Negatives first, then positives.
Target Reading Age: I kept having to check back on the spine to see that this book actually WAS classified as young adult. It reads much more to the middle-school range. Romances are vanishingly small, and hints about "adult" activities are vague. The heroine is 16, the 'semi-heroine' Merista is 13, and your 14th birthday marks the passage to adulthood - for girls only. While an interesting premise, it's one which seems pretty calculated to draw favor from the younger set, rather than their mature elders in high school.
A Little Extra Help Here: I normally don't think too much about extra-textual additions, but a story like this, with a new world, a convoluted magical (and lunar) system tied up into political intrigue, in addition to several far-spaced locations visited in the story itself, with more bandied about as important from the past? Really needs some liner notes. If I were publishing this, I would ask for the following:
A regional map.
An orbital map of the moons (with names).
A geneology/hierarchy of the gods/goddesses (strangely, I learned their associations pretty well from the text, but their relations and their "assigned astronomical body" remain largely mysteries).
A geneology of the current ruling family.
As a reader, I would have appreciated a pronunciation guide also - nothing here is particularly difficult to "invent" pronunciations, but I am always curious as to what the author intended or thought.
Next Time in StarCrossed: There was an extremely strong episodic feel for this story, to the point where I wondered if the chapters and sections had originally been written intentionally for different audiences. Each section has a different focus, feel, and pacing structure, and for someone who reads quickly (this one went down in about 6 hours one afternoon) those glaring shifts were quite strange. The problem here is that for someone who likes action, only the first and last episodes are going to thrill, while for someone who likes period drama (fancy dress balls and dinners) they may never get past the guttersnipe first portion to realize that the center of the book would be their cup of tea. Quite odd.
Contrivances Galore: Digger's family, "nobs" adopting a stray merchant child (in a very stratified society), the finding of the fugitive in the basement, the easy outwitting of the Inquisitors (who, presumably, after more than 14 years, have figured out how to do their jobs a wee bit better than that), and the sudden upswing in purple flaunting around (who, in this society, is brave enough to make and market purple cloth?) each, alone, isn't too much to handle. Taken all together, they act as a bit of an anchor to the buoyant narrative, holding it back from what could be truly excellent storytelling.
Casting Call for Boys: Men, we have in plenty. However, after the first section, there are exactly two boys, one of which is attached already. Far be it from me to suggest that the women aren't capable of holding down the fort (because I'm pretty sure they are) but even if they're not the main character, just HAVING some around makes reading more fun. Especially cruel is the introduction of the two noble boys at the beginning.
Now that I've smashed it all to bits, here's the good stuff! (Which did, incidentally, outweigh the negatives for me.)
Love a good story set in a differently-organized world. The multiple moons, the use of 'lunarists' instead of astrologists, the different personalities and purpose of each deity - lovely. The magic system doesn't seem as inventive to me as to some other reviewers, but it is well-established and appears to be a perfectly workable system.
Characterization was delightful. Digger/Celyn creates an almost Smeagol/Gollum personality split. Between wanting to be liked and to like and trust the people she's with, and her nearly pathological need to steal and sneak around, she is always interesting. A great viewpoint character. The noble/mercantile ladies and gentlemen are all individualized and personable, the courtesan is a tragic figure, and the two other "young" ladies start off interesting and show growth of character through the narrative. Even the villains have larger-than-life personalities.
While I griped about the abrupt changes in tone and focus above, I do have to say that (perhaps with a lighter touch) I did enjoy the different "stories" in all their vastly different ways. The novel ended up being almost like a collection of shorts, each a different genre - the street-rat, the comedy of manners, the spy story, the political intrigue, the ghost-story, the best-friend mystery - and what was most interesting: all of them were written well!
Language and spelling were tip-top (thank your editor today) with no distractions from the story. The mannerisms were decently fitted to the social-political scheme (with exceptions noted above) and the time-period itself was used to good effect to fit thematic and plot advancements into the narrative.
Overall, quite fun. Very much looking forward to the next installment.
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