Yeah, Amy, the sounding clever with herself really seemed to come through and bug me.

And the time travel mechanics and her rules for it drove me batshit, but then again, I'm Virgo Girl, hear me analyze. *g*

By the by, you did know that Wicked Lovely won the YA RITA, right?

I think I saw you mention it, but I feel like I've been skimming *everything* for days. I swear, I would kill for a job where I could at least have the Internets at *lunchtime*, you know?

I honestly don't know what I was reading at 14. I was still probably plowing through my parents' bookshelves (I remember reading Joan Baez's bio at 15, so who knows!) The Jane Eyre marathons were early in high school.

I read a lot that was likely considered inappropriate for my age. And honestly, there's some stuff *I* think I should have left for later. There weren't any restrictions. So it meant Judy Blume and Theodore Sturgeon and polar explorers and mountaineers and hippydippy and lots and lots of scifi and childhood development, of all things. Oh, I do know I went on a Steinbeck kick (because my grandmother sent all my dad's old copies) also when I was 15. The big name ones didn't get me. To a God Unknown mesmerized me. Hrm. I do have a vague recollection of checking out a lot of YA & YA scifi at the library, on my bike. Which would be 10-14, likely

Basically, if it has words and was within reach, I probably reached for it by 12.

Published in 1982, The Darkangel featured a story that Pierce claims came to her all at once while she read the account of a dream recounted to Carl Jung,

Yeah, it pretty much reads that way.

Erin, I would recommend not reading the final book of that trilogy. I'm not sure Meredith Ann Pierce can write trilogies. I tend to love the first book, think the second is okay, and end up going WTF? at the third.

Hmm. See, I think that if you've read the second, it's worth reading the third because those two books fit together. I don't know that I think there was really any need to write them in the first place, but structurally it's a bit like the PotC movies, in that the first is a stand-alone, but then the 2nd and 3rd are conceived afterwards as a middle and an end of a larger story.

What I liked about the third book was the fact that even though the heroine IS eventually appreciated by her prince, and hot sex is had, and apologies are made - she doesn't stay with him and live happily ever after. I was surprised and pleased that her relationship with her FRIEND, which is developed as being much more passionate and devoted throughout, is the one ends up being her Happyishly Ever After. Heaven knows it's not where I would have expected the story to go, and to some extent I think of the 2nd and 3rd books as interesting fanfic, whilst the original book is the REAL story. Um. Still, my fanfic-loving heart did rather rejoice that in the end it's pretty much a slash romance.

Notwithstanding that, I think my main reaction was more of a "...huh" than a "yay!"

I really have to re-read. My teenage heart was all "GUH!" at the prince -- god, what was his name? -- but I think my almost 36 yo heart (and brain, yo) might be think he was a bit more archetypey and less interesting than a more persony...uh, person.

Yeah, I'm an English teacher. I used up all my adjectives in Orientation and syllabi roughing.

God, I need some new quality stuff to read that will be at the used bookstore. (My lib card is maxed out -- dude, you KNOW you're an English teacher when your credit card balance is ok, but your library card is declined!)

My university library had some books organized by the Library of Congress system, and some by Dewey Decimal. It seemed like they were slowly moving the Dewey Decimal ones over the the LoC section. The Dewey Decimal section was much older books -- my best guess is that when the new library was built, they just kept the Dewey system for the old books, and started filing new books under LoC. There were all kinds of interesting things to be found by wandering the Dewey Decimal stacks.

At 14? I was reading Dunnett already, I think. Plus lots of sf/fantasy: Norton, Kurtz, McCaffrey. I'm too old to have grown up on Lackey and Pierce, but I don't feel the lack, either.

At some point between 12 and 16 I spent an entire summer reading my way through all of Christie that the library had, and another summer reading all of Fleming. Plus lots of random historical novels, so I'd read a lot of Victoria Holt and Samuel Shellabarger by the time I was 15. I wasn't specifically that interested in romances, but I'd read them if they were historicals and maybe had adventures in them.

Fucking HELL!

Okay, this is my third attempt at writing this damn post. My fist attempt was insightful and articulate, but by this point I'm down to grumpy and terse. Grr.

So, anyway - I do think that The Darkangel stands up well to rereading, even 20 years down the line. It's not like a YA novel about fairytale themes (like Holly Black's books etc) - instead it reads like an actual fairytale, in terms of language, characterisation, narrative logic and all that jazz. Totally unironic, totally unselfconscious, and that could add up to bad fanfic but I don't think it does - I think that Pierce pulls it off.

And I do love the fact that in this strange tale the vampyre is genuinely horrifying - this is a long time pre-Angel, never mind pre-SparklywarklyEdward. He's casually cruel and monstrous, drinking girls' souls and breaking the wings of bats just to laugh at their desperate flutters. But he's also pitiable, in his way, without being any less scary. And I love Aeriel's competence, and her kindness, and the growth of her confidence and maturity.

Actually, it's all very Jane Eyre. If Jane Eyre were written by the brothers Grimm as a coming-of-age tale. And set on the moon.

(His name is Irrylath, btw.)

Okay, but in the third book, she wakes up as a ROBOT.

It's like the third book of the Firebringer trilogy. I read the first one in grade school, because OMG unicorns, and in my twenties, I realized there were sequels. And then in the third one, there's a bizarre faux-incest subplot.

The first one remains a favorite of mine, though, whereas the third book of the Darkangel series ruined my enjoyment of it. Admittedly, I only read it once.

At 14, I was well into my Star Wars novel phase. I read... a lot of them. Many of them several times. I was very dorky. At the time. I'm not anymore. Really.

I also read Great Expectations, A Separate Peace, and The Lord of the Flies in English that year, and loved them all. Especially Great Expectations. Everybody else in my class read an abridged version that was included in our textbook, but I went out and bought the full version, and still finished it three weeks before the end of the unit. LOVED it. Still do.

I think I've read Darkangel, but it completely didn't stick in my head. I'll have to find it in my books and read it again.