Dig a Little Deeper!

Monday, October 7, 2013

The Resident Bookworm's Thoughts on: Starcrossed

Hello, fellow bookworms!

The book of the week for this post is Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini. Starcrossed is the first in a trilogy, or as some like to call it, the first in a "haunting saga." Really, that was verbatim. It's on the book jacket. If you're familiar at all with the Percy Jackson series, which are now movies to boot, the idea behind this story might sound a little familiar. To be honest, Starcrossed is the teenage-girl version of Percy Jackson. You'll see what I mean if you read the summary.

Summary: "How do you defy destiny?

Helen Hamilton has spent her entire sixteen years trying to hide how different she is—no easy task on an island as small and sheltered as Nantucket. And it's getting harder. Nightmares of a desperate desert journey have Helen waking parched, only to find her sheets damaged by dirt and dust. At school she's haunted by hallucinations of three women weeping tears of blood . . . and when Helen first crosses paths with Lucas Delos, she has no way of knowing they're destined to play the leading roles in a tragedy the Fates insist on repeating throughout history.

As Helen unlocks the secrets of her ancestry, she realizes that some myths are more than just legend. But even demigod powers might not be enough to defy the forces that are both drawing her and Lucas together—and trying to tear them apart." - Summary courtesy of amazon.com

The Good: The concept is just really cool. Angelini uses a lot of names you've heard before if you've ever paid any attention to mythology, including Cassandra, Ariadne, and Jason, among others - and Helen, obviously. But the cool part is that the myths don't match up with this story. They're not the same people; they just share names and some of the same gifts or traits. It's really clever. And this story is a real page-turner. I have a lot of interest in Greek mythology, but I don't know that much about it. I'm trying to learn more, but it's really dense. There's too much of it to be an expert just as a little side job. So I was eager to learn more about the people with names that I recognized in the story, like the four I listed above, as well as others. It's also well-written and there's a lot of sappy romantic parts, both of which are big pluses for me.

The Bad: Yet again, this is too long. If you're noticing a pattern here, you're very astute. But don't get me wrong; I don't have any problem with long stories. I've devoured every Harry Potter book with no arguments or even a sigh here or there. These books that I'm critiquing are just long for no good reason. Starcrossed is almost 500 pages, and it's just not necessary. It could easily be even 400 if not 350 and it would be much better. There is also an aspect of teenage love that, while it's sweet and enjoyable to read, is really unrealistic. It reminded me of Twilight, actually, which also really annoyed me. You're really going to leave your family for this guy you've known for 20 minutes so you can be together eternally? What a stupid girlish move, despite that you're supposed to be really mature for your age. And Helen is prepared to do the same thing, which angered me (At least Helen and Lucas are fated to be together, I suppose. What was Bella's excuse? But I digress). If she was really that smart and well-adjusted, she wouldn't be considering running off with a guy she met a month ago when she's seventeen. Crazy teenagers.

Overall Score: This one does have me eager to read the next book, which is definitely positive. So I'm going to give it a 7. It was too long and silly at parts, but it is a fantasy book, to be fair, and it's definitely a page-turner.

Would I recommend this to a fellow bookworm?
I would recommend this one. The story is intricately interwoven with mythology, but not so much that you can't understand it if you don't know anything about myths, because Angelini still explains everything. So if you like fantasy and can stomach some highly sappy young love, then I recommend giving this "haunting saga" a shot.