Monthly Review: Rebel Angels

The eerie sequel to the gorgeous novel A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels has a lot to live up to. The mysteries that seeped through the pages of Libba Bray’s first gothic novel carry over well into her second; however, the way the author took the absurdities of the plot lines and transformed them into truly enticing chapters is lost. While this novel has very few flaws in my opinion, I feel that the series did begin to lose its believable edge. With the introduction of evil in the realms in the second novel, the readers are plagued with the idea that not all of the main characters are rooted in good. In fact, while Pippa is slowly becoming evil the longer she lives in the realms, it is the other characters’ longing to spend time with her and willingness to do whatever it takes to please her that prevents readers from having that strong anchor. The line that separated the four girls, declaring their solid stance in the world of the good, begins to blur and this has us connecting solely with Gemma for the majority of the novel. While I appreciate the book trading the scenery of the Spence Academy with London’s streets, London’s boys, and London’s finest, I believe this was ultimately a bad decision on Libba Bray’s part. Part of the reason the first novel was so strong and widely accepted was because of its location. Having the story take place in an ancient castle bursting with magical energies, surrounded by gypsy-infested woods and caves that once held dark ceremonies and sacrifices draws the readers in in a more personal way. While the story line hosted interesting ideas on the social lives of over a hundred years ago, the plot revolves around an alternate world: the world of the realms. It was almost too much for Gemma to have the world of the realms, changing and never certain, accompanied by London’s world, a world that Gemma is also struggling to place herself in. This almost made the story line overwhelming; however, I do appreciate the way the writer tried to show Gemma as not just the host body for this powerful essence, but also as a young girl just trying to relate to the culture around her.

Rebel Angles is a very unique fantasy novel. I have many ready novels of this genre, but most of them take the idea of this glorious, magical world that has been created, and focus on the light and fun that accompanies it. Rebel Angels breaks the mold of fantasy novels: Libba Bray did not take the fact that this book was about a magical culture of odd creatures and morph it into some G-rated experience. Instead, the delved deeper. She took the potential, and she shone a light on the epic darkness that runs through Gemma’s power. She understood the corruption that can occur when such a luring influence is used, and it runs through every single word in the novel. The teenage girls talking about suicide, sacrifice, murder; the seemingly good characters of the realm disappearing behind each chapter with a sneer and an alternate plan; the new teacher at the school whose past is almost as plagued with as much loss and lies as Gemma’s is. But this is not the only way that Rebel Angels differs from other novels of its genre: Rebel Angels shows teenagers for who they are, not who they are supposed to be seen as in the novel. It is true that a lot of novels with a fantasy genre revolve around teenagers, i.e. Harry Potter. However, with the exception of a few, most books fail to admit that their characters are children. They deal with adult things and frightening, unique characteristics. But they also go home at night and think about that special someone, and how embarrassing a certain moment was that day, and whether their teachers and peers like them or think they are imbeciles. This novel shows the giddiness of little girls, and joins the idea of two worlds, the world of a hundred years ago and the world of today, together. We may not hold dance cards or request appearances at someone’s place of residence, but we do have a lot similar concerns and flaws. Gemma, the main character, is constantly worrying about her appearance, and struggling to fight back her lustful feelings towards a man she should not feeling those feelings for. Teenage girls can relate to this, because these characters are us; every girl can find themselves in one of the four main characters, which I think is an impressive and unique trait for a novel that is fighting of the fantasy genre generalization.

