Ruins by Dan Wells

Ruins, the final novel in the Partials series picks up where the second left off. 

The Partials are super-soldiers, created in labs,sent to wage and win a war with China. When the returned victorious to the United States, they found themselves abandoned. So they turned on their creators and this led to the Partials War. Twelve years later, both humans and Partials find themselves facing extinction.

The humans on East Meadows have been ordered to surrender Kira Walker, the sixteen-year-old medic who had found the cure to the RM plague. The cure saved the life of Arwen Sato,  who became the first infant to survive in twelve years. The message by Dr. McKenna Morgan blares on radios constantly but the residents of East Meadows cannot turn her in because she isn't among them anymore. The penalty for not presenting Kira is the death of another human each day and continuation of the occupation of East Meadows.

And so every day one human is assassinated. Dr. Morgan knew what the humans did not, that Kira Walker is a Partial, but a special one whose DNA might be able to cure the built-in expiration that killed the Partials. 

1. Long Island Senators

With the Partials outnumbering the humans by more than ten to one, the humans needed some way to achieve better odds. That came with the discovery by Marisol Delarosa of a nuclear warhead in a sunken navy ship. The fugitive senate are holed up underneath the ruined JFK International Airport. There, on Long Island, Senator Owen Tovar, Duna Mkele, Haru Sato, Senator Hobb debate the use of a recently discovered nuclear warhead aboard a sunken warship. The nuclear warhead is in the hands of Marisol Delarosa, head of the only successful group of human resistance fighters, known as the White Rhinos. Delarosa believes that as long as the Partials exist, the human race will never recover itself and therefore, she's determined to exterminate all Partials. Tovar, Hobb, Mkele and Haru believe her plan is to take the warhead to the Partials homebase in White Plains only forty miles north of East Meadows and detonate it there. The group debates whether this is a justifiable use of such a deadly weapon. They decide that if this is a likely scenario, they need to evacuate East Meadows quietly and quickly. To that end they decide to create a military distraction, while another group leads the humans out of East Meadows. Tovar will lead the distraction, while Hobb and Haru will do the evacuation. But Mkele wants to take some of the Partials with them, as they are their only hope for survival.

2. Dr. Morgan, Dr. Cronus Vale & Kira

When the broadcasts by the Partials cease, the senators believe this indicates that they have located Kira Walker. Unknown to both the humans and the Partials, Kira Walker, herself a Partial, has returned to Dr. McKenna Morgan at the Greenwhich, Connecticut facility to be experimented on to see if she holds the key to turning off the Partials expiration date. With Morgan is Dr. Vale who is distressed at the way Kira is being treated. Morgan and Vale were part of the group of ParaGen scientists, called the Trust, who created the Partials and the RM plague. Dr. Morgan gave up on the humans and has focused on helping the Partials build a new society and to try to overcome their problems of sterility. Then, twenty years after their creation, they began to die in a matter of hours. But Kira has none of the genetic issues that plague the Partials and she has no expiration date.

Dr. Vale desperately works to recconstruct his work on the Partials' expiration without much success. The Partials live for twenty years and then in a matter of weeks they age quickly and die. Kira tells Vale he could have refused to make the Partials or to make the expiration but he tells her it was supposed to be a temporary thing. Vale reveals that the government wanted a kill switch, the Failsafe that would kill the Partials when they were done with them. They wanted a plague that would kill off only the Partials but the Trust made two: one for the Partials that was never used and a second one for humans - the RM plague that has killed most of humanity. They created a disease that only the Partials could cure, hoping to make the two need each other.

After weeks of tests on Kira, Dr. Morgan realizes that Kira's body does not hold the key to saving the Partials. Dr. Vale wants to focus on saving the humans, since they know the Partials have the antidote for the RM virus. Vale and Kira come to realize that just as the cure for the human RM viral illness was placed into the Partials, it is possible that the cure for the Partial's expiration was put into humans. The RM virus as three stages: the Spore which is breathed out, Predator which sickens the human,  Blob which is the deactivated virus. The Partials breathe out the RM virus "the Spore", but in close contact with humans, the Partials Pheromone 47 "Lurker" that they produce deactivates the virus in humans. She theories that while the Partials breathe out the cure for the RM virus, the humans might also provide something to the Partials which will disable the expiration date. Kira theorizes that something in the life cycle of the RM virus deactivates the expiration of the Partials.  What do the humans have that can deactivate the expiration in the Partials? 

Kira believes she needs a sample of the deactivated RM virus, the Blob. When Kira suggests to Dr. Vale that they need to bring a human into the lab to test her theory, he refuses. They cannot use Kira as she is a Partial-human hybrid, and they can't use Vale as he has been genetically modified. He tells her that Partials and humans can never live together.This leads Kira to slip out of the lab and head north to try to find a group of Partials who might consider working with humans to prove her theory and save both races.

3. Samm and Heron

Meanwhile, Samm and Heron are in Dr.Vale's old laboratory near the Preserve outside of Denver, beginning the process of awakening the nine Partials from the Third Division who have been sedated for the past thirteen years. They have been used to provide the Lurker chemical which is the cure for the RM disease that has decimated the human population. As they awaken, Samm and Heron are removing the Partials from the basement and taking them to the humans who live in the Preserve. A tenth Partial who has been irreparably damaged is left behind. As the Partials are disconnected they struggle to regain consciousness and must be restrained. Heron doesn't understand why Samm is doing this and urges him to leave to find Dr. Morgan and save himself. 

Eventually the nine Partials recover from their comas and learn that they have been used for thirteen years. When Samm fills them in on what has happened in that time and explains that the Partials have an expiration date, He tells them there are only thirty-five thousand humans left alive, and only about two hundred thousand Partials.  Gorman, one of the Partials tells him that they are all twenty-one years old. Somehow they have survived past their expiration date. Samm encourages them to begin working together with the humans.

Samm decides he is not going stay at the Preserve and instead wants to find Kira Walker, However one of the recovered Partials suggests that Samm take three other Partials, Ritter, Aaron and Bradley and they go to East Meadows to volunteer to provide the pheromone to the humans there so their babies can survive. They then learn that a baby born the previous night has never sickened with the RM virus. Heron states that there are now ten Partials living in the hospital, herself and the nine recovering Partials. They have been releasing the pheromone into the air and it is likely that the concentration is enough that the baby now has it in her blood, protecting her. They now realize that they must get to the humans in East Meadow to tell them what has happened, in the hopes of de-escalating tensions. 

4. Nandita and Madison and Arwen   
On Long Island, Nandita Merchant who created the Partials and the RM virus and who kidnapped and experimented on the Partials as well as the human-Partial hybrides Ariel, Kira and Isolde, is preparing to leave the Island. Accompanying her are Ariel, Isolde and Isolde's hybrid human-Partial child, Mohammad Khan, Xochi and her adoptive mother, Senator Erin Kessler, Haru's wife Madison and their daughter, Arwen, the first child in the Long Island community to survive in thirteen years. Mohammad did not die from the RM virus but has an unknown illness that causes his skin to erupt in boils. Two Partials come to the house after heaing Mohammad's cries and are told he has RM. They are not convinced but leave. Nandita tells them they are going to the Plum Island Disease Research Center, a hermetically sealed, government research center with it's own power source. She hopes to study and cure Khan's illness.

A routine Partial patrol finds them in the woods, pursues and captures them. One of the Partials, Cedric asks about the biological weapon and the rocket strikes in Plainsview, but Ariel insists they know nothing about this. Just then a large creature, manlike enters the warehouse. When Cedric shoots it in the leg, the flaps on it's shoulders flare and the Partials collapse. It tells them to prepare that the snow is coming. It mentions Nandita by name but quickly leaves.

As they travel north towards Commack, Nandita tells the group she has no idea what the creature is or who made it.She believes ParaGen had the technology to make it. While Ariel is doubtful that ParaGen could create genetic modifications to repair the climate, Nandita is not. While crossing the Long Island Expressway, they unexpectedly meet up with Haru, Senator Hobb who discovers that Mohammad Khan is his half human-Partial son. The group now splits up with, Haru, his wife Madison and their daughter Arwen heading south, while Hobb, Isolde and their son Khan, along with Ariel and Nandita head north to Plum Island.

5. General Shon and the Partial Army in East Meadows
General Shon, leader of the Partial invasion force on Long Island is using the Dogwood outpost to contain the humans on the island. He is not a general but an infantryman. Partials were created in such a way that their military rank is part of their biology. With so many Partials gone, they are disorganized. He is watching as his Partial soldiers begin dying from a new bioweapon he believes the humans have unleashed in East Meadows.  The Partials develop boils which turn into rough scaly skin, a contagious, genetic disease in which the Partial becomes allergic to their skin - Acantholysis and the scaly patches are Icthyosis which is the genetic part. In the basement, Dr. Skousen is researching the disease as well as the RM virus. He is angry and tired, because thirteen years ago he watched humans die from the RM virus. As two new patients are brought in (the Partials who checked on Nandita's house in East Meadow) Shon feels overwhelmed. 

