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Innocent Darkness
The Aether Chronicles-Book 1

Suzanne Lazear

Flux
August 1, 2012 / ASIN: B008MBHPM0
Teen / Fantasy & Magic, Alternate Universe, 1901 California
Amazon

Reviewed by
Beth E. McKenzie

Magnolia Montgomery Braddock (Noli to her friends) is a typical tomboy in a single-parent home. She likes to read, climb trees and fix things. She misses her father, an engineer who was taken by the aether in the aftershocks of the San Francisco earthquake. She lives in Los Angeles with her mother who can’t face their diminished circumstances or ask for help from her Boston Brahmin family. The biggest problem that Noli has is that she was born into high-society during the waning light of Victoria; and being a tomboy, even in “that barbaric new country that doesn’t need monarchs”, is neither typical nor acceptable.

I enjoyed most of this story. The plot has enough surprises and twists to keep me interested and the faerie are interesting folk with a beautiful land. The High Queen is deceitful and cold, but the scenes at the reform school made me shiver worse because of the blatant meanness of it all. I loved the contrast between the cold, grimy place where they were trying to help Noli by starving and torturing her and the bright happy land where she could have her every wish until she is sacrificed.

I was disappointed overall though. I wanted to read a steampunk book and this author comes highly recommended for the subject. But with the exception of the opening scenes about a flying car and sporadic references to “aether”, this is a book about a Victorian-Age girl who won’t conform to societal norms and the extreme measures the culture was willing to accept to mold girls with ideas into ladies. When Noli makes a wish in a fairy tree on the night of the summer solstice under a full moon she is whisked away from the frying pan into the fire to the Otherworld of fairies. In some ways this is very much a kid’s book as all of her best friends charge into the Otherworld to the rescue and the handsome prince risks everything for her. Is she any better off? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Reviewer’s Notes: Holiday: Christmas is mentioned
I think the age designation (12+) is too young for the later part of the book when the characters get into heavy petting and sleeping together. Maybe the more naïve readers will just skip over it because they will think it is gross to be kissing (cooties!), but the curious will wonder exactly where “she had never even touched herself”, and of course there will be the group who know exactly what is going on even at that age. One of Noli’s pet peeves is that she can’t escape what she feels are “outdated conventions of propriety.” While I don’t really believe in chaperones and chastity belts until you are 35; sometimes I wonder what we are thinking!
Reviewed 2012
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