Libba Bray

A recipe for Beauty Queens: Mix together two cups Swiftian satire, one teaspoon Lord of the Flies, two tablespoons beauty pageantry. Set aside. In a mixing bowl, cream together two sticks of feminism, softened, one teaspoon piracy, one tablespoon capitalist criticism, two cups of heart. Add dry ingredients slowly and mix until blended. Bake at 350 for 390 pages. Enjoy the eclectic dish that emerges.

When I first read the blurb for this book, I knew it was something I had to read. Mostly because the topic of beauty pageants brings back memories of my Most Horrific Moment. Everyone has one....a moment in the teen years where something happens that makes you cringe for eternity.

What's my Most Horrific Moment? (Yes, I will get to my review of this book.....but after my tell-all revelation) I was once in a beauty pageant. I am not pretty. I am not sexy. I am nerdy. Yeah....the nerdy girl show more was in a beauty pageant. Because......I was the only girl left. Two cheerleaders were pregnant. The most beautiful girl in our class (who was an awesome friend) was already in another pageant. Another two girls had parents that said no on grounds of modesty/religion/morals. I was literally the only halfway passable girl left. The Daphnes were all busy....so Velma was tricked (guilted, really) into participating. I had no idea what I was getting into. Oh. My. God. I had to go to meetings about how to wave properly, how to walk properly, a two hour presentation on what "talent showcase'' meant. A makeup artist came to give us beauty tips. He looked around the room and chose me to use as a model.....I immediately found out why. He chose the one girl in the room who had no chance of winning so that the others (who all obviously had a shot at the tiara) could watch what he was doing. The entire time he was applying greasy nasty crap to my face he kept saying "See what makeup can do? It can make ANYONE look wonderful.'' In my mind I was applying a roundhouse kick to the side of his head and curb stomping him for being mean jerk. But on the outside I was smiling and pretending I didn't get his snide remarks. What an asshole. And the girls were supremely snarky to one another. If the pretty girls are all being bitches to each other....just imagine how they were to plain girl thrown into their midst. I felt like the hunk of steak tossed into a lion's den. It was AWFUL. I wanted to just feign a seizure to remove myself. But, the Lions Club had sponsored me.....and all the other nerdy girls were cheering me on. I couldn't quit. So, I did it. I was a swimsuit clad hunk of meat with a horrific silk banner on for ONE NIGHT. I did not come in last. I came in next to last....ahead of the girl who completely froze up during the judges interview and couldn't answer questions. I think she even threw up. The judges comments? Lose 15 pounds. Change your hair. Your evening gown is ugly. And those shoes? Really?? The actual pageant was the most horrific night of my young life. Under my swimsuit, I had double sided tape on my rear end and boobs to prevent wardrobe malfunctions. The pushup bra I had to wear under my gown had underwires that came straight out of a medieval iron maiden. And I had to put bandaids over my nipples so they didn't show. Because heaven only knows....girls parading around in swimwear on a stage can't have noticeable nipples. I had tape residue on my bum for a week after it was all over.

Who won? The cute blonde girl whose talent was singing a song while doing the lyrics in sign language whose greatest aspiration was to promote world peace in 3rd world countries.

So, that being said.....I just had to read a book about an airplane full of pageant beauty queens crashing on an island. Despite my previous pageant horror, I absolutely loved this book!!

My favorite character is definitely Petra, the transgender pageant hopeful who used to be a member of a popular boy band. Awesome character! But this book has every stereotypical pageant girl from the overachiever pageant-veteran from Texas to the angry journalist-wanna-be that is there to unveil the horrors of beauty contests. Underneath the humor and satire is an awesome statement about gender, the conflicting messages girls get about beauty, femininity and sexuality, and stereotypes about pretty girls.

I listened to the audio book version of this story. The author narrates, and she did an absolutely awesome job. She did the voices for the characters perfectly and just made the listening experience fun. The audio book is 14.5 hours long. I have partial hearing loss but was easily able to hear and understand the entire book.

Great humor. Fun story. And it let me laugh about my Most Horrific Moment. 34 years later, I still cringe just thinking about it. And I still wish I could F'ing curb stomp that makeup applying jerk face moron who spent an entire afternoon making snide comments about my appearance. Adult me still wants to fling back in time just to kick his ass.

