Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
This novel has been featured in the community before and I wholeheartedly agree with the points of fail made in that November 2010 entry plus have some additional fails of my own. Like the original reviewer I am somewhat surprised by the number of positive reviews for this novel though did find plenty over at Goodreads who gave it a thumbs down.
The narrator of this novel is Ethan Wate, resident of Gatlin, South Carolina, who has been haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl that he has never met. Then Lena Duchannes moves to town and starts at Ethan's High School. She instantly is branded as an outcast as she is living at Ravenwood, the residence of the town's shut-in, Macon Ravenwood, who is Lena's uncle. Ethan recognises Lena from his dreams and then discovers that they can share thoughts. While Lena is meant to be keeping various family secrets, she quickly blurts all out to Ethan. It transpires that she and all her family are Casters, emphasising that Casters are not witches but spell casters. Ethan is soon drawn into Lena's convoluted family politics, experiences flashes of a possible past life during the Civil War and seeks to understand the nature of the curse that Lena is under that will trigger on her upcoming 16th birthday. A family curse and young love provides plenty of opportunity for angstation for both Ethan and Lena.
When I first read its cover blurb I felt that it sounded an interesting premise but in execution this was excruciatingly bad on so many levels. I am well aware that the novel and attendant series has its passionate fans and that I am not in its target demographic. However, one of the members of my library reading group is a young adult and she also was rolling her eyes as we compared various points of fail at our latest meeting. I did manage to finish it though by the last 150 pages I was just considering it as an unintentional comedy.
At first I did find it refreshing that the novel had a teenage boy as its narrator with his love interest as the one with supernatural powers. However, any sense of dramatic or romantic tension between them was seriously weakened by their telepathic ability and her tendency to reveal these so called deep dark secrets at the least provocation. The same can be said of her relatives as well as the adults in Ethan's world with any knowledge about Casters. I did have some personal quibbles about the nature of Casters that included Lena saying that Ethan was ridiculous when he used the word witches, stating it was a stereotype like the word 'jock'. This was just confusing though it soon became clear that the authors had done little research about the history of witchcraft given Lena's mention of witch burnings at Salem and 'all along the Eastern seaboard', which Lena suggested did not get included in 'your history books'. The mid to late 17th century was well documented in colonial America and there were relatively few executions compared to arrests with no burnings.
This 'us and you' attitude was evident throughout the novel as various Casters referred to everyone else as 'Mortals', which was annoying even if this is a trend in some paranormal novels. It just is something that personally bothers me. Also, the powers exhibited by various Casters were rather random and required no training - they were just born with them. It is very phenomenological magic and this kind of 'Bewitched'-style magic in which food magically appears/disappears or décor and architecture changes on whim always strikes me as lazy over better thought out magical systems.
The novel is also weak in terms of characterisation across the board for major and minor characters and while its South Carolina setting held the promise of Southern Gothic it quickly descended into a caricature of the Deep South. More fantasy comes into play in terms of history, which caused me to almost throw the book across the room when a minor character, a custodian of local historical records, has a primary source with details that the town had been founded when the King of Scotland had given a land grant to the Ravenwood family in 1781. History Fail in terms of both USA and UK! What makes it inexcusable is that both its authors were university educated with MAs and one is a former teacher.
Then there is the Science Fail, which I will place under a cut as it is a little spoilerish in terms of details of a location the couple visits. When Ethan and Lena are introduced to a secret Caster library that only is open during Bank Holidays they are cautioned that they must leave by dawn or be trapped in the library until the next Bank Holiday. Fair enough but then the custodian warns them "the sun will rise precisely at six; it always does, on a Library Day" . As I said major Science Fail. Can you imagine if the sun rose precisely at 6 am on those days the Caster Library was open no matter the time of year? Even given that South Carolina doesn't have the kind of sunrise variations throughout the year as further north, the sun coming up one day at say 7:15 and the next at 6 am and the day after 7:16 would certainly cause folk to sit up and take notice. Plus, how would these out of sequence sunrises effect the rest of the planet? In short, there has to be some coherence with the real world even in fantasy and when the laws of physics get twisted for what seems no real reason it just seems lame. I won't even touch on the other issue of this gigantic Caster library being located in this small town to service a small number of actual Casters. Just silly.
The town could also be a collective recipient of a Darwin Award due to this little final nugget. Again, I will place under a cut even though this doesn't impact on the plot only the level of ridiculousness. The residents of Gatlin partake in an annual re-enactment of a local Civil War battle (Honey Hill) and use unstable antique weapons along with live ammunition as well as live artillery shells. It seems that the authors did this in order to heighten the sense of danger in case someone wandered into the 'war' zone during a crucial scene but again this just came off as daft. There is an actual re-enactment of the Battle of Honey Hill that takes place at the end of November, the actual anniversary, rather than February as in the novel though by this point there were so many timey-whimey wibble wobbles what was a town being 3 months out of date? Also, I am sure its real life organisers can't be too happy with this ludicrous fictional portrayal with live ammo.
So I have cited this novel for poor characterisation, a weak confusing plot and an unrealised setting along with magic fail, history fail, science fail and cultural fail. I could find little in the way of redeeming features and that is very rare for me. Also, at 563 pages this novel felt very bloated and by the end it was hard to really care where the authors were going to take the story next. As a result I will not continue with this series.