A Final Offering

Language separates us all in ways that are cultural and expected. We expect to be able to speak to those we share a country with, but we can't imagine a country separate into castes by the language we speak... or can we? Isn't language already a separation between those who can and those who can't In Kimberly Derting's final Pledge novel, The Offering, Charlie finally understands what it means to be a queen. 

When Charlie became queen, she did not rid the world of Sabara the tyrant. She fused Sabara's soul to her own. While it hasn't been easy, she has chosen to block out the former queen's negativity and focus on the changes she always dreamed she could make to her country. She disbanded the work camps for orphaned children. She sent their sadistic leaders to their punishment for years of abuse. She disbanded the caste system. Most importantly for a country separated by language, she restored communications. Sabara had cut all communication systems in the country long ago, but at Charlie's insistence, they were replaced and brought the country back together. Sure, this means her enemies could communicate easier as well, but Charlie refused to think of her people with Sabara's paranoia. She was a different kind of queen. 

Her scariest threat was Elena, the queen who would do anything to have Sabara's power. Charlie sent her friend, Xander, to forge an accord with Elena, but his long absence has troubled them all. When Elena sends a token of her time with Xander, a piece of him, Charlie gets both messages- the implied one from his severed hand, and the hidden one in the bottom of the box. As a true queen, Charlie knows it is her own duty to set off and stop Elena from the harm she intends for the people Charlie loves. Charlie might be young, but she certainly doesn't underestimate the lengths Elena is willing to go for control of Sabara. 

This series and its basis over language as a caste system has always been intriguing to me, especially as a teacher of dyslexics where language is a constant factor in their successes and failures. If you don't believe me, ask a dyslexic about an experience where they had to fill out an application on the spot and couldn't take it home to spell check it or ask someone for help with it. They will tell you what separation language makes between them and a non--dyslexic. So to see Charlie bring the country back together, for better or worse, was great for me. It felt like the same sentiment that fights to uphold the freedom of speech or demonstration even if it means also protecting groups and people you disagree with. If I want my rights, then I can't deny them for anyone. It was a really beautiful sentiment, and I loved watching Charlie blossom into a true queen. She was selfless and brave, and it didn't hurt that she could kick a little butt when needed!

The finale had a slow moment or two, but it really was just one big journey to the final battle against Elena. Charlie was truly the epitome of great leadership while Elena was the quintessential power-hungry leader who can never have enough. As we see the two comparatively, their differences are vast and unmistakable. It was a really nice juxtaposition. So even with a few slow parts, the story was a great ending to a great story. Kimberly Derting proved she could do dystopia with the same ease she did supernatural in the Body Finder series... so what's next?!

Chaos Isn't In the Stars

Life as a teen is hard enough, but when you are the daughter of Egyptian Gods, your life comes with a special set of issue. But for Isadora, life as a normal teen is like a fantasy more fantastical than actual mythology. In The Chaos of the Stars, Kiersten White combines modern day teens with ancient mythology for a fun and mystical story.

Isadora lives an easy enough life, if you don't count her goddess mother, dead, but undead, father, awkward brother and strange half-brother. As the mortal daughter of immortal God parents, she knows her time with them is limited. But time amongst the immortal is tricky. They live years as moments and she is tired of being ignored because her life is fleeting. When her mother chooses to get pregnant again, a necessary part of keeping herself alive is to produce heirs who will worship her, Isadora is almost happy when it means she is being sent to America to live with her brother. When her mother is pregnant, she is most vulnerable, so it would be safest for Isadora to be squirreled away someplace. 

Her brother Sirus is welcoming, but she was shocked to find him with a wife- a pregnant wife. To make matters worse, her mother's arms reach far from Egypt and get Isadora a job in a museum curating an exhibit of none other than Isis herself. Isadora wishes she had more distance from Egypt and everything in it, but at the museum she meets some great people- including a mysterious boy who writes epic poetry. While Isadora makes herself quite clear that she has no interest in romance, she can't help but think about Ry (Orion). Isadora starts to think she might just be able to have a normal life away from Eygpt... until Egypt finds her in San Diego.

Kiersten White has a way of writing stories in a very middle reader/YA hybrid kind of way. I don't think they follow into either category, but somewhere in between. For instance, they sound kind of young and feel kind of young, but I can picture young adult readers still enjoying their stories (in a much different way than they enjoy the books of Rick Riordan, for instance). It makes them both versatile and hard to place in an equally strange way! Some YA readers find them childish and some middle readers aren't ready yet. But they do have fairly good cross-over appeal, and make for fantastic reads for older, low-skilled readers or younger, high-skilled readers. 