I will definitely read more by this author! :) show less

I’m glad I finished this series. I loved the characters (although Evie gave me fits sometimes)—their diversity of backgrounds and powers, their distinct voices, their love stories—and I was rooting hard for them. What I didn’t love was their getting hammered and bested by the bad guys for hundreds of pages, their blindness to how/why this kept happening, and their sudden revelations of how to fix things toward the end. Jake Marlow’s motivations make absolutely no sense in this show more book, and neither, really, do the King of Crows’.
I usually do these on audio, and I missed January Lavoy’s portrayal of the characters. I don’t know if doing it on audio would have raised my rating, though, since the characters are still what I liked most in this book. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but Sam, Theta, Ling, and Henry are high on my list.
The first half was really good and had me turning pages and blowing through. I loved how the characters were combined in unexpected groupings when they were on the run, and the circus business was a fun surprise. There were some actual wins in that first half, and I was excited when the Diviners all came back together. And then it became a bit of a slog, and I really started feeling like it could have been a shorter book. The time at the farm seemed to go on forever. And how they didn’t figure out Sarah Beth earlier, I don’t know.
And let’s talk about Jericho. A lot of people were mad at what seemed like character assassination in the last book, and in this book, it’s like Bray decided she needed him, so she just glossed over the attempted rape of the last book as down to the serum, and all the characters should just get over it. And Evie still sort of wanting his attention and not fearing him or hating him? And Sam not hating him? And all the others not even thinking about it? None of it rang true. Bray is willing to tell some hard stories, but I don’t think she followed the logical hard conclusion that Jericho would not have been accepted back in the group, no matter what his excuse was. I wish the attempted rape had never happened. I don’t know her motivations for writing it, but it seemed a clumsy way to end the love triangle. And as happy as I am that Jericho got a little bit of happiness at the end (because I thought the rape plotline was bogus, and I thought he deserved better), I don’t think there was enough fallout from his actions in the last book.
Do I recommend the series? Yes, I still do. It’s imaginative, it’s timely, it’s scary, and I’d hate for anyone to miss out on meeting these characters. show less

Just before dying Alonso Quixano recovers his reason and addresses his family and friends from his deathbed, “I was mad, and now I am sane; I was Don Quixote of La Mancha, and now I am, as I have said, Alonso Quixano the Good. May my repentance and sincerity return me to the esteem your graces once had for me...” Alonso was fifty years old when too much reading—day and night he consumed books of chivalry—and too little sleep deprived him of his reason and he decided to become a show more knight errant.

Cameron Smith is only sixteen when his study of Don Quixote for the state mandated SPEW (State Prescribed Educational Worthiness) test—Did I mention that Cameron goes to high school in Texas?—is rudely interrupted. His muscles begin to twitch uncontrollably; he collapses in class, after punching a classmate and insulting the teacher. He is diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. In animals it’s known as mad cow disease. His brain is deteriorating and he will lose control of his muscles and be subject to dementia and delusions. A gang of eight-foot high fire giants have already chased him, and when he tries to flee he finds the way blocked by, a “Big Dude. Black armor glistening like oil. Spiked Helmet, steel visor. Sword. The light bounces off the sword in arcs and hurts my eyes. Sword.”

But all is not frightening or hopeless. In the hospital he is attended by a nurse named Glory, and awakes to meet one of his classmates in the bed next to his, “Paul Ingacio Gonzales, but everyone calls me Gonzo.” Gonzo is a champion gamer and a bit of a hypochondriac, but he shares Cameron’s love of science fiction movies. Cameron also meets someone that he’s glimpsed briefly before. He wakes up to find her standing at the end of his bed. As he describes her, “I take in the torn fishnets, plaid mini-kilt, shiny riveted breastplate with leather straps at the sides… Her wings are a crazy black-and-white-checkered pattern, like they’ve been spray-painted at a body shop to look like hipster sneakers.” Did I mention that her hair is pink?

He blinks his eyes to make the hallucination go away, but she doesn’t. Then she introduces herself as Dulcie, eats the chocolate pudding from his hospital tray, and tries to enlist him in a mission to save the world and maybe himself by tracking down Dr. X, whose travel between dimensions has opened this universe up to forces of dark energy, including the ones now consuming Cameron’s brain. He tells her this is the most random thing he’s ever heard. She tells him that he has to take Gonzo with him because their fates are connected. He counters, “There’s no such thing as fate.” To which she replies, “Except for random fate.” And he figures, it’s better than just sitting in the hospital bed and waiting.

Alonso Quixano’s quest ends with his death. Will Cameron’s quest take him beyond? Did I mention the yard gnome that’s really a Norse god? show less