StarCrossed, letting us know a little more about them as we go on. That was one of my favorite parts, because in many books, I could be near the end of the story and still know very little about the characters.

The author seems to be very thorough in everything that a lot of writers aren’t. Her explanations of the story’s world were never shallow. I actually think I know more about this book’s politics than our own (US). This book has humor, politics, war, good people who do bad things, and bad people with a heart, etc. And it’s all narrated by Digger, which makes it easier to take all the different aspects in without being confused (for too long at least).

My other favorite thing about this book was that there are things happening in the very beginning that you don’t see or understand until much later. I had a lot of “So that’s what they’ve been up to” moments. And even though all these things are fixed or partly solved by the end of the book, I can’t help but be excited for what Digger does next. I’m anxiously waiting for Liar’s Moon, the 2nd book in the Thief Errant.

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