When Shon goes outside to question the rest of the Partial's platoon he sees them surrounded by a strange and terrible man-like creature, hairless, without a nose and a wide mouth, and covered in plates of hide like a rhinoceros. It tells them that the Earth is changing and warns them to prepare for snow and then leaves. Slits on the creature's neck open and result in the Partials collapsing.

General Shon continues to search for the human terrorists who have been striking all over the island. Their camp has been pinned down by a sniper but they have discovered that it was rigged with a note left by Owen Tovar. He recognizes that the tactics are a decoy but he doesn't know yet why or for what. With the destruction of White Plains and the guerillas leading their troops north and east, allowing the humans to flee East Meadows, Shon realizes they are the last surviving Partials in the world. When Dr. Morgan's orders stopped coming, Shon had stopped the executions and simply kept the humans in captivity. But now Shon decides that he is going to start torturing the people he has captured and they learn that the White Rhinos is behind the attacks. He tortures Yoon Ji-Bak, one of Delarosa's people. As Shon pursues the remaining humans across Long Island and with thousands of his soldiers soon facing expiration, he believes he has only one thing left: revenge. 

6. Marcus Valencio and Commander Woolf.
Marcus Valencio, Commander Asher Woolf, and two Partials, Galen and  named Vinci have failed in their diplomatic mission to the Partials, hoping to form an alliance with the largest of the Partials factions to fight back against Dr. Morgan. They need the help of Marisol Delarosa's White Rhinos whom they are trying to find in the woods. Human refugees have told them that Delarosa's resistance group is heading north. They are now holed up in an old house covered in vines. Two humans, a Defense Grid soldier, Yoon Bak along with a young boy named McArthur arrive at the house. They are members of the White Rhinos and along with another man and Yoon's black panther are led to the resistance group which also includes a wagon. The White Rhinos are dressed in Partial uniforms and are carrying gas masks to block the link. In this way the Partials cannot tell that the White Rhinos are humans. To make their use of the gas masks more believable the group has planted the rumour that the humans are using a biological weapon. Ironically the illness seems to be real. 

As Marcus attempts to enlist Delarosa and her group to join him and the smaller groups of Partials he hopes to recruit she tells him about the appearance of a "monster", a man-like creature that is eight or nine feet tall and "the color of a new bruise". This creature is warning both Partials and humans about snow. Marcus, Woolf and Delarose remember that there hasn't been snow or a real winter in years, even north in Canada. Marcus, Woolf and Vinci learn that Delarosa intends on using the nuclear bomb on the Partials, but Vinci, who is a Partial tells her he cannot allow her to do this. With Marcus and his crew now imprisoned, Delarosa explains that using the nuclear bomb on White Plains will take out enough of the Partials to even the odds for the humans. She imprisons Marcus, Vinci and Woolf in a warehouse with a guard, but they manage to escape. Vinci goes after Delarosa while Marcus and Woolf lead a band of almost fifty surviving humans back to East Meadow.

Wells weaves his complicated storyline which includes these six major threads, the truth about saving both Partials and the last of the humans gradually becomes evident. For Samm and Kira it becomes a race against time. Can they make both factions understand that their only hope lies in living together peacefully?

Discussion

Ruins is the final novel in the Partials trilogy by Dan Wells. The novel has to weave together six different narratives, an ambitious goal that mostly succeeds. The narratives are Kira, the remnants of the Senate, General Shon, Samm and the revived Partials, Marcus Valencia and his group, and Nandita and her group. Readers will find it difficult to keep track of all the different narratives especially as there are many new characters introduced.

In Fragments, the world is broken, with humans and Partials determined to destroy each other. In Ruins, the story is the struggle to save what's left of both Partials and humans, as both species are facing imminent extinction. The way to achieve this is gradually revealed: the humans and Partials need each other to survive. They have been bioengineered for this. While Kira Walker suspects that this is the case, it is only after Dr. Morgan's test on her proves futile that she becomes convinced that humans and Partials must learn to coexist if they are both to survive. Her examination of Dr. Morgan's research seems to suggest this. Unknown to Kira at this time, her theory is unexpectedly proven by the events that occur at the Preserve, on the outskirts of what used to be Denver,. 

At the Preserve, ten Partials have been enslaved for thirteen years to provide the pheromone to save human newborns from the RM virus. Over one thousand human babies have survived but at the expense of unethical and cruel treatment of the Partials. When Samm and Heron awaken and free nine of the Partials, they learn that they have survived past their expiration date. But it is when a newborn baby born in the hospital alongside the recovering Partials that the theory is proven. The Partials have been living in the hospital for a month, breathing out the pheromone that neutralizes the RM virus. The baby has the pheromone in her blood and never sickens with RM. Events at the Preserve prove that when the Partials and humans live in close proximity, the RM virus is neutralized by the Partial pheromone. No extraction of the pheromone nor injection is required. And the proximity of humans, means the Partials do not expire and die. The challenge now is to convince the remaining humans and the Partials that this coexistence is necessary to save both species. This leads Samm to decide to leave the Preserve and travel back east- to reach out to the humans at East Meadow and the Partials at White Plain to save both.

Kira Walker is also determined to save both humans and the Partials. She has already saved Madison and Haru Sato's daughter, Arwen from the RM virus. So, as a Partial, Kira attempts to find a cure for the Partials expiration by offering herself as a test subject. Dr. Morgan's medical tests reveal that Kira is not the key to curing the Partial expiration. However, reading through Dr. Morgan's notes, Kira uncovers the truth about the humans and Partials. She becomes convinced that humans are the key to saving the Partials from expiration. Kira is faced with a choice, she can go to Dr. Morgan and suggest experiments on humans to find that key or she can choose another path. She knows that Morgan will do to humans what Dr. Vale did to the Partials in the Preserve. It is her conversation with Dr. Vale who convinces her that human experimentation is wrong and that another choice must be made.

Vale challenges Kira on the ethics of experimenting on humans, as he's already done this to a group of Partials. When Kira suggests that the sacrifice would be worth it if it saves the world, Dr. Vale counters, "Now I see I was wrong about you, because you weren't giving yourself for a cause, you were just obsessed, as obsessed as Morgan is, and you only gave yourself because you didn't have anyone else to give."He tells Kira, "I know what it's like to betray your ethics, your humanity, everything that makes you who you are, and I don't want you to go through that."  

Dr. Vale doesn't believe that humans and Partials can co-exist, a view that will influence his own choice later in the novel. He questions Kira as to how there can  be a "cultural marriage" between Partials and humans when one side holds all the power: "the group with the power has always oppressed the group without--first the humans, by making Partials in the first place, and forcing them to fight and die and come home to a life of second-class subservience." Vale doesn't see the Partials and humans ever co-existing while Kira believes that "Partials could cure humans, and humans could cure Partials."  For Dr. Vale, the entire situation appears futile. It's interesting to note that neither Kira nor Dr. Vale know at this point about what has happened at the Preserve.

After speaking with Dr. Vale, Kira opts for another option: she can try to find Partials who will help the humans as Samm did for the people in East Meadow. Later on while captive with Green, a Partial who has abandoned Dr. Morgan, Kira explains her theory. "Partials produce the cure for RM, and humans in turn are able to produce a particle that inhibits expiration in Partials. Both of the cures were engineered this way. So the only way to save both species is to live together. In peace, preferably...The transmission of the particles would be almost impossible to replicate in a lab, not on the scale we're talking about-- tens of thousands of humans and hundreds of thousands of Partials. The two species can cure each other, but they'd have to be constantly breathing the same air. They'd have to live together without fighting."  Kira explains that the plan was written into their DNA. However, after being captured and almost killed by the Blood Man's modified Partials, Kira changes her plans and informs Green that she needs to return to Long Island where Morgan's Partials are in the hopes she can convince them of what she's discovered. 

Kira's plan faces two unexpected and serious obstacles besides being rejected by both Partials and humans: her father, Armin Dhurvasula who is so genetically modified that he is now insane, is determined to create a new species from the blood of Partials and humans, and Mariosol Delarosa who wants to detonate a small nuclear bomb in White Plains to destroy the Partials, thus evening out the odds for the humans. 

Dr. Vale inadvertently removes one obstacle. With the help of the Partials, Vale manages to locate Delarosa and the nuclear bomb in White Plains. Vale attempts to explain how coexistence can save both humans and Partials:  "Pretend for a moment, that she, and every human carrying the RM virus, is the cure for expiration. That they produce a chemical agent in their breath, the same as you do for them....You can't synthesize it. It's a two-part biological reaction: You breathe out a particle that renders RM inert in the humans, and then their body alters it, and breathes it back out, curing you of expiration. You have to have both species in close proximity, and you have to have living bodies in which the reactions can take place."

Unfortunately, Dr. Vale's explanation is met with intense skepticism. He listens with deep frustration as the Partials recreate his own failed plans, when he enslaved Partials to save humans, as they suggest creating prison camps full of humans to save Partials.He tries to reason with them but ultimately realizes, "he was caught in a loop of flawed logic generated by racist suspicion, one he could never hope to talk his way out of..." Vale tells Delarosa, that after researching what Kira told him about coexisting as a mutual cure, he believes she is correct. Delarosa is also skeptical. After his discussion with the Partial soldiers, Dr. Vale believes Kira's plan is futile: the Partials are not open minded to even considering the possibility of coexistence. And so choosing once again to save humans, Vale acts, with Delarosa's help, detonating the nuclear device.

Eventually the remnant of the humans on East Meadow along with those Partials (Samm, Green, Herons, Ritter and others) helping them, the surviving Partial army under the command of General Shon and Kira's father Armin meet up in what becomes a final confrontation. Kira learns about what happened at the Preserve and it is Green who begins to recover who proves to the Partials that Kira's theory is correct: coexistence is the cure. 

Ruins offers an interesting story with unique characters. Kira Walker, a Partial, is the main character in the trilogy. It's interesting that Ruins, The Hunger Games, and the Divergent series, all feature strong intelligent, young women as leaders against tyranny. At the beginning of the novel, Kira continues to struggle with her identity and purpose, questioning the actions and intent of her father Armin Dhurvasula. "Why did he make me? Why would anyone hide a Partial among the humans? What was I intended to do or be or accomplish?"Kira struggles with her identity as a Partial who has no expiration date and who was planted among humans. Why was she created? What is her purpose if its not to provide a cure for the expiration?  To that end, she volunteers to be tested by Dr. Morgan.

When her plans continue to go awry, Kira still struggles with who she is. On Long Island as they are fleeing south from the remnants of the Partial army, she tells Marcus, "I thought I was made for something terrible...and then I thought I was made for something great, and now it turns out I wasn't made for anything. I'm just...here." But Marcus tells her she's just like everyone else: "Nobody has a...destiny. I mean, nobody has some kind of inescapable path for their life...we're clay. Living, breathing, thinking, feeling clay, and we can shape ourselves into anything we want, and we keep shaping ourselves all our lives, getting better and better at whatever we want to be, and when we want to be something else we just smooth out the clay and start over." Marcus tells her that she is not going to save the world because she's predestined to but because she wants to save it.

One of the more interesting characters in the trilogy is Heron who is an espionage model of the Partials, trained to extract information and to hide her emotions. Armin reveals that Heron is a Theta model, one who has free will and isn't controlled by the link. Heron's exposure to humans and other Partials makes her curious about emotions. She kisses Samm in an attempt to feel love, but he explains to her that kissing is not love. He tells her that the Partials were built to feel emotions, "to value human life, to love them." But he doesn't envy her because she is like a black hole. Heron tells Samm, "The espionage models were built differently, ...You don't feel my emotions because I don't feel them either. And you're right about me-- I'm a black hole. I'm a hollow shell." Samm wonders "Why make a person and then take away everything that makes them a person."

After learning that humans cure Partial expiration and as she accompanies Kira and her group of humans along with Samm and the other Partials to Breezy Point, Heron considers taking a human with her and escaping into the wilderness. However Kira realizes what Heron's plan is and confronts her. She tells Heron, "Survival is important...but not if you lose yourself in the process.Surviving just to survive is...empty. That's not a life, it's a feedback loop."  Kira is telling Heron, what Dr. Vale tried to tell her weeks earlier. It is Heron who makes the ultimate sacrifice and in doing so, saves the world, the humans and the Partials from Armin and gives the humans and the Partials a second chance to do the right thing. As she lays dying Heron tells Kira, "If my life had no meaning, there was no reason not to end it....So I gave it meaning." Heron's death is heroic.

Besides Kira and Dr. Vale struggling with the morality of their choices, other characters also struggle with the morality of the choices to be made. For the humans on Long Island, their leaders debate the morality of using a nuclear weapon to destroy the Partials. It might appear to be clear cut as every day the Partials kill one more human. For Mkele, the answer is clear: "We are long past the point where we can pick or choose our morality. We either save our species or we don't." However Tovar tells him, "...I'd prefer it if we were still worth saving by the end of it." Mkele tells Tovar, that "We can change if we live...A nation built on slavery can be redeemed, but not if we all die." While Tovar believes using the nuclear warhead is wrong, Mkele agrees but believes it is the lesser of many evils. Tovar agrees to be the distraction but he tells them "Just don't give up on goodness yet. Somewhere out there, there's a way to get through this..."

In Denver, Samm and Heron are working to free nine Partials who have been slaves, having the Lurker pherome harvested from their bodies while under sedation for thirteen years, allowing a colony of humans to survive and reproduce. Samm views these Partials as "saviours. But they were unwitting, unwilling, unconscious saviours.." Samm isn't willing to let this continue and he begins the process to waken them. However, the tenth Partial in the lab is a weapon, genetically modified so that his body produced a pherome that resulted in other Partials including himself becoming comatoase. Samm and Heron realize the cruel reality that this Partial's entire face has been rebuilt for this function. They now face the decision of what to do with this Partial - do they leave him to die on his expiration date or do they kill him now. Heron has some hope for the future, willing to take one day at a time, "...Survival is all we have. If we end, we end, but if we live a second day there's always a chance, no matter how slim, that we can find a way to live a third, and a fourth, and a hundreth and a thousandth." For Heron, giving up is that same as killing themselves. Vale lost the technology that altered the tenth Partial, as well as the way to undo it. To Samm, he is a living corpse and it is cruel to leave him like this and so he considers killing this Partial might be the best thing to do. However, no action is taken in this regard.

While Ruins is an interesting and engaging novel,  better editing to remove some unnecessary detail would have shortened the novel, for example Kira's journey through the various subdivisions to find the Ivies. The novel would have benefited from a list of characters, and instead of numbered chapters, chapters labelled with by character would have helped. Maps showing the locations of the various groups would have also added to the story. There are some unresolved parts of the story: what happened to Dr. Morgan, and what of the bioweapon that kills the Partials?

The Partials series does contain plenty of violence, some torture and is probably better suited to older teens and adults. Fans of The Hunger Games and Divergent will enjoy the Partials series. 

Book Details:

Ruins by Dan Wells
New York: HarperCollins Publishers    2014
453 pp.

The Massey Murder by Charlotte Gray

Canadian author, Charlotte Gray brings history to the masses in this detailed account of the events surrounding the murder of Charles Albert (Bert) Massey by his family's domestic servant, Carrie Davies at the turn of the last century.

On the evening of Monday, February 8, 1915, Bert Massey was shot on the steps of his house at 169 Walmer Road by eighteen year Carrie, a British immigrant. Massey was carried to a neighbour's home where he died and Carrie, in shock, was arrested and taken to police headquarters at City Hall.

Carrie Davies had been in Canada for a mere two years, employed during that time by the Massey family. She arrived from Bedfordshire, England with the hopes of obtaining work as a maid in order to send money home to her widowed and nearly blind mother who had four children to support.

When questioned by police, Davies stated she shot Massey because "He ruined my character...",  a shocking allegation against a wealthy family that was a pillar of the Toronto's upper class at the turn of the century.

Set against the backdrop of World War I, Gray takes her readers first through the crime and then goes on to explore the events surrounding the trial by portraying life in Canada in the early 20th century and describing many of those involved either directly or indirectly in this major newstory.  Life in the city of Toronto in 1915, the history of the legendary Massey family, the women's movement in Canada and women's changing role in society in the early 20th century, the Toronto newspaper scene, and the Toronto judiciary are all detailed before Gray gets down to the actual details of the trial.

Gray describes the Women's Court, a separate court for women set up by the National Council of Women and Toronto's Local Council of Women, who were concerned for the integrity of the judicial process when it came to women. As women were unable to vote or create laws, the judicial process was usually not favourable to them. Only women were allowed to attend Women's Court.

The Massey family history is explored in-depth in a separate chapter entitled, "The Muscle of the Masseys". The Massey family were American Methodists from Vermont who settled on farmland north of Lake Ontario in 1802. Bert Massey's great-grandfather, Daniel, purchased a workshop in Newcastle and this heralded the beginning of the Massey foray into the production of agricultural implements - a venture which would make them millions. From the sale of threshers and reapers the Massey family became one of Canada's first self made millionaires. Gray reveals to readers how Bert's family gradually became estranged from the rest of the Massey's with the death of his father Charles from typhoid in 1884. Nevertheless, when the shocking circumstances surrounding the murder of Bert in 1915 began to surface almost immediately and the Massey name was facing the possibility of being irrevocably shamed, the Massey family began to assert their influence.

There's an interesting chapter on what was termed the "White Slave trade" - girls who traveled from Europe to be domestic servants in wealthy Canadian families. Such work often entailed long hours, little time off and placed young women in situations where they were preyed upon by their employers with little recourse to the law should events turn dangerous.

The Massey Murder is an engaging read for those who have a keen interest in Canadian history and that is the strength or weakness of this book, depending on your level of interest.  For those with a historical bent, Gray gives her readers a strong sense of Toronto society and life in Canada during the World War I era. Canada was a British colony and Toronto was a predominantly white, British immigrant city with a sense of obligation and duty to the England and King George V. Gray's main thesis is that Davies' legal counsel, Herbert Hartley Dewart, KC, was determined to win her case by creating a story for Carrie that would get her acquitted. There were several motivations behind his determination to win this case. The first was bad blood between the Dewart and Massey families. His father, Hartley Dewart Senior and Hart Massey had been at odds over the move of Victoria College from Cobourg to Toronto years earlier. There were also rumours of a stock deal gone bad between the two family patriarchs. Dewart had also lost an important case early in his career to a lawyer who managed to portray his client accused of murder, as the victim. Dewart never forgot this case and it was a lesson he was to use in Carrie Davies favour years later.

Hartley Dewart would craft a story that was based on his client's purity and defense of her honour - something that would turn the tables and make Bert Massey the villain. He would compare Carrie's fight for her honour to that of the British soldiers fight for honour in the trenches of the brutal war going on in Europe. He would appeal to patriotic sentimentality and the steadfastness of the British working class as the foundation of the British Empire. It was a risky defense but it just might work.

The main draw of the story, the trial of Carrie Davies on the charge of murdering Charles Albert Massey, takes up a mere four chapters of the book. These chapters are filled with drama and theatrics that would never be a part of a criminal trial in the 21st century. They are particularly insightful because they demonstrate how little the force of law played into the resulting verdict. The use of the "unwritten law" defense which entailed Since the transcripts of Davies trial were not preserved due to her acquittal, Gray relied on contemporary newspaper accounts to write about the trial.

Gray concludes her book with a follow-up chapter on the main characters in this drama, which will be of interest to readers. Charlotte Gray's blog has an relevant entry from 2013 about an encounter The book includes a map of Toronto during the time the events occurred, a diagram of the Massey family tree, black and white plates of Toronto newspaper coverage pluse many photographs of the Masseys and life in Toronto during this era. There is a detailed source list at the back of the book but no annotated bibliography.

When writing history it can be difficult to discern between fact and embellishment. Some readers may find this the problem with The Massey Murder. Gray mentions that no transcript of the Massey trial survived because of the outcome, so her account is based on newspaper articles of the day.

Regardless, this is a fascinating account of an event that gripped Toronto almost one hundred years ago.

Book Details:
The Massey Murder. A Maid, Her Master, And The Trial That Shocked A Country by Charlotte Gray
Toronto: HarperCollins Publisher Ltd.     2013
308 pp.

The Winter Horses by Philip Kerr

Set in the vast Ukrainian steppe in 1941, this novel tells the story of a young girl who tries to save the last of a herd of rare horses, known as the Przewalski's horses while outwitting a cruel SS captain.

In the summer of 1941, the Soviet caretakers at the State Steppe Nature Reserve of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic prepare to abandon the reserve with the coming of the German army. The senior manager, Borys Demyanovich Krajnik, advises the elderly caretaker,  Maxim Borisovich Melnik, to abandon the animals. Borys tells Max that when the Germans arrive, they will kill him and he orders him to slaughter all the animals on the reserve. The reserve is home to many exotic animals including ostriches, zebras, llamas and Przewalski horses. The Soviets do not want the animals falling into the hands of the Germans.

Max however has no intention of killing all the animals. The sanctuary at Askaniya-Nova was created by a German, Baron Friedrich Falz-Fein with whom Max had a good friendship. The baron had always treated Max kindly. And the sanctuary which was mostly open grassland covering three hundred square kilometers was there to protect the animals from being hunted. Max who speaks German and who doesn't want to judge all Germans by what's he's heard, believes he will be able to reason with the German soldiers when they arrive. 

When the Germans come to Askaniya-Nova a mere two weeks later, Max meets the cultured, intelligent Captain Grenzmann. He explains how he came to learn German but is insulted by Grenzmann who notes that his aristocratic German doesn't match his impoverished look. When he tries to explain the uniqueness of the Przewalski horses to Grenzmann, Max is astounded to discover that the Germans do not consider the endangered horses to be something that should be saved. This is even more astonishing considering that Grenzmann claims to have been on the 1936 German Olympic Equestrian team. Instead, Grenzmann explains to Max that this is nature's way of saying that this type of horse is not fit enough to survive. Parroting Nazi ideology he states,   "No. I almost imagine they're almost extinct because nature just wants it that way. It's survival of the fittest. You've heard of the phrase? What Charles Darwin says, about natural selection? In the struggle for life, some species, and for that matter, some races are simply stronger than others. So the strong survive, the weak perish." The Przewalski horses are a forbidden breed and are to be destroyed on orders from Berlin.

Meanwhile unknown to Max, hidden in the forest on the Askaniya-Nova reserve is a young Ukrainian Jewish girl, Kalyna (Kalinka), who has fled her village of Dnepropetrovsk. The entire Jewish population of Dnepropetrovsk was murdered including her own family.  Kalinka loves the horses she has found in the forest, she knows they are intelligent, clever and playful. She observes how they are able to communicate with one another through neighs and snorts. One of the horses, a mare leads Kalinka to a small blue cottage. Finding the door unlocked, Kalinka enters and steals some food, as she is so desperately hungry. 

Later on the mare leads her to her stallion and they allowed Kalinka to sleep between them to keep warm. Observing the wild horses, Kalinka comes to realize that the horses make many different kinds of vocalizations and that they seemed high intelligent and even cunning. In particular, she befriends a stallion known as Temujin and his mare, Borte whom seem to sense that like them, Kalinka is a refugee.

Max quickly comes to fear the Germans, as Borys predicted. It wasn't because they shot and ate many of the animals in the reserve. It was that they would return home from a "special police action", their guns splattered with blood and a crazy look. Max learned from the people in the village on the estate that the Germans murdered thousands of people and buried them in mass graves. 

With the war with Russia going poorly and the likelihood that the Germans will now be retreating as the Red Army is only one hundred kilometers away, Grenzmann wonders what to do with the "mongrel sub-horses". Eventually he reveals to Max that he must shoot the Przewalski horses, to "complete the work that nature has started ..." and that it is all "part of our eastern master plan for the destruction of Ukrainian and Asian culture so that you people can be properly Germanized." Max tries without success to convince the German commander to simply leave the horses. He has no idea how to help the horses who are impossible to catch. There are likely two or three herds of ten horses each and Max has only seen one of the stallions, Temujin and his mare Borte from a distance.

Then during the night Max hears the sound of gunfire and races out onto the steppe to see the an SS motorcycle chasing the horses and shooting them. Equally horrified is Kalinka who watches the entire scene with a mixture of horror and terror. After seeing if she can help any of the horses, Kalinka finds the stallion and his mare. Meanwhile Max is horrified to discover that the Germans have butchered the horses and are now eating them. He also learns that the Grenzmann's unit is now encircled by the Red Army and will likely be on the reserve until the spring.

That night Kalinka comes to Max's small cottage, with Temujin and the mare Borte who is bleeding from a shoulder wound. Kalinka begs him to help the wounded mare. Max questions Kalinka as to where she has come from and she tells him that she has been living in the woods by the lake since late summer. He has her take the horses to the stable behind his house. In the stable, Kalinka tells Max the her family along with all the Jewish families were made to gather in the botanical gardens in her city. "Three uncles, three aunts, my brothers, my sisters, my grandparents, my great-grandmother, and all my cousins." As they were being marched to the botanical gardens along Haharina Avenue, someone pulled Kalinka out of the line and into a house and told her to go out the back door and run no matter what she heard. 

Max treats the mare, removing the bullet from her shoulder, gives the horses oats and rice and then carries the exhausted Kalinka to his cottage. Despite the risk to himself, Max invites her to stay as long as she likes, determined that she is not to go back out into the cold. This offer astonishes Kalinka because every person she's met on her three hundred fifty kilometer walk from Dnepropetrovsk has driven her away, sometimes with stones. Max suggests that Kalinka and the two horses stay in the old abandoned waterworks buildings which are quite dry and well hidden.

After Kalinka tells Max how she came to be out in the forest, he tells her his story. In the morning Grenzmann shows up early and asks to have his horse fed. Fortunately Kalinka covers the two Przewalski horses with hay and hides herself in the hayloft and Grenzmann leaves, but not before insisting that Max come for dinner. During the next snowfall, Max sets up Kalinka and the two horses in the old waterworks tanks. 

This seems to be the perfect solution for the tired and cold Kalinka and lonely Max until Grenzmann becomes curious about the abandoned buildings. Despite attempting to dissuade the German from exploring the old waterworks tanks, Grenzmann is determined to see them himself. Realizing Kalinka is in great danger, Max gives her provisions and a compass and instructs her to head southeast towards the Red Army along with Temujin, Borte and his dog Taras. For helping Kalinka and the horses escape Max pays the ultimate price. And for Kalinka, it will take every ounce of strength and wit she has to escape from the fanatical Captain Grenzmann as he and his soldiers pursue her across the steppe.

Discussion

The Winter Horses is a story of deep tragedy and senseless brutality, but it is also a story about self-sacrifice, resiliency, and courage.

The story centers around two main characters,  Maxim Borisovich Melnik and a fifteen-year-old Jewish girl named Kalyna (Kalinka) Shtern and their interaction with a third character who is the villain of the story.  Both Max and Kalinka are heroic figures who have suffered under the Soviet Communists and/or the Nazis.  Kalinka is a fourteen-year-old Jewish girl from the town of Dnepropetrovsk, in the Soviet Ukraine. The town was occupied by German Nazi forces on August 24, 1941. Most of the almost ninety-thousand Jews who lived in the city at this time managed to escape prior to the German occupation. However, while under German occupation, those Jews who remained and those who came into the town from rural areas were robbed, assaulted and murdered. From October 13 to 15 the Nazis murdered over ten thousand Jews on the outskirts of the city. Kalinka is the sole survivor of her family, and has walked over three hundred kilometers to find refuge on the Askaniya-Nova reserve.

Although she is resilient, it is obvious that Kalinka has suffered significant trauma which she herself recognized. She calmly responds to all of Max's questions. "She had thought there would come a time for tears, but ever since her escape, this had not happened. She had now concluded that she might never cry again, the something human inside her had died alongside the rest of her family." Inadvertently being saved, has resulted in Kalinka suffering intense guilt. "...she felt ashamed that she was alive and everyone in her family was not. How could she have done such a thing? This was the thought that haunted her, day and night." Later on when Taras dies from his wounds from the lynx attack at the zoo, Kalinka still finds she cannot grieve. "How could she cry for a dog when she had not cried for her mother and father, her grandparents, her great-grandmother, her brothers and sisters, her aunts and her uncles, her cousins and her neighbors? How could she cry for Taras when she had not cried for Max? Where was grief to be found for a wolfhound when there had been none for them?"  Eventually Kalinka does break down and grieve for those she has lost, her family and her friend Max.

Kalinka is also courageous, as she stands up to the Russian soldiers who want to shoot the two Przewalski horses for food. She manages to convince the soldiers of the importance of the Przewalski horses.

Maxim Borisovich Melnik, is the elderly caretaker on what has come to be known as the State Steppe Nature Reserve of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. In fact the reserve was founded by a descendent of German colonists in the south Ukraine, Frederich Falz-Fein in the late 1800's. Max tells Kalinka that he came to the reserve in  1897 from Sevastopol, to Askaniya-Nova working as a groom for the reserve founder, Baron Faiz-Fein's Hanoverian horses. With the arrival of the Przewalski horses in the early 1900's, the baron began to breed these wild horses which until recently had been believed to be extinct. When the Bolshevik's (Communists) came to power in 1917, they confiscated Askaniya-Nova from the family. Max was arrested and tortured by the NKVD but eventually freed. He returned to live at Askaniya-Nova, now a People's Sanctuary Park in 1921, caring for the animals. Max's life has not been an easy one. He was married to a girl, Oxana Oleniva who was a maid to the baroness. She disappeared when the baroness was killed by the communists and he has no idea if she was murdered or taken prisoner. Max, who has had experience with the NKVD, knows the type of man Grenzmann is, but in an attempt to preserve the reserve's animals, he tries to simply get along with Grenzmann.

Their archenemy, Captain Kaspar Grenzmann, is a blonde-haired German, cultured but fanatical about the Nazi doctrine he is tasked to uphold. He claims that all he wants to do in life is "paint pictures, ride horses, listen to Mozart..."  but when he and his German unit arrive at the reserve in 1941, it's clear that his duties as an SS officer are paramount.  Grenzmann identifies himself as an accomplished equestrian who was on the German Equestrian team which medalled in the 1936 Olympics. Max notes that Grenzmann's pen-and-ink drawings of the Hanoverian horses are "among the finest" he has ever seen and yet he wonders how an "...artist of such great sensitivity should be capable of such diabolical cruelty."  The cruelty Max is referring to is the mass murder of people in the village on the reserve. 

When Captain Grenzmann informs Max that all the animals but especially the Przewalski horses must be shot, Max challenges him to consider what he's going to do. Grenzmann states that he is simply following orders from Berlin and that he doesn't have any choice in the matter, but Max tells him it is his ability to choose that makes him human. Otherwise, he is like the horse Molnija, with a saddle on his back and bit in his mouth -  just an animal. However, to Grenzmann, the Przewalski horses are "sub-equine" and part of what needs to be destroyed to make room for Germans to live and thrive - a common theme in Nazi ideology.

Grenzmann insists that Max dine with him and the officers at their house. He knows Max loved the Przewalski horses and it is these same horses which Grenzmann butchered, that will be served up for dinner. In this way, Grenzmann is shown to be a very twisted man, normal looking on the outside but incredibly cruel inside.  At this dinner Max wonders how "men who had murdered so many men, women and children could appear so very normal--that they could laugh and joke and enjoy music like any other men..."  Max also learns that it was Grenzmann's men who had carried out a "special action" in Dnepropetrovsk, killing tens of thousands of people, most likely including Kalinka's family. 

Upon discovering that Max has harboured not only a breeding pair of Przewalski horses, but also a Jewish refugee, Grenzmann doesn't even consider just letting the entire incident go. The Red ARmy is days away and the war with Russia has been lost. Instead, his fanatical adherence to Nazi ideology demands that he not only murder Max, but that he also pursue the Jewish refugee and the horses with the intention of exterminating them. 

Kerr does offer another German character in contrast to the fanatical Grenzmann in that of Joachim Stammer, Captain from the Second Company of the German Field Police in Simferopol. Stammer, who is from Bonn, "...was not and never had been a Nazi" and he had not wanted to fight against Russia. He treats Kalinka with great kindness, taking her and the horses to the abandoned zoo in Simferopol. He also advises her that when the Russians do arrive, she does not tell them she is Jewish, but that she pretend to be Ukrainian Christian. He brings her food, a letter and other supplies before he leaves the city. His kindness shows Kalinka that not all Germans are like the ones who murdered her family and hunted her.

The Winter Horses offers young readers insight into the effects of war on soldiers and civilians through the characters of Kalinka, Max and Grenzmann while showing that people are often resilient and courageous. The novel ends on a hopeful note, although as history tells us, the struggle in Ukraine was one that continued on even after liberation by the Soviets.

Kerr has crafted an engaging story in southern Ukraine set against the famous Askaniya-Nova reserve and the famous and endangered Przewalski horses. The Przewalski horses are endangered horses which were named after Colonel Nikolai Przewalski who spent time studying them. These dun-coloured horses were once found in the Central Asia steppe. Their likeness can be found in European cave art painted some twenty-thousand years ago. Their numbers dwindled drastically and they were on the verge of extinction. However, a committed breeding program has restored their numbers. Przewalski horses  can be found today in Mongolia, China and Russia and where there are now about twenty-five hundred. Since they were never domesticated, they are considered the last true wild breed of horse.

The Winter Horses would have benefited from having a map showing the location of Ukraine, the town of Dnepropetrovsk, the Askaniya-Nova reserve, as well as a map showing Kalinka's journey. This would have been helpful in establishing the setting for the novel's young readers. Otherwise, The Winter Horse is an engaging historical novel that will appeal to middle grade readers, especially those who love animals.

Book Details:

The Winter Horses by Philip Kerr
New York: Alfred A. Knopf        2014
274 pp.

Movie Review: Divergent

The screen adaptation of  the first novel in Veronica Roth's immensely popular Divergent series was thrilling and faithful to the book. The movie, directed by Neil Burger (The Illusionist) has a solid cast that includes Shailene Woodley as Beatrice (Tris) Prior, Theo James as Tobias Eaton, Ashley Judd as Tris' mother, Natalie, Ansel Elgort as Tris' brother, Caleb and Kate Winslet was Jeanine Matthews. Rounding out the cast is Maggie Q as the hardened Tori, Zoe Kravitz as Christina and Jai Courtney as the bad-ass Eric.

Divergent tells the story of post-apocalyptic Chicago, a city isolated from the rest of the country by an enormous fence designed to keep whatever is left, outside. Inside the city, the population is organized into factions based on virtues. At the age of sixteen, young people chose which faction they will belong too in an initiation ceremony. This ceremony takes place after they have undergone testing to see which faction they show an aptitude for. Beatrice Prior's test is inconclusive because she demonstrates an aptitude for three factions, Abnegation, Erudite and Dauntless. This means that Beatrice can overcome her fears and that she cannot be controlled like most of her fellow citizens. She is warned not to tell anyone because she is considered "divergent" and that she must hide within a faction.

Believing herself not worthy of staying with Abnegation, at her choosing ceremony, Beatrice picks the Dauntless faction and leaves her family to begin initiation into this faction. The initiation process is cruel and physically taxing, but Beatrice who now goes by the name of Tris, finds an ally in Four who is one of the Dauntless leaders. Four sees that Beatrice is both brave and selfless and he begins to help her train to move up the ranks. As romance begins to blossom between Four and Tris, they discover that their factioned society is breaking down with the Erudite faction accusing Abnegation of mismanaging the government.

In an attempt to remove Abnegation from their position of control, Jeanine Matthews, leader of the Erudites, uses an mind control serum that causes the Dauntless warriors, who believe they are in a simulation, to attack the Abnegation faction. Because they are divergent, Tris and Four are not affected. Instead they must now try to stop the wholesale slaughter of an entire faction.

Discussion

Divergent: The Movie provides fans of the novels a realistic means to visually experience the Divergent world author Veronica Roth created in her novel, showing a ruined Chicago with vast abandoned areas, partially destroyed buildings and a rejuvenated city center. Director Neil Burger does an good job of portraying life in ruined Chicago with its five factions, showing how each group dress and how their lives are lived so separately from one another. In the novel, this kind of detail is spread out through the story, but in the movie it's immediately apparent.

While the entire cast give strong performances and Shailene Woodley was surprisingly good as Tris, Theo James in particular stood out as Dauntless trainer, Four. James' solid effort proves he's more than just a pretty face and he almost steals the spotlight in this movie. James did all of his own stunts.

The screenplay is well done too, as it effectively showcases Tris' development from a shy, awkward teenager unsure about her future, into a brave and selfless young woman who begins to assert her "divergence" to challenge the status quo. This leads to plenty of action, romance, and tragedy. Completing this solid effort is a diverse soundtrack that is both appealing and enhances the action on the screen.

Divergent as a movie might actually be better than the book. The next movie, Insurgent is slated for release in March, 2015.

Starry Nights by Daisy Whitney

Julien Garnier lives in Paris with his parents where he attends the Lycee d'Aile. Julien has a deep connection to art; his mother runs the Musee d'Orsay, an art museum that displays works from 1884 to 1914 and he also sketches. He works at the Musee d'Orsay where he runs tours after school. AS a result, he is allowed into the building whenever he wants. 

One night he sees a most astonishing sight - subjects in the paintings come alive before his very eyes. Dancers from the Degas paintings step out and pirouette, a peach rolls out from a Cezanne painting, and a black cat slinks down from Manet's Olympia. The art coming alive continues for several weeks before the beginning of his story.

Julien is not sure just yet what is happening to the art so he keeps what he has seen a secret. Meanwhile he is anxiously awaiting the arrival of Auguste Renoir's lost painting, The Girl In The Garden to the Musee d'Orsay. This painting surfaced a month ago in a family of high fashion designers, the Clemenceaus, who claim to have had the painting in their family for over a hundred years. Julien is desperate to view this lost treasure, so as an incentive, his mother tells him if he does well in his literature class he will be able to see the painting before it goes up in the gallery.

 A few days later, Julien's mother takes him to see the long lost Renoir at the Clemenceau's home on Montmartre. Mrs. Clemenceau's cross-dressing son, Bonheur, invites Julien to a surprise party for his eighteenth birthday on Friday evening. It is a surprise party because he will be giving away one of his strange ceramic creations, a five-legged calf, as a prize to the person who exhibits the best surprised expression during the party.
 
During his visit with Bonheur, Julien makes an interesting discovery in the Clemenceau home when he finds himself in the wrong room on the way to the bathroom. There he finds a chalk reproduction of half of Renoir's Dance at Bougival showing Suzanne Valadon who was also an artist herself and the first female painter admitted to an art school in France. Julien wonders what the connection is between the Clemenceau family and both Valadon and Renoir, and how the Clemenceau family came to have the missing Renoir.

Dance at Bougival 

While Julien's mother reviews the documentation attesting to the authenticity of the Renoir painting, Bonheur shows the recovered Renoir painting to Julien. Julien is immediately taken with the painting, that of a beautiful girl with blonde hair in a flower garden and feels inexplicably drawn to it.

Meanwhile, Julien continues to experience strange phenomena around artwork. When he is with Emilie, an aspiring ballet dancer, he hears strains of Giselle which leads him to encourage Emilie to work towards getting in to the Paris ballet. When Julien and his friends attend Bonheur's party, Julien sneaks down into the basement and can hear women's voices from below the basement floor. He later learns from Bonheur that these voices are those of the nine Muses from Greek mythology (Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia and Urania).

Julien learns that the house at Montmarte where Bonheur lives is the same house where Suzanne Valadon lived and that he is indeed distantly related to her. Bonheur tells Julien that The Girl in the Garden is not like other paintings and that his family has been entrusted to keep it safe. Bonheur allows Julien another chance to view the lost Renoir painting and during this viewing, he witnesses one slender finger from the beautiful girl slip out of the canvas, which shimmers with silver.

The strangeness continues when Julien is sent to the Louvre to check on sun damage on a Renoir painting. There his hand is burned by the candle flame in a La Tour painting, he notices the repaired Renoir painting is showing damage again, and Rembrandt's Bathsheba has a drooping stomach. At first Julien thinks that he's crazy, but when he returns the next day to the Louvre, he discovers more paintings have damage.

Bonheur tells Julien that art is made to come alive in museums and that he has been told by the Muses that only special people like Julien can see art come to life. Bonheur also reveals to Julien that he speaks with the Muses who exist below his home and that they have given him the silver dust that he places in his five-legged ceramic calves. Bonheur tells Julien that the paintings can only come alive in museums.

Sure enough once The Girl In The Garden is hung in the Musee d'Orsay, the beautiful girl comes out of the painting, revealing herself to Julien as Clio one of the nine Muses. Julien is entranced by Clio and they go on dates in the museum, since she cannot leave the building. When Clio goes back into the painting she lives in Monet's garden. Eventually she begins to take Julien into the paintings.

As the art begins to sicken, not only in the Louvre but in galleries and museums around the world, Julien begins to suspect that a terrible curse that involves Renoir and Clio might be behind the damage and that only he and Clio will be able to save the world's priceless art, at a cost that might mean losing everything that matters most to both.

Discussion

Starry Nights is a unique and fantastical love story about a boy who falls in love with one of the Greek Muses who has been trapped in a painting due to a curse placed by Renoir. In this imaginative novel, Whitney has Clio and Julien go on dates where they travel from painting to painting - through Monet's works many of which include the bridge in his famous garden. The author has packed her story with numerous facts about paintings and various artists, although the painting at the center of the story is in fact, fictional. Nevertheless, readers might be inspired to look up Van Gogh's Starry Night, Toulouse-Lautrec’s Dancing at the Moulin Rouge, or Manet's Olympia.

The principal characters in Starry Nights are well crafted.  Julien is a tender, romantic young artist who cares deeply about art as well as inspiring others to create art. Unlucky his first time in love, he finds his "soulmate" in Clio, the Eternal Muse who spends her time inspiring art. Bonheur, the cross-dressing son of the Clemenceaus is based on the real Rosa Bonheur who lived in the 1800's and was known for her portrayal of animals and for wearing men's clothing. He's a sweet soul who helps Julien recognize his ability to heal art as the only human muse and who believes in true love. It's unfortunate other characters in the novel were not more fully developed. Instead these characters such as Julien's friends, Simon and Lucy, were one dimensional and mostly uninteresting.

Readers may find the story line somewhat complex, fantastical and will have to make a careful reading of this novel, but they will be rewarded with a satisfying conclusion to this unique story.

Image credit: Dance at Bougival: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_at_Bougival#/media/File:Dance-At-Bougival.jpg

Book Details:
Starry Nights by Daisy Whitney
New York: Bloomsbury      2013
275 pp.

The Offering by Kimberly Derting

"That the measure of a true queen didn't lie in her magic. It had more to do with who she was, and what she was willing to give of herself, than it did with the powers she possessed."

The Offering is the final installment in The Pledge series about an ancient evil queen who has achieved immortality through her ability to move from body to body. That queen, Sabara, had her attempt partly thwarted when she was forced to transfer herself to Charlaina, who apparently is able to resist the ancient queen's ability to destroy her own existence. The two queens now co-exist within Charlaina's body.

The novel opens with a prologue that tells readers what has happened to Niko and Xander's peace mission to Astonia's Queen Elena. Xander is a prisoner of the Queen as a result of the betrayal by Niko who appears to be in league with Astonia's Queen Elena.

Back in Ludania, Queen Charlaina continues with her reforms and reunification of the country. The work camps have been abolished, those sentenced to the Scablands reintegrated, and communication re-established across the country between Charletown and the southernmost city, 11South.

For Charlie, the struggle between her and Sabara is ongoing, as they are "two queens trapped in the same body".For now Charlie is winning the battle with Sabara relegated to the back of her mind.

One day four messengers from Astonia arrive bearing a paper box containing a gruesome gift hidden amongst layers of purple flowers. Both Zafir and Eden are distraught over the loss of their brother and leader respectively. Eden strikes out at the messengers, killing one before she is prevented from further action by Zafir and hauled off to be ministered to by Charlie's younger sister, Angelina.

Charlie returns to the hall pondering Queen Elena's motivation for sending her such a gruesome package. Upon closer inspection of the box, Charlie finds a letter from Queen Elena in the false bottom making her an offer she can't refuse. That offer is eventually revealed after Charlaina heads to Astonia with Eden as her bodyguard and accompanied by Brooklyn, head of the army. Charlaina hopes that Elena has a means to banish Sabara's Essence forever, to cure her of the evil ancient queen's insidious presence. But destroying Sabara will prove more difficult than Charlie ever imagined, as the threat to herself and Ludania grows more terrible by the minute.

