The Gathering by Kelley Armstrong
Series: Darkness Rising
Publisher: Doubleday, 2011
Genre: Fantasy
Sub-genre: Paranormal, Urban fantasy, YA
Rating: 3 pints of blood
Ok, look. Every time I come across a cover where the artist got all happy with the blue colour filter in photoshop, all I can think of is smurfs. So let's go ahead and get all the smurf jokes out of our systems now. Go ahead, make as many as come to your head.
We got that squared away? Ok, good.
Honestly, I have no idea why they went with blue for this cover. Even more puzzling is the choice to keep her lips pink. I just... I have no answers for you here, folks. Close-up of girl's head in blue. While it's true YA in general is the place to go if you truly want beautiful cover art, this is not one of the examples you'd go looking at. It's not hideous, it's just... bizarre. And not something I would ever have picked up to check out if I was not already familiar with the author.
I've been a fan of Kelley Armstrong's for years, and her previous YA trilogy (starting with The Summoning) was amazing. So it was a no-brainer that I'd get my mitts on her newest YA venture as soon as possible.
Maya has lived in a tiny town for as long as she can remember, populated almost entirely by the families of the local medical research company's employees. It's an isolated place, but Maya likes it that way. With nothing but forests for miles around, she and her friends Serena and Daniel have the world's biggest backyard.
Until, that is, Serena is killed in a freak accident.
A year later, Maya and Daniel are still dealing with the guilt and trauma, doing what they can to come to a new normal in their lives. Strange things start happening, though, and they all seem to centre around Maya and her friends. Wild animals start popping up wherever she goes, she starts having strange dreams, Daniel develops an eerily reliable sixth sense about people, and an older woman calls Maya a witch after seeing the pawprint-shaped birthmark on her hip. When a reporter comes snooping around and asking questions, Maya initially thinks this is just another spy trying to collect information on the medical research being done there, but the reporter seems much more interested in the kids than the scientists. Some of her questions and information seem to imply there's more to this small town than Maya ever thought, and the teens are at the heart of it --including Serena and her death.
This is the first in a planned trilogy, so let me say now there are a lot of questions raised here and very few answers given. It doesn't exactly land on a cliffhanger, but there's also no attempt to wrap up loose ends. The Darkness Rising trilogy is also loosely related to the Darkest Powers trilogy, and there are a few references in there readers of the first books will catch. It's not a continuation, though, being entirely new characters in an entirely different location, so new readers don't have to be intimidated.
Something else to be noted: Maya is a young native woman and she does deal with stereotypes thrown at her because of it. Because she was adopted, she's not certain which tribe she comes from, and is fully aware of how much of a difference that can make.
True to the small town setting, the pacing in The Gathering is slow. It's very slow. While there are weird things beginning to happen, for the most part they're little things, aiming for a slow build that never really starts to build until the final act. The plot is just starting to get traction when the book ends, making it more of a lengthy setup for the two to follow than anything else.
It is, however, always nice when the author is clearly familiar with the genre they're writing in. After the new guy arrives in town, he starts paying attention to Maya, and at first she's skeptical, since he puts on this mysterious bad boy air that ensures pretty well every girl is interested in him. About halfway through the book, they have this conversation:
"Why do you like me?"
He laughed. "Do you want a list? Smart, pretty, funny--"
"That's not what I--" I shook my head. "Never mind."
It sounded like I was fishing for compliments. But something about this bugged me. Hot new guy comes to school, checks out all the girls and decides I'm the one he really, really wants. It was the ultimate fantasy, which meant there had to be an angle I was missing.
I have to admit, I did a little cheer inside when I read that part. How many times have you read that trope in a YA novel? And this has to be the first time I've read a heroine questioning it. I can't tell you how excited I get when someone twists a familiar trope, and Armstrong doesn't just leave it with a token conversation. This becomes a significant part in the budding relationship between Maya and Rafe (the new guy).
Relationships in general are handled very well in this book. I loved the brother/sister vibe between Daniel and Maya, the openness in her dealings with her parents, and the caution she showed with... well, pretty well everyone else. Maya doesn't take crap from anyone, and she'll stand up for herself and her friends, and this is not only well known, but it affects the way people treat her. I really enjoyed the way the characters played off each other, and if the focus had been more on that sort of interplay, I would have liked the book a lot more. As it stands, it felt like a whole lot of buildup for a book that's not out yet, and while there are questions I'd be interested in finding out the answers to, I had no problems setting the book down while I was reading it due to the slow, slow pace.