I believe the author had many purposes when writing this novel: to create a good book, obviously; to mold their creative ideas into a series of chapters and share them with the world; and to conjoin young women with the idea of power. I do not think that it is a coincidence that the only truly powerful characters in this novel are women. There are some men scattered through the book who can hold their own both in wit and in cleverness, but the four women who make up the essence of Rebel Angels are truly the powerful ones. Gemma is blessed – or, debatably, cursed – with this amazing gift to be able to explore the extremes of a world with random animals and superbly beautiful plants, the talking dead and the two-faced villainous friends, but her power lies in her inner strength. Her ability to do what is needed to be done in a hard situation, to look past the reality she hopes for and embrace the reality that is in front of her. Felicity holds friendship true to her heart, and while she is weak in the way that she is flighty and holds grudges against Gemma for her gift, her own personal sacrifices prove the kind of woman she is truly becoming. Anne, who began her journey in the story as a meek, plain girl has transformed herself into somebody who can just truly be, even without the comfort of the beauty she possesses in the realms. And Pippa, while she subconsciously becomes as evil as some of the villains in the realms, manages to hold onto herself and escape the corruption before it truly is late. The main purpose of Rebel Angles is not simply to create a beautifully and truly heartbreaking novel, but to create one that reinforces the idea that women, at any age, are powerful and full of potential.

What Is On The Inside Is What Matters.... Really?

Clothes. We rarely ever realize the impact that what we have on our bodies has on the people around us. If we thought about it, we would realize that our clothes are influential, persuasive, distracting. You can look at somebody and immediately determine what kind of person they are just by their clothing: or so we think. The thing is, we can't automatically assume that that boy who comes to class every day in sweatpants and, frighteningly enough, the same exact sweater he has been wearing all semester that he is a slob, a procrastinator who probably has a seriously low GPA. How do we know that that boy doesn't go home every night, perusing websites of random and various colleges, completing every assignment that he meticulously marked in his agenda. And what about the athletes of our school? A lot of the time, I run into a controversial thought: that the athletes must not be as smart as the rest of us, because that is what we were raised to believe. We saw it in the movies: the dumb bully jock who could barely spell but always had a date on his arm. If we really think about it, every time an athlete walks into a classroom with a monogrammed jacket on, do we think "Wow, what a brain. Maybe I should partner with him on our next project?" This might seem like a topic that has been done to death, but even though i have realized it before, I am only starting to think about it now.

Girls can dress provocatively and know that they will have more of an influence over men than they would if they wore a skirt down to their ankles, and a tight bun pinned to their scalp. The brands that are so familiar to us now have become so drilled into our head, the assumptions that follow them plaguing our thoughts about our peers. Who's to say that the girl in Hot Topic with the industrial piercing goes home every night, turns on goth music, and closes all the blinds? But we see groups of these people with dyed black hair and chipped gothic nails hanging out together and we assume that they are weird, lonely, unstable. But what if they simply like black? Or they wear the chained belt because it makes them happy, not reminds them of darkness? I know it seems awkward for me to bring up cliques and stereotypes in almost a negative way, but "what is inside is what matters" is all a bunch of crap.

OF COURSE who you are on the inside is what you should be judged on. OF COURSE it shouldn't matter what store you shop at or what car you drive. But doesn't it? Every single day, we are judged, and while judgments on our personalities are many, their number can not even compete with the judgment directed towards us because of the clothes on our back. Abercrombie, Urban Outfitters, Hot Topic, American Eagle, Target for God's Sake, and many many more clothing stores run rampant through our schools every single day. And every single thing we wear says something about us. The large, comfy, pull-over sweater I wore to school today? The weather is crappy, I am exhausted, and I couldn't care less. The black two inch strappy boots my neighbor in Spanish wore this morning? It was obvious she wanted to add a little sizzle to her outfit. This is not a bad thing at all: in fact, expressing individuality through things as simple and necessary as clothing is maybe one of the easiest ways to show people who you are. The problem I have with Clothes Profiling is when we look at our peer's clothes, turn our noses up at their style, and by extension, turn our noses up at them. Clothes are what we wear, and I do believe they are who we are. We choose what we put on our backs every morning, and how we want the world to see us. I just wish more people could look past what they don't like on the outside, and try to find something they do like on the inside.

You OK With Going Dutch?