I like White's stories, but in the Paranormalcy series, she lost me after the first book, which was really, really good. I am looking forward to the next project White works on, and would have loved to see where Isadora's story went, but at the same time, I am happy White plans to leave it as a stand-alone. I think it will do the story justice to not drag it out unnecessarily. For me the big reveal was not terribly surprising, but it was satisfying, nonetheless. This was a fun, interesting tweak on Egyptian mythology!

The Essence of a Soul

We don't need castes and language barriers to separate us from our fellow human beings, but in the sequel to Kimberly Derting's The Pledge, Charlie finds out just how difficult it is to break down the barriers of generations worth of differences. In The Essence, we see a young woman with good intentions who struggles to shake off the pieces of her own past. 

Charlie hasn't adjusted at all to being the Queen. Not only does it feel strange for people to refer to her as "your Majesty", but everything about being the queen is difficult, even the table manners. When she defeated Sabara, she didn't expect all that embodies royalty to become her future, but then again, she didn't expect Sabara's essence to attach itself to Charlie's psyche either. While Charlie is trying to exact great change to the country she loves, Sabara is inside her trying harder and harder to gain control over Charlie's body and do what she has done for generations: rule Ludania. 

The war inside Charlie's head isn't the only one being waged. The people of her own country are turning against her and the queens of surrounding nations don't trust her. Charlie believes in what she is doing, abolishing the caste system and trying to instill equality among her people, but the people are fighting back. Even the simple act of opening a new school has become a battle field for Charlie and everyone in her wake, innocent or not. She can't control what is going on inside her head, but she won't stop trying to help the people of Ludania. 

The fact that the wars in this book are being fought on a global and on a mental scale made the story all the more intriguing. Charlie is a tough girl, but having someone inside your head, someone you didn't hesitate to kill, can't be easy. Imagine the realization that every time you let your guard down, a piece of yourself takes over and you can't stop it? It must be maddening! So the Charlie you remembered form the first book is still there, but she is being consumed by the war being waged inside her head. I really liked this angle, especially when Charlie starts to see more and more of Sabara's memories. It brought a whole new level of sophistication to the story and it kept me from putting the book down.

I think this story has a tiny bit of the sophomore stall because it really needed to take the time to transition Charlie from wayward rebel to unrefined queen. That 180 took some time, but Derting was great at making the transition while still moving the story forward. In all, I barely noticed the stall, but it was there. What I didn't get enough of with this story was more of our supporting characters like Angelina and Max and Xander. We got a lot of Brook, who I love, but I want more from everyone! They are such great characters that you want them to pull out into the spotlight so you can enjoy it. On a whole, however, I loved this book, love this series, and can't wait for the next installment!

Trafficking Enlightenment on a Difficult Subject

Slavery is a term all our young people think is something of the past, something that happened before their time. But what too few people realize is the slave trade is still very real and in many capacities. We have hear horror stories about the human trafficking into the sex trade, but the human trafficking into the domestic trade is also very much alive and very much ignored. In Kim Purcell's Trafficked, she fights to stop the ignorance regarding a veritable slave trade that imprisons so many of the world's young people.


Hannah is from Moldova, but the family looking for a nanny wants a Russian girl, so she must watch her dialect if she is to make this work. Her friends and family warn her about trusting anyone willing to take her to the US for a job that seems to good to be true, but Hannah won't listen. She and her grandmother are barely surviving as it is, and she won't sit idle while her grandmother's blindness ruins her life for lack of money for a simple cataracts operation. So Hannah travels under a fake name and fake visa to the States, but she is very wary of her surroundings. She has heard the stories of girls shoved into brothels and sold as sex slaves and has no intention of becoming one of them. When she arrives at a home with children to take care of, she breathes a sigh of relief that she has not become another statistic.


