slatebreakers

Long May She Reign by Ellen Emerson White. Feiwel and Friends, 2007. Currently Available.

Genre: Contemporary Realistic Fiction

Face Value: I continue to enjoy these covers, inspired by famous paintings. It gets at the idea of a girl on display, for the whole world to see and comment on, without actually knowing what’s going on behind the face value, the big picture. And I love the idea of Meg as the Mona Lisa. Something about that, I think she would find rather amusing.

Does it Break the Slate? My goodness yes. Typically, I’m not interested in reviewing sequels to books I’ve already reviewed earlier versions on this blog, unless I feel really sure that I have something different to say. But when I finished Long May She Reign (the sequel to The President’s Daughter, White House Autumn, and Long Live the Queen), I felt like I definitely had more to add about the incredible Meg Powers and her amazing family. We firmly declared Meg to be a Slatebreaker in our earlier review, but wow, we had no idea how much further she could go. This book, as well as the two sequels in between, elevate Meg to Slatebreaking superhero. Not only does she, you know, escape from terrorists based on her savvy and will to survive, but she deals with PTSD and the aftermath of a horrifying event with remarkable grace and fury.

Who would we give it to? I am really going to start advocating hard for this series. For one thing, it’s outstandingly compelling. I read this last one on a train from Michigan to Chicago (I’ve been doing a lot of traveling this holiday season) and I could not put it down. I read a bunch of great stuff, but this one won for sheer engaging readability. And if you’re a fan of contemporary realism, especially with any kind of political bent, you’ll really like this whole series. But this book, the strongest comparison I would draw is actually with Kristen Cashore’s fantasy series Bitterblue. Like that book, this is a book about the aftermath of a disaster. The immediate danger has passed, the “happy ending” where our heroes were saved came in a previous book. But just because the danger is over doesn’t mean that everything is magically ok, and, like in Bitterblue, our characters have to deal with not only healing themselves, but the larger political implications of that healing.  Taking 700 pages to deal with, not a disaster, but recovery from a disaster is something that I deeply appreciate, and something that White does extremely well here. As a side note: there aren’t enough books about people in college, either YA or adult. It’s something that’s come up a bunch in the whole “New Adult” debate, which I’m not all that interested in exploring here. But I think, for those that are, this book would fit into that category. Also, it can totally stand on it’s own, for those who have not read the previous books, with plenty of exposition to get you up to speed.

Warning: spoilers ahead for the first three books in this series! Continue reading →