Nowadays, the rules of dating are not so much a structured, definite protocol; they are viewed more as expectations. As much as the feminists out there want to deny it, the men carry the burden of chivalry. While it is not mandated that they open doors for us or pay for our coffees, when a man asks to split the bill, or goes days without calling, us women tend to over-react. The rules are simple: in a monogamous relationship, no cheating! Duh. Some of the more vague rules are waiting 48 hours after a first date to call the girl, but not a full 72 hours, because that may be misconstrued for the man not caring. Dating rules are not etched in stone, and they revolve around the individual's comfort zone. When should you leave a toothbrush? How soon is too soon to say "I love you"? If I meet her mother now, will she expect a proposal? Communication. It not only determines the rules, but it is the rule.

The rules of dating were not something that was randomly invented by some preaching man on the corner of a dilapidated road hundreds of years ago: the rules have been passed down through word of mouth from generation to generation, evolving from different religions, cultures, and races and blending into such a mixture of notions and concepts that it is so easy for the average person to get confused by it all. I believe that dating comes simply from trial and error. We learn, we conform to the rules that have worked for us and our peers, and we either succeed, fail, or move on. We invent the rules every day.

31 Days Until Summer

About two months ago, I wrote a blog post chronicling how many days of school we have left until Summer Vacation. I was writing at the end of the third quarter, and having just started hearing kids talk about their plans for the coming season, I got overwhelmed with excitement and maybe got a tad ahead of myself. But now, with THIRTY ONE DAYS (including weekends and holidays) UNTIL SUMMER VACATION, I think I can safely say that we are on the cusp of our annual freedom. What bothers me, however, is how little the teachers seem to be talking about the end of the year. I have a theory that maybe, if we brought it to their attention more, they will not want to assign as much homework because they will figure Hey, the kids are too distracted by what is coming up, why assign them this term paper? Why have them go online and learn these conjugations? Why ask them to lug this text book home when I know they just won’t?

I know this is wishful thinking, but I seriously hope the amount of homework being assigned starts to trickle away until we have nothing left to do and nothing to distract us from the sun, the sand, the surf. See, look what has happened to me? At the beginning of the year, I took careful consideration into every sentence that went into my blog post because, even if nobody ever reads it or ever cares about what I have to say, it was out in cyberspace for the world to undress with its eyes. But now, thirty-one days away from the best part of the year, I can’t even program my brain into thinking about a productive blog post. That is why this one revolves around the zen-ness of summertime.

Last summer was awesome: I honestly have no complaints, except that I had to spend the first two weeks of it in Memphis with my Dad and my siblings. But even then, his condo had an amazing pool! I did nothing all day but hangout with my friends, usually taking road trips to some place sunny, putting on maybe too much tanning oil, and baking under the rays. What happens to those tans anyways? It has been sunny (albeit a bit chilly) for weeks now, but I don’t see a golden tan anywhere. Sure, there are a few faux-bakes caked onto those people going to prom this weekend, but most of us are pale, with slight hints of color on random places, like the tops of our shoulders or the undersides of our arms.

I can’t wait for thirty-one days to be one day. I can’t wait to go outside, drop my book bag, and run away from it. I don’t want to ever have to bother with taking notes, doing extra credit, frowning at progress reports and freaking out over deadlines. I can’t wait for this to all END.

But then I think of it ending, and I think of all the note-taking and freak-outs that await me at college. And then my mind wanders to the deadlines and evaluations that are awaiting me at whatever job I choose to take. Maybe I can drop out now, and marry rich?

A Weekend Without My World

When we were first assigned the Quick Write that has us imagining what our lives would be if we had to give something electronic up, I thought Wow. Some of the people in this class really could learn something from this little experiment. However I did not actually realize how much of a slave to technology I have become since my first Nokia cell-phone in the fifth grade, or my “coolest-thing-ever” GameBoy in the sixth grade. I did this experiment: I truly sat down, thought out what electronic device I use more often than the others, and I drafted a plan. At first, the answer was easy: OK, your cell phone is ALWAYS in your hand. It needs to go for a couple of days. I literally have my phone in my hand on the way to every class, and when there is no reception and my roaming network is on the fritz, I can be seen with an arm outstretched in the corner, waving my phone around, desperately searching for the smallest ounce of reception. But then I thought of what I would miss the most, not what I necessarily use the most.

