Claimed

I have this really weird OCD thing when I go into bookstores, I always have to buy three books, not sure why, but I cannot go into a bookstore without coming out with three new tomes to add to my bookshelf.  Normally this is really no big deal, my book list is pretty long and I love buying books.  Well one week my sweet Hubbin had a lot of studying to do so we ended up at the bookstore three times in a row!  One of the problems with the bookstores now days is they have a much more limited selection.  Many of the books on my list were not available at that particular store so off I went to find some different books to fill out my OCD three.  This is were I got Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl.  I had heard of it with the movie version coming out, but had mostly written it off as yet another YA paranormal romance, but I needed one more book, it had a pretty purple cover (no stupid movie cover for me) and it was surprisingly big so into the bag it went.  I had finished another book and this one was the closest one to the bed, and being the lazy bum that I am I picked it up and started reading it.  I enjoyed it more then I thought I would, and finished it fairly quickly.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Ethan Wate can't wait to leave the slow and unchanging Gatlin in South Carolina.  His hometown is small, boring and stuck on following the most archaic of traditions.  Ethan is a 16 year old high school student, with a spot on the basketball team, a dead mother and a reclusive father, he also has dreams, strange haunting dreams about a girl, and a song.  Enter Lena Duchannes (rