Nocturne

Nocturne, by Christine Johnson, is the sequel to Claire de Lune, reviewed here. I finished this book pretty quickly, not so much because I loved it but because it was so emotionally painful I had to see how it would end. If you plan on reading Claire de Lune, don't read this review. It will contain SPOILERS.

In Nocturne, Claire is a full werewolf, but one more ceremony remains to see if she is a complete werewolf. Incomplete werewolves are so rare that the others in her pack even joke about it, believing she will have no problem showing off all her new skills. But they don't know that Claire can't start a fire in the werewolf way, an elementary skill, and if Claire can't get it right by her New Moon Ceremony, she will become an outcast. To complicate matters, her mother avoids any part of her human life, and her boyfriend, a secret-keeper for the all-female pack, doesn't seem to want to have anything to do with her werewolf life. When her best friend, Emily, finds a new friend to hang out with, Claire believes it might be for the best, since if Emily ever found out the truth, the pack would have to kill her. But Claire can't bear to give up her human life and friends entirely. Torn between two paths, Claire becomes alienated from everyone she loves, and if she doesn't start a fire, that will be her life forever.

You see? Emotional pain. That's what this book is about. I have occasionally come across books like it, not that all books don't have a little of it. This type of emotional pain is unique. It involves a teenager who is trying to do the best she can with no one listening to her or helping her. The odds are so stacked against her that all the reader wishes for is that the end will even things out and bring her some vindication. But the process of getting there is painful, especially because the girl keeps all her problems to herself and seems not to even try to fight the alienation. It's rather frustrating for the reader. I felt a little of this reading Claire de Lune, too, but that was resolved mostly satisfactorily.

I didn't feel quite the same about the end of Nocturne. I felt a little cheated, even though there was certainly emotional resolution, enough to bring a tear to my eye even; it just wasn't the resolution I was looking for. Just as in Claire de Lune, in Nocturne there are a lot of mother/daughter issues, but I confess, I understand the daughter far better than the mother. Claire's mother is kind of cold. She's Alpha of the pack, so she has to keep the rules. But I feel like she always treats her daughter as a Beta wolf and never as a daughter, especially since she's not interested in Claire's human life. The Alpha has her reasons, but they don't resonate with me on an emotional level. While Claire and her mother come to an understanding by the end, I feel like Claire just accepts how things are without ever receiving the support that she needs and that the reader desires for her.

It's the same with the boyfriend. He explains himself in the end, but I don't buy it. I take Claire's side on the issue and don't understand how she can put aside her feelings without at least one of the characters saying, "You know, you're right." The other characters do tell her she's right about her decisions in the end, but not about her feelings. It's just unsatisfactory, and Claire's reaction is not quite believable. But maybe she's just a bigger person than I am. I fully admit, Claire makes her own mistakes. In every relationship, there are two sides, and just as her mom and boyfriend don't understand her, she doesn't understand everything they do. Yet, I feel she has a better grip on their lives and shows more concern for them, especially for the boyfriend, than they show for her.

Aside from the plot and story, there are other issues to be aware of in this book. I noticed the cursing in the first book, but I noticed it even more in this second. It might be considered minor cursing, but I'm not a fan. Also, there's more sexual foreplay, for lack of a better term, in this book. The characters never go all the way, which I very much appreciate, and nothing is ever graphically described, which is especially great for young adult fiction, but I still found it was too much. Claire and her boyfriend are always alone together, and they're all over each other. I just didn't think it set a great example for young, even teenage, readers.

I will still give Nocturne three stars for being a fun, semi-unique werewolf story, and I'm curious to see where the author goes from here. Book 1 is about becoming a werewolf. Book 2 is about defining what a werewolf's life entails. I would like to see Claire evolve more in following books. I'd like the stakes to be raised, and I'd like to see a more confident heroine involved in more meaningful, satisfactory relationships. Because, with that, this series could be good.

Firelight

Dragon stories come and go in the trends. Firelight, Sophie Jordan's young adult novel, has a much different take on dragon lore than I've seen before. Though the story matches the current fascination with supernatural beings, Jordan spins it a new way, casting her female heroine (rather than the love interest) as the shape-shifting, half human Draki, descended from Dragons of long ago, and living in our modern world.

I loved the beginning of this book. I started reading, and I was pulled right into the story. I knew this was one that I was going to love and want on my shelf.

Jacinda is a Draki, part of a pride, the only fire-breather in generations. The pride leader wants her for his son, but Jacinda would like to be less conspicuous, less in the spotlight, able to live her own life how she wants. But when she takes a forbidden daytime flight, she becomes a danger to the pride, and they will go to drastic measures to ensure her cooperation. Jacinda's mother knows her daughter isn't safe in the cult-like pride, but Jacinda would rather be there than let her Draki die in the desert, and that's just what her mother intends. To complicate matters, Jacinda falls in love with a Draki hunter who causes her to begin to manifest her Draki in front of him; the problem is no human alive, especially the hunters, must know that Draki are also human.

Cool premise. Nice set-up. Cool cover (a red-headed heroine again, but I'm not complaining). The first third of the book is about perfect.

Then...it fizzles to a stand-still.

The last half of the book is full of teenage rebellion and angst. It's like trudging through mud in a circle. If you've watched the TV show Smallville, you can compare it to Lana always telling Clark Kent she can't trust him. Yes, we know. You said that last episode, oh, and the episode before that, and, come to think of it, wasn't that the main dilemma last season? You get the idea. All you want is for the characters to move on. Jacinda can't trust the hunter. She needs him because he awakens her dying Draki. She kisses him. Oh, she'd better not do that ever again. She's done with him. Repeat. And repeat.

As if that weren't tiring enough, Jacinda never gains any ground with getting her mother and sister to understand her, and this annoyed me the most. In fact, by the end of the book, Jacinda is feeling like she's been selfish, and there's no emotional resolution for the reader who has been feeling Jacinda's pain and needing for her family to connect with her and support her. The family supposedly does what they do out of love, but it's difficult to buy.

Even the potential danger of the hunter's evil cousins is buried in all the teenage drama. It emerges for a brief, pitiful attempt at a climax, and then the book doesn't end! It leaves you hanging at a point that I thought would be a good place to begin the climax, and there is no emotional or even romantic resolution, let alone a conflict resolution. I guess that's being saved for the next book. Problem is, you need to end one book before you start another! Even the first book in a series should be a good stand-alone book. It should, at the very least, leave the reader feeling emotionally satisfied. But my reaction to the end of the book was literally, "Ugh."

The only pay-off the writer gave me was at the beginning of the book. When I started to read what the pride was like, I was thinking, wow, this is a lot like a cult. I hope the author realizes that. And though Jacinda didn't realize it, her mother did, and this is made abundantly clear. I liked that. But as I said, the first part of the book was wonderful. It felt like the author just filled the rest of the book with fluff to get something long enough to sell and to not use up all her series ideas in one book.

Though I was ultimately disappointed in the book, I can honestly give the beginning a good four stars for ingenuity and beauty. But maybe Jordan would have had a better book if she had just kept her plot with the pride and not tried to turn her story into a modern, everyday teenage drama. Needless to say now, I don't plan on keeping this book on my shelf, after all.