The Gathering is available in hardcover
.
Publisher: Doubleday, 2011
Genre: Fantasy
Sub-genre: Paranormal, Urban fantasy, YA
Rating: 3 pints of blood
Ok, look. Every time I come across a cover where the artist got all happy with the blue colour filter in photoshop, all I can think of is smurfs. So let's go ahead and get all the smurf jokes out of our systems now. Go ahead, make as many as come to your head.
We got that squared away? Ok, good.
Honestly, I have no idea why they went with blue for this cover. Even more puzzling is the choice to keep her lips pink. I just... I have no answers for you here, folks. Close-up of girl's head in blue. While it's true YA in general is the place to go if you truly want beautiful cover art, this is not one of the examples you'd go looking at. It's not hideous, it's just... bizarre. And not something I would ever have picked up to check out if I was not already familiar with the author.
I've been a fan of Kelley Armstrong's for years, and her previous YA trilogy (starting with The Summoning) was amazing. So it was a no-brainer that I'd get my mitts on her newest YA venture as soon as possible.
Maya has lived in a tiny town for as long as she can remember, populated almost entirely by the families of the local medical research company's employees. It's an isolated place, but Maya likes it that way. With nothing but forests for miles around, she and her friends Serena and Daniel have the world's biggest backyard.
Until, that is, Serena is killed in a freak accident.
A year later, Maya and Daniel are still dealing with the guilt and trauma, doing what they can to come to a new normal in their lives. Strange things start happening, though, and they all seem to centre around Maya and her friends. Wild animals start popping up wherever she goes, she starts having strange dreams, Daniel develops an eerily reliable sixth sense about people, and an older woman calls Maya a witch after seeing the pawprint-shaped birthmark on her hip. When a reporter comes snooping around and asking questions, Maya initially thinks this is just another spy trying to collect information on the medical research being done there, but the reporter seems much more interested in the kids than the scientists. Some of her questions and information seem to imply there's more to this small town than Maya ever thought, and the teens are at the heart of it --including Serena and her death.
This is the first in a planned trilogy, so let me say now there are a lot of questions raised here and very few answers given. It doesn't exactly land on a cliffhanger, but there's also no attempt to wrap up loose ends. The Darkness Rising trilogy is also loosely related to the Darkest Powers trilogy, and there are a few references in there readers of the first books will catch. It's not a continuation, though, being entirely new characters in an entirely different location, so new readers don't have to be intimidated.
Something else to be noted: Maya is a young native woman and she does deal with stereotypes thrown at her because of it. Because she was adopted, she's not certain which tribe she comes from, and is fully aware of how much of a difference that can make.
True to the small town setting, the pacing in The Gathering is slow. It's very slow. While there are weird things beginning to happen, for the most part they're little things, aiming for a slow build that never really starts to build until the final act. The plot is just starting to get traction when the book ends, making it more of a lengthy setup for the two to follow than anything else.
It is, however, always nice when the author is clearly familiar with the genre they're writing in. After the new guy arrives in town, he starts paying attention to Maya, and at first she's skeptical, since he puts on this mysterious bad boy air that ensures pretty well every girl is interested in him. About halfway through the book, they have this conversation:
"Why do you like me?"
He laughed. "Do you want a list? Smart, pretty, funny--"
"That's not what I--" I shook my head. "Never mind."
It sounded like I was fishing for compliments. But something about this bugged me. Hot new guy comes to school, checks out all the girls and decides I'm the one he really, really wants. It was the ultimate fantasy, which meant there had to be an angle I was missing.
I have to admit, I did a little cheer inside when I read that part. How many times have you read that trope in a YA novel? And this has to be the first time I've read a heroine questioning it. I can't tell you how excited I get when someone twists a familiar trope, and Armstrong doesn't just leave it with a token conversation. This becomes a significant part in the budding relationship between Maya and Rafe (the new guy).
Relationships in general are handled very well in this book. I loved the brother/sister vibe between Daniel and Maya, the openness in her dealings with her parents, and the caution she showed with... well, pretty well everyone else. Maya doesn't take crap from anyone, and she'll stand up for herself and her friends, and this is not only well known, but it affects the way people treat her. I really enjoyed the way the characters played off each other, and if the focus had been more on that sort of interplay, I would have liked the book a lot more. As it stands, it felt like a whole lot of buildup for a book that's not out yet, and while there are questions I'd be interested in finding out the answers to, I had no problems setting the book down while I was reading it due to the slow, slow pace.
The Gathering is available in hardcover
.