But instantly, something feels off to Hannah. Lillian, the mother, demands to keep Hannah's papers and return plane ticket. Hannah loses the ticket but manages to hang onto her visa and passport. Then, she warns Hannah to stay away from her husband. Hannah finds this disconcerting, but the promise of $400 a week is too much to pass up over a bad feeling. She quickly settles into the absurdly long days raising this woman's children, cleaning up after the family, and even cooking all their meals, but she can't get over the fact that she is clearly a "tool" to the family, not a human being. Forced to stay in the garage instead of a bedroom and given only a few clothes, she is basically at their mercy for anything she needs. When they don't pay her for weeks and weeks, she finally asks about her wages only to find she has to "work off her debt" of the ticket and the agent to get her here. Hannah quickly begins to understand that while this might not be a brothel, she is still a slave to this family. But with no place to go for help and people who threaten to hurt your family if you leave, is there anyway to escape that slavery?


When I first saw this book, I have to say I only scanned the blurb and assumed it was the sex trade, not the domestic trade, that Hannah had been duped into. While the domestic trade seems less harmful that the sex trade, it shouldn't be discounted as less terrifying and dehumanizing, because it is still slavery at its very core.  I was also very happy to see Hannah was wary of the arrangement and on high alert for anything suspicious. I often wondered how these girls, at this point in time, didn't know about human trafficking and remain alert. It was good to see a girl who was indeed aware but whose obligation and love for her family led her to take the risk anyway. I often wonder if our students (or us, for that matter) understand the desperation that a person can reach where they would knowingly put themselves in a potentially life threatening situation in order to save their loved ones. I think Purcell did a great job of illustrating that devotion in Hannah.


My one confusion with this story was the connection of the host family to Hannah's dead parents and missing uncle. I think this story line was only dealt with superficially and detracted from the primary focus of the novel- a young girl can be held as a slave in modern day Los Angeles. With all these ties of the father to her past life, it makes this story more narrow rather than casting the terrifying large net of having this be any girl and any family. And since it wasn't properly explained, developed, and concluded, it was only a distraction in my personal opinion. I would rather have the message be out there that this can happen to any girl from any place, not just a specific girl whose mother rejected some guy who had an issue with rejection.


So I would keep this as a book for students who are old enough and mature enough to have very candid discussions about what the human trafficking situation really is. If you can't read this book with a student and openly discuss the horrifying aspects of rape and brothels and forced prostitution, or you think the student isn't mature enough to handle this accurate part of humanity, pick another book. But this is an important thing for our students to know about. Slavery isn't over. It is alive and well and can be right in our backyards. Trying to ignore it doesn't mean it goes away, it just makes us ignorant and guilty of not doing something about it. 

A Pledge of Royal Proportions

Native English speakers of the world take the fact that English is the closest thing to a universal language for granted. What if your language was the thing that defined your social class and every aspect of your life? In Kimberley Derting's dystopic trilogy, The Pledge, language is more than just communication. It is a way to control the masses and allow one tyrannical queen to control her country for lifetimes.

Charlaina, who goes by Charlie, is in the Vendor class. That means she speaks two languages, Englaise, the universal language and Parshon, the language of the Vendor class. If a person indicates they can understand a language of a higher class, they will be put to death. In fact, any interactions with a higher class means they can't even make eye contact without being arrested. But Charlie has a secret. She understands everything. She understands all languages, even those that she has never heard before. This could put her entire family in danger in a society where turning in your neighbor solidifies your place in society.

But their country has more going on than just the huge divisions in classes. They are at war, constantly under threat of being attacked from surrounding countries. When two strange young men show up in Charlie's life, she knows something isn't right. Max is followed by two huge thugs and Xander is clearly a man with deadly secrets. They each warn Charlie to stay away from the other, but Charlie can't seem to avoid either one. When their secrets coincide with Charlie and her family caught in the middle, the truth finally comes out, but it is a reality Charlie never thought was possible.

The language aspect of this dystopia is a very different angle, and it is a great way to open up a line of dialogue with young adults about classes, castes, and societal norms. As a teacher of dyslexic students, I love the idea of language being inaccessible and the basis for keeping classes in their place. It is something I am certain my students would be able to appreciate and relate to in a way non-dyslexics wouldn't understand. While this book has clear entertainment value and would appeal to a wide range of people, there is a population who would get more out of this than most others: those who are already find themselves divided and held down because of language.

The Pledge is a great story for any strong middle school reader through high school student. Some of the names of languages and such are a little tricky, but they don't distract the reader. The queendom they all live in is fascinating and the queen herself is terrifying! My favorite part of the book is how everything all fits together in the end. But I warn you, it ends in a way that will keep you chomping at the bit to get ahold of the next book!