Derting has crafted a good, if not predictable, ending to The Pledge series that delivers what most readers will want, hope and a happy ending. This third novel has multiple narrators offering perspectives from most of the important characters including Charlie, Max, Niko, Aron, Brooklyn and Queen Elena's sister, Sage. Charlie's perspective is in first person, while the other characters narratives are done in third person. Despite this switch in perspective, they are easy to follow, each advances the storyline and is seamlessly connected to the preceding narrative.

There are a few unanticipated plot twists in The Offering that will catch the reader by surprise, helping to hold interest, especially in the prologue and the first part of the novel. Although the middle section which describes Charlie's journey across Ludania towards Astonia is slow, it is important because the reader is given a glimpse into the tenuous existence of the abandoned children in the camps outside the cities. These experiences make Charlaina realize how her country has regressed during the lengthy reign of Sabara, reinforcing Charlie's determination to ensure that Sabara never regains the throne.

Charlie is a strong female character demonstrating integrity and sacrificial love for her country - something neither Elena nor Sabara exhibit. These qualities inspire loyalty from those around her, even unto death.

Overall, this is a fitting conclusion to an interesting, well written trilogy.  You can read about Kimberly Derting's next novel, The Taking on her website.

Book Details:
The Offering by Kimberly Derting
Toronto: Margaret K. McElderry Books       2014
286 pp.

Paige Torn by Erynn Mangum

Author Erynn Mangum, well known for her Maya Davis series, quickly sets the tone of this first novel in the Paige Adler series. Twenty-two year old Paige's best friend Layla Prestwick excitedly announces her engagement to boyfriend, Peter, and immediately draws Paige into helping her plan her fall wedding. But before that event, Layla is also organizing her parent's 25th wedding anniversary party and for that she desperately needs Paige's help. Paige can't turn down her best friend and is quickly drawn into helping her for this event too.

Meanwhile at work, Paige who is a receptionist at a private adoption agency, Lawman Adoption Agency, is busy organizing the agency's fundraising banquet, also to be held in February. Paige has a degree in child learning and development, hopes to take on cases some day, but so far that hasn't happened. Paige finds herself doing whatever it takes to keep the office running smoothly, including transcribing three interviews one night for one of the counselors.

Paige is also very involved in her church, Grace Church in Dallas, attending services and teaching the ninth grade girls youth group. At church she meets twenty five year old newcomer, Tyler Jennings, a computer software specialist, who has volunteered to take over the ninth grade boys group. The pastor of the church, Rick and his wife Natalie are expecting their first child any time now, meaning that Paige will be needed even more. Once Natalie's baby arrives, Paige is asked to fill in even more at the church and even ends up spending a weekend helping Natalie with her new baby.

It soon becomes apparent that Paige's life is off track. Between the demands of her coworkers, her pastor, the kids at the church, and her beloved best friend Layla, Paige can't find the time to eat, shop for groceries, or do her laundry. And she has even more trouble making time to pray. Her inability to say no has put Paige Alder on a treadmill she can't get off. When Tyler begins calling to ask her out, Paige, who finds Tyler very handsome, is almost too busy to accept. But Tyler has a way of making dates with Paige happen, all the while warning her that she needs to slow down and learn to say no to people. Paige is also reluctant to get involved with another guy and is still not completely recovered from her break-up with Luke Prestwick, Layla's older brother. Can Paige get her priorities in order and recognize

Erynn Mangum does a good job of demonstrating how Paige's life quickly becomes too busy and loses it's focus. However, Paige gradually recognizes that there is something amiss with her life. She ends each day looking at her Bible sitting on the nightstand, yet again untouched and thinks "tomorrow". But she seems powerless to change things until friends intervene.

Paige thought that God's plan for her was to spend each and every moment serving him through service to others. But when she reads the story of Jairus and his daughter, she realizes that Jesus was careful to spend the time he had not trying to do everything people wanted of him, but to do what mattered and to make time to pray.This revelation helps Paige begin to bring some order and perspective into her life and to change her behaviour. Instead of micromanaging everything for her friends and coworkers, she begins to try to look realistically at what she ought to be doing.

Against this backdrop is the blossoming relationship between Tyler and Paige and that's the hook which draws readers into this novel and ultimately the next in the series. The author focuses their relationship on the formation of a friendship, which if successful, will perhaps lead to something more. Tyler is respectful and tender towards Paige, and acts as a leader in their friendship. At the same time he encourages Paige to make her needs and views known, thus modelling a healthy friendship for readers. The hanging ending, a total surprise in a rather predictable book and the possibility of a love triangle in the next book will leave readers yearning for more.

Although this novel was placed in our Young Adult section it really is part of a new genre termed "New Adult", which refers to young adults who are at least 18 years of age up to about 25 years of age. Themes in this genre deal with leaving home, sexuality, courtship, marriage, and work, essentially all those areas that new adults who are either off to college or finished their education and now working, must navigate. Mangum's offering will be appreciated by her many fans because it is also Christian fiction, part of publisher Think, an imprint of NavPress the publishing ministry of The Navigators, a Christian organization that encourages personal development. The front of the novel indicates that "some of the anecdotal illustrations in this book are true to life".

Book Details:
Paige Torn by Erynn Mangum
Colorado Springs: NAVPRESS     2013
289 pp.

She Is Not Invisible by Marcus Sedgwick

"I am scared almost all the time. But I never tell anyone. I can't afford to. I have to go on pretending I'm this confident person, because if I don't, if I'm quiet, I become invisible. People treat me as if I'm not there. I remember being tine, about Benjamin's age, standing in the sweet shop, and the woman behind the counter asking Mum,...How do you manage with her? It must be very hard...
The woman kept on and on, and Mum didn't know what to say, and I just stood there, feeling more and more upset, and as she went on, I suddenly though it was as if she was the one who was blind, and couldn't see me, not the other way around."

This fascinating short novel opens with sixteen year old Laureth Peak and her seven year old brother, Benjamin flying from London to JFK in New York in search of their father. It is seven o'clock in the morning Saturday London time when they board the plane and the events in the book take place over the span of one day -Saturday in London and Saturday in New York City.

Laureth's father, Jack Peak, is a well known author, whose first five books were extremely popular. She checks her dad's fan mail that comes in via his website and responds using pre-written replies. One evening while checking his emails, she encounters one about the "Black Book" which is what her father calls his notebook. The email, from a Michael Walker, indicates that he has found Jack Peak's notebook. Michael's use of the currency dollar leads Laureth to suspect he is in America. Laureth responds as though she is her father and asks Michael to prove that he has the journal. He sends Laureth some scanned pages of the journal confirming it is her father's. After arranging how much reward he will receive they arrange to meet him at the Queen's Library in Long Island City.

The discovery of her father's journal in New York city is upsetting to Laureth because she understood her father was in Switzerland. When she questions her mother, she tells Laureth that she doesn't care that they haven't heard from her father and that he is the one who is responsible for whatever has happened. Instead Laureth's mother continues packing for an overnight visit to Aunt Sarah's in Manchester; a visit that will leave Laureth and Benjamin on their own for the day and one night. Laureth tries contacting her father but his phone just rings.

At this point Laureth decides that she is going to go in search of her father. She takes one of her mother's credit cards and purchases two tickets to New York. She and Benjamin wait until their mother leaves the next morning (Saturday) for Manchester and then unbelievably they manage to circumvent security and board a plane to New York.  It is during her travel to the airport, that we learn that Laureth is almost completely blind and that this is the reason she has "abducted" her younger brother, so he can be her eyes.

Several interesting things happen in the airport and on the trip over to America. First, it seems that Benjamin has the ability to crash electronics, an anecdotal effect (that is not scientifically verified) known as the Pauli effect. Secondly Laureth has Benjamin read through the first of three pages of the notebook that Michael emailed to her and she realizes that her father is obsessed with trying to understand coincidences and whether they have any meaning in our lives.

On the six hour flight over to New York, Laureth meets a young man named Sam who befriends her and tries to give her his phone number until he finally realizes that Laureth is blind. When Benjamin and Laureth arrive in New York, they meet up with Michael Walker who is not as they thought he would be. He is twelve years old and has a funny habit of speaking like someone out of a Dickens novel. But he does have Laureth's father's notebook which he gives to Laureth. Laureth tells him that their father is missing and asks Michael how he came into possession of the notebook and if he knows anything more about the notebook. Michael tells them that he found a receipt in the book from the Black King Hotel in Manhattan.

With the notebook as their only guide, Laureth and Benjamin set off on a race against time to solve the mysterious disappearance of their father and in the process learn much about themselves and their parents.

