Meridian

Reader: Meghan K
Age: 14
Title: Meridian
Author: Amber Kizer
Publisher: Random House
Pub Date: 8/11/09
Galley: Yes
Nominate for Teens’ Top 10: No
Recommend: Yes
Convince us to read the book: Amber Kizer steps bravely away from the territory of her previous work, One Butt Cheek At A Time, (Which was very funny, by the way) to write an elegant gothic about people who were some angel ancestry, Fenestra. Now, my strongly rooted DnD upbringing says such people should be called Aasimars, but I'll let it slide because the author was so clever picking the name. Okay, my geeking aside, this is a great book with realistic characters and well-written suspense.
Compelling Aspect of the Book: This book did fall back heavily on a series of well-worn teen fantasy traditions. There's the Not-Quite-The-Same-Species Romantic Interest, the I'm-Wise-And-Older-Than-Time-Itself mentor, and of course, the Vaguely-Mormon-Yet-Still-Ambiguous-And-Non-Denominational-And-Therefore-Non-Offensive-Christian-Sect-Of-Evil. This book manages to rise above these overused cliches, and be a really good read. As I said, the author invented their own Not-Quite-Human-Species, rather than using the traditional vampires/werewolves/wizard set. I support this growing trend of creative non-humans.
Comments: I commented earlier about the author having written a very different genre before. Again, I'm all for that. I think it's wonderful to see authors try all sorts of different things. Hooray! Wow, this review has been uncharacteristically cheery. I feel like I should complain about something, just to keep my mean/overly negative streak going. I hate cats?
Did the cover tempt you and/or reflect the contents of the book: This book has a nice cover. It's simple, understated, and it has a sort of old lace-looking pattern on it. Note I didn't say it went with the book. The character mentions at one point her hair was red during the book, and there's nothing in the background that was in the book. -1,000,000,000 points for non sequiturs.