Victoria Hanley

It took me a long time to get over my expectations for this story. You see, I am a firm Victoria Hanley fan. I discovered Seer and the Sword when I was a teenager, caught by Trina Schart Hyman's stunning cover. I loved Hanley's rich and romantic world. I'm not talking about love-romantic, but romantic in the sense of visionary, idealistic, and to quote the dictionary, "marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious or idealized." I love the show more way she can blend relationships and a little love-romance into her stories without it dominating the whole plot, as so many YA novels seem to do. (No, I'm not talking about Twilight. I'm talking about how the majority of YA fiction is focused on romantic relationships. It irritated me when I was a teenager and it irritates me now). Anyways.

I was soooo excited when I heard she had a new story coming out! One for tweens! But it's taking me some time to sort out how I feel about it. First, the story seemed completely different than anything she'd written or what I'd expected. It's non-stop action with minimal character development. A young fairy, Zaria, is shocked to discover there is something very unique about her. Suddenly, everything completely changes and she's battling spells she doesn't understand, enemies she can't find, and even her own friends. Her unique powers help her free the world of TirFeyne from an evil villain and she learns a startling secret at the very end. I know that's not a very good plot summary, but I don't want to spoil it.

At first, I didn't like it. It's divided into very short chapters, each one prefaced by a lengthy excerpt from a history of TirFeyne. Some of the excerpts are as long as the chapters! All the fairies have names derived from jewels and every time I thought I had figured out how their world worked, another part of it showed up. Their system of magic was based on complicated mathematical calculations (well, complicated to me!) and involved an odd and seemingly cliched trope of magical-education fantasies, those with more magic despise those without. The nasty human Zaria encounters is unbelievably horrible.

But then I thought about it a little more. And you know what? It works. It really, really does. The action grabs the reader, pulling you along until suddenly you realize "I know these characters!" Every new facet of the world is a like a marvelous surprise. The drama, the confusion, the exaggeration, it all perfectly fits the characters of the twelve-year-old fairies, suddenly encountering completely new circumstances and power they have no idea how to handle. Even the jewel names, which seem to have bugged quite a few readers, fit into Hanley's strangely beautiful world, a world both barren and vibrant. I want to know what happens next!

This book is not going to please fans of YA faerie novels. It's probably not going to work for those who want only the quasi-high fantasy adventure of Hanley's previous stories. But this book is perfect, absolutely perfect, for that in-between stage. Tweens who love romantic and thrilling fantasy but aren't ready for the more edgy YA titles will fall in love with Hanley's elaborately imagined and tensely plotted story.

Verdict: This is the absolutely flawless recommendation for the vast squadrons of little girls (and boys!) who are huge fans of Rainbow Magic but want to move on to something more challenging. Victoria Hanley has a massive and ready-made audience waiting for her newest creation; all we need to do is put it in their hands!

ISBN: 978-1606840115; Published August 2009 by Egmont; ARC received from the publisher at ALA; Purchased for the library (purchased again after it was stolen); Added to my personal wishlist show less

I admit; I did not really know what to expect upon winning a copy of Wild Ink. I was pleasantly surprised as I turned the pages investigating this text. My first instinct was to view this book from my teaching persepctive. I found some interesting ways of adjusting my teaching habits. I also enjoyed the author interviews; many were humorous and made me smile. Maybe one day I'll have enough nerve to begin a novel. I'll definitely use this book as a reference when I do.

I decided to read this book in between revisions of my current young adult novel as I gave myself my typical "rest" between drafts or writing projects. It ended up being a good decision -- now that I'm finished with the book, I'm energized and excited to dive into the next draft.

Victoria Hanley's voice and expertise make this an accessible, encouraging, and enlightening read. It's down-to-earth and honest about the challenges of publishing without coming across as defeatist. And unlike some show more writing books, it feels like a two-way conversation, and not just a way for the writer to gloat about her own writing process. It also includes interviews with many young adult authors, ranging from the renowned to the more "undiscovered." While I felt that the book relied too much on "other voices" at times, overall the result is affirmation that there really are as many ways to write fiction as there are writers. While filled with sound advice, this guide leaves plenty of room for individual styles.

It covers the process of writing a young adult novel from idea generation to publication, and even gives a balanced perspective on self publishing. I vowed to do every single writing exercise in this book--even the ones I REALLY didn't want to do--and I'm glad I did. They gave me a fresh perspective on my writing style, why I like to write YA stuff, and ideas for future stories. A lot of the exercises were even therapeutic, such as a long list of questions that asked things such as, "When was the first time you learned you were being lied to?" Although not all the answers fell within my adolescent/teenage experience, it still evoked many of the complicated emotions during that time of life.

Since the book covers so much, some of it is related in rather broad strokes, but Victoria consistently provides resources for deeper exploration of the included topics. Overall, it was awesome to have a up-to-date, smart how-to book about writing for teens, even if a lot of writing advice is sound across all genres. show less

Thoroughly mediocre addition to an already bloated genre. The author commits several of the cardinal sins of fantasy: unnecessary maps, inconsistent use of dialect, and needless insertion of "foreign language" terms among them. Her "strong" heroine does nothing but run from danger and moon about lamenting her helplessness and regret for the mistakes of her past, while the plot is moved forward solely by the male characters. Luckily, the heroine is utterly and stunningly beautiful, pure, show more vivacious, simply "unlike anyone else" etc. etc, as the author is only too happy to remind us at every possible juncture.

These problems are further compounded by Hanley's curious inability to use the pluperfect and future perfect tenses, and her general laziness (to wit: she sets up many interesting actions scenes, only to elide them with '* * *' before moving on to the next tedious bit of exposition).


I recommend avoiding this book, but have chosen to give it two stars because, for all its faults, it was not written by R.A. Salvatore. show less