For me, my Itouch is the source of my procrastination. Every spare minute I get in class, I plug in my ear phones, press the “Shuffle” button, and melt into another world. Whenever I need to check my bank statement, I connect to the nearest unlocked Wi-Fi and enter cyberspace. And if I find I have sufficient funds in those accounts, I use my Itouch yet again to do some online buying. Sometimes, when I am sitting alone at my work on a rainy day, and have not seen a customer for hours, I mute the TV and begin playing Rock-Band… Via my Itouch.
So this is what happened when I decided to go a weekend without the use of my Itouch….

I can describe this with one word: WITHDRAWAL.

I do not honestly think I can survive another two days in a world without Itouch-es. It was torture! I was forced into listening to my family’s conversations in the car while I was driving with them, and worse than that, I had to suffer the unbelievable torment and jealousy that was seeing my sister enjoy the luxuries of her own Itouch. Right in front of me. Fortunately, I did not let her know that I was on this electronic fast; otherwise she probably would’ve rubbed it in my face far worse than she unknowingly did.

Even though my two days without my Itouch were incredibly hard and had me biting my nails, shaking my feet, and playing with my hair out of boredom, I found some clarity. When I was left alone with my thoughts and the unusual conversations that roam through the chatter at my house and in my classes, I realized that some people actually have interesting things to say. And some people shouldn’t be talking at all. While I am not even the slightest bit tempted into giving up the one electronic that spurs my workouts and fuels my meditations, I do think it was a profitable experience. If it taught me anything, it is that I should be worried about future generations, where we will all be so isolated and alone in our own little worlds, that socializing will be something for Twitter, not a Saturday night.

Rebel Angels: Lit. Circle I

Dear Ariel and AK,
Rebel Angels, the dark and enchanting sequel to Libba Bray’s gothic novel A Great and Terrible Beauty, finds Gemma and her two friends Anne and Felicity at Spence Academy after the tragic death of their friend Pippa. However, while the entire school mourns, the girls themselves understand that Pippa has become a figment of the beautiful realms that hosts the source of Gemma’s power. This novel explains what happens after the sun sets, after the girls leave their precious friends in this alternate world: the magic that ties Gemma to the realms has been unlocked, and it now roams free among the myriad of creatures residing there. Pippa, the sultry girl who suffered epilepsy and deep loneliness, bound herself to the realms by sacrificing her life, and now Gemma, Felicity, and Anne are faced with the realization that their friend might not be who they think she is. Gemma’s guilt towards Pippa helps her come to the conclusion that maybe sharing her gift brought more harm than it did good:
"Why is it that some secrets can drown you while some pull you close to others in a way you never want to lose?"
I believe that this statement is not only a metaphor for Gemma’s relationship with her other friends, but also for Pippa’s death. Pippa drowned in the realms, an irony that runs deep through this thought. This first section of the book truly has Gemma questioning not only herself, but everything her mother and her inherited magic stands for. She has come far since she discovered her magic, when all she wanted to do was escape the secret, deny her destiny. But now, with the arrival of friends who help her see the fun in her gifts as opposed to the dread and terror that could come from it, she is able to embrace both the realms and her friends. The secrets drew them close.

A Great and Terrible Beauty: Monthly Review

For what audience(s) is this book intended, and how can you tell? (In other words, for whom would you recommend this book?)