The first part of the novel is quite interesting, especially as Laureth learns about the research her father did regarding coincidence.  Jack Peak was going to incorporate coincidence into his next book and was doing research on it. Using this as a springboard, Sedgwick weaves in many interesting ideas that readers may not have encountered; numinous (the feeling that you have experienced God), apophenia (the tendency to see patterns in events), Benford's Law (on the frequency a digit will be the first digit in a number), as well as famous scientists such as Albert Einstein, Carl Jung, and Paul Kammerer. The storyline itself is filled with numerous coincidences and chance meetings, all of which work together to help Laureth and Benjamin in their quest to find their father.

Laureth is a fascinating character, a teenage girl who's blind and who has worked hard to make sure she is not invisible in life. This drive to force herself to be assertive has been scary but in the end pays off when Laureth travels halfway around the world to try to find her father. Laureth's determination and initiative saves her father and her family. Through all of this Sedgwick does an excellent job of conveying to his readers a sense of what it is like to be blind, busting a few myths about the blind along the way.

The resolution to the problem of Laureth's father's disappearance is somewhat disappointing but is offset by the dangerous situation Laureth and her brother find themselves caught up in. Sedgwick uses Jack Peak's diary to build tension in the novel, as the entries grow ever more mystifying and darker, leading Laureth to suspect the worst about her father and her parent's marriage.

She Is Not Invisible is a departure from Sedgwick's novels which tend towards horror and the occult. Because of the numerous interesting concepts put forth in this novel, it would make an excellent book club selection.


Book Details:
She Is Not Invisible by Marcus Sedgwick
London: Indigo    2013
354 pp.

Her Dark Curiosity by Megan Shepherd

Her Dark Curiosity picks up Juliet Moreau's story several months after she returns to England. Previously in The Madman's Daughter, she had barely escaped her father's island and its terrible beast men created by her father. The man she loved, Montgomery, her father's assistant had stayed behind to try to tend to the creatures. Juliet was picked up, adrift in the dinghy, three weeks later by a ship bound for Cape Town, South Africa. From there she traveled to Dakur and onto Lisbon, Spain. Desperately ill during the last part of her journey, Juliet was cared for by her best friend, Lucy Radcliffe.

But in London when Dr. Hastings learned of her whereabouts, he had Juliet thrown in jail for attacking him. Fortunately, Juliet was rescued by her father's colleague, Professor von Stein who successfully had the charges dropped. Von Stein was the colleague who reported Juliet's father to the police for his unethical experimentation/research. He is now determined to save Juliet and has taken her into his home.  Despite his kindness to her, Juliet has never told the Professor about her father's continued experimentation nor his creation of the beast men. She has never told him about the creation of Edward Prince, "a young man created from a handful of animal parts chemically transmuted using human blood." Edward loved Juliet but he was a man who contained a beast within, who at any moment could take control and murder.

Juliet too has her own secrets - the most important of which involves her condition. Born with a deformed spine, her father straightened her spine and replaced several of her missing organs with those from a fawn. Her body is always attempting to reject the foreign tissue, causing Juliet bouts of dizziness and tremors. To prevent this Juliet has always taken daily injections, but now they are no longer working.

To try to find a serum that works, she has rented a small attic in a lodging house in Shoreditch. She feels more at home in the attic with its rustic atmosphere, where she can be herself and where she uses animal parts from a butcher to try to replicate the serum her father made for her.

Nevertheless, living most of her time at the professor's home, Juliet must try to adjust to London society. As Juliet continues to try to assimilate back into London society, the city is gripped in terror by four gruesome murders. Each of the bloody murders has seen the victims badly mauled, leading newspapers to dub the murderer the Wolf of Whitechapel. Upon learning the names of the victims, Juliet is horrified to discover that they are all people she knew and who had harmed her in some way.

Determined to examine the victims, Juliet sneaks into the Kings College of Medical Research morgue. From the type of injuries, she comes to the conclusion that Edward Prince did not die on the island, but has survived and managed to travel to London.

Meanwhile, Juliet's friend, Lucy, reveals that she has two suitors, neither of whom she particularly likes; Inspector John Newcastle who is leading the investigation into the Wolf of Whitechapel murders and a strange man named Henry who has a strange appeal to Lucy. When Juliet meets Henry, who goes by the name of Henry Jaykll from Finland, she recognizes him at once as Edward Prince.

Juliet confronts Edward in private and tells him he must stop the Beast within him from murdering. Edward reveals to Juliet that Montgomery is alive and has been hunting him on the island. Scared he would kill Montgomery, Edward escaped the island to come to London in the hopes of finding a cure for his transformation into the Beast. Edward admits to loving Juliet, telling her that the Beast loves her too. He is finding it more and more difficult to control the beast, that the beast is able to retain his form longer each time and that he feels he is losing himself to the beast. Juliet takes Edward to her attic room begging him to chain himself there. During this time, Professor von Stein's neice, Elizabeth arrives from Scotland. She tells Juliet that both of their families have secrets in their past.

Shortly after Edward begins staying at the attic, Juliet arrives to find Edward covered in blood with torn clothing. Juliet realizes that the Beast has stuck again. Despite the horror of this, Juliet and Edward become lovers. In the morning however, Juliet regrets her actions of the previous night and tries to explain to Edward that she still loves Montgomery. This causes the Beast to reappear and attack her. Juliet escapes but vows to cure Edward and save him from the Beast.

The night of the Radcliffe masquerade, Juliet and Lucy share the secrets they have both been keeping from one another. Lucy reveals that her father has in his possession, letters with strange information about Juliet's father's research. Since Lucy's father is an investor, Juliet now believes he has been financing her father's research on the island. Juliet reveals to Lucy Henry's identity and origins. The two girls decide to search Lucy's father's study but find little to help them understand further what the connection is between the two men.

It is at the masquerade that the mystery deepens further; Juliet meets Montgomery who explains that he has received notes from both Edward and the Beast stating that Edward wants to find a cure, the Beast is hoping to experience all the "pleasures and pains" of life. While talking with Montgomery, they overhear a conversation between Lucy's father, Radcliffe, and another man which reveals that they know about the existence of Edward and that they are attempting to capture him at the ball.

Juliet and Montgomery are in a race against time to find Edward. For Juliet, time is running out to find a cure for Edward and to save him from both Montgomery and Radcliffe and the King's Club.

Once again, Megan Shepherd has crafted a unique story that takes many of the elements of the classic novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to create completely new story. From this novel, it appears she will then segue into Frankenstein, weaving together a trilogy that encompasses three classic gothic/horror novels.

Both the characters and the storyline are compelling in this novel, as they were in The Madman's Daughter. The forbidden romance between Edward and Juliet is deeply disturbing and not surprisingly, Shepherd continues to develop the love triangle which was hinted at in the first novel, with the reappearance of Montgomery.

The characters of Edward and Juliet are primarily the focus of this novel. It would have been wonderful to see more development of both Lucy and Elizabeth, both of whom are interesting characters. Hopefully we will see more of Elizabeth in the third novel as she appears to be a linking character whose purpose is to transition the storyline into the third novel.

The essence though of Her Dark Curiosity is the relationship between Edward and Juliet and the tension they experience. Edward tries to convince Juliet that he has more in common with her than does Montgomery; that they are both creations of her father and are part animal. This is only partly true, since Juliet is the biological daughter of Dr. Moreau but Edward is made out of animal and human. Edward is referring to the fact that he comes from animal parts while Juliet had animal organs grafted into her. He also suggests that her civilized behaviour is only a veneer that covers the animal inside. This theme is demonstrated using some interesting symbolism in the novel; Juliet's corset becomes a symbol of her civilized side which both Edward and the Beast ask her to remove. This suggests that Edward is not quite so separate from the Beast as he leads Juliet to believe. Juliet's corset is symbolic of the social norms which prevent her from acting on her baser impulses. Once Juliet removes the corset (her civilized nature) she is easily seduced by Edward - in fact quite willingly, despite him being covered in blood after the Beast committed a murder. What kind of woman would make love to a man who has just murdered someone and is drenched in blood?

The title of the novel refers to Juliet's curiosity about herself, but more importantly, about Edward and the Beast. The Beast accuses her of sabotaging her own attempts to develop a cure as a result of her dark curiosity.

"You're dying of curiosity -- that's why some deep part of you is sabotaging any attempts for a cure. You're desperate to know what you'll become, and as far as Edward goes, let's just come out with the truth, shall we: You don't want to cure him, either, not deep down, because the one who fascinates you is me."

Earlier in the novel Juliet demonstrates a dark curiosity about Edward. She is curious about what Edward experiences when he transforms into the beast; what he feels and what he might remember. This curiosity upsets Edward greatly when he sees Juliet's desire to know more because he is repulsed by the Beast and wants to destroy him.

Juliet also recognizes her unnatural curiosity. "A part of me thinks he was right. There is something unnatural about me. I can feel it, deep inside. I don't care for the things other girls do. I'm curious about things I shouldn't be. I'm so fascinated by Father's research that I can hardly stop thinking about it. I feel like a monster for thinking that."

Overall, this novel was engaging with its decidedly gothic tone, but has disturbing elements too. Due to the graphic violence and sexual content of the book, it is recommended for older teens.

Book Details:
Her Dark Curiosity by Megan Shepherd
New York: HarperCollins Children's Books    2014
422 pp.