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray is an intense gothic novel, with mystery, intrigue, betrayal, and romance. While the novel is written with a comedic edge and is narrated by the main character, Gemma, it is rooted in darkness. Gemma loses her mother at the beginning of the book, and Libba Bray spends the majority of her pages unraveling the mystery that is her mother’s murder, culminating in the realization that Gemma is apart of a secret Order. This book is intended for readers who like losing themselves in the impossibilities of a great book. A Great and Terrible Beauty explores a magical realm where extraordinary things become ordinary, and it concentrates dramatically on the magic that can be found in this parallel world. Teenagers, I believe, would love this novel not only because it is mysterious and intriguing but also because it is narrated by a teenager itself, a young girl with adolescent thoughts and emotions, immature and irrational behaviors and lustful desires. While I think that adults will be able to appreciate this book for all its creativity, the book itself is geared more towards the youth of today. Another reason that I think this book is intended towards teenagers is for the sheer fact that the voice of the novel is living is 1895. Teenagers reading this story will not only look at the magical realms and enchanted Gypsy-infested woods that can be found at the Spence Academy where the storyline takes place, but will look at the alternate reality that is life centuries past and see it as a different, otherwordly environment that coincides with the magical mysteries of A Great and Terrible Beauty. I would recommend this book mainly to young girls, because the life of men is barely delved into, and the childish interpretations of the novel are completely feminine and in no way relatable to a teenage boy’s lfiestyle. While the novel is a great read, those of us who cringe at tension and cliffhangers are not meant to read this novel: the mysteries of this book are always multiplying, and are rarely solved quickly.

If you've read other books in this same genre, how does this one compare?

A Great and Terrible Beauty is a novel completely unlike any others (with the exception of it’s sequels). I have read many fiction novels with magical roots, ie. the Harry Potter series, but this novel is so uniquely individual, it stands out far more than any other book I have read in this genre. One of the misconceptions that are associated with teen novels, I have realized, is that they are frivolous, indulgent excuses for novels, because the age they are geared towards is simply shallow. Surprisingly, this pathetic statement has been backed up by some seriously pathetic novels written for the teenage groups, especially mystery novels with magical roots. It takes a special book, like this one, to handle this genre in a relateable way, and while it was scary and disturbing at times, I think that is what makes this book so outstanding. A Great and Terrible Beauty takes the idea of a magical order of young women, an alternate reality where both good and evil creatures reside, constantly waging battles and false aliances, and makes it so much more adult than it’s meant-for-teenagers exterior. The deaths in this book are deep, with not only emotional ties, but also evil corruptions. This book introduces us to four young, youthful women with romantic dilemmas, personal self-doubts, and troubling realizations, and transforms the characters into women who will do anything to keep the magic of the realms within their grasps. Unlike other books in this genre, A Great and Terrible Beauty claims the deep darkness of the magic they are messing with, and then shows it to us. The women turn wild, kill helpless animals, become animalistic themselves, and give in to the power and lust that is the demonic side of the main character’s magical essence. In this novel, not all is “faith, love and pixie dust”. It is about disappointment, loss, grief, and overcoming all those demanding emotions. This novel will inspire its readers, but not before it shocks them with visions of untouchable darkness.

Pick a character that interested you and write about them in depth.

Gemma Doyle, the main character, is the most inspiring of all the girls in A Great and Terrible Beauty. At the beginning of the novel, she is nothing but a white girl living in India, craving the taste of the civilized culture that is London. But when her mother dies, she is brought into that world, carrying with her the burden of a unique heirloom: the ability to disappear into another world, harness its power, see visions, do amazing and horrible things. She realizes soon that her mother’s death was actually a murder, and she is the next planned victim. Yet inspite of this, inspite of the loss she faces and the overwhelming confusion she feels towards her new gifts, she stays strong. She is sent to school in a place where magic is bred, where great evil deeds have been done, and where the temptation for her to hide in herself is unbearably strong. But Gemma prevails. She forms friendships with girls who originally bullied her and through this friendship she shares with them the magic of the realms. What inspired me the most was the fact that she could use her gift to torment the others, if not actually, then in the form of bribery, but she did not.These girls thrived on leaving the world behind and going into these realms, so much in fact that one of them commits suicide to stay forever in this land. But while the power is in her grasp, the temptation is right in front of her, Gemma never gives into it. She sees past the incredible power she can have through evil, and instead resolves to fight against the people who killed her mother, the ones who threaten the lives of her friends. Although she is just a fictional character, she is incredible. She is the true hero in the story, not for what she is able to do with her powers, but because of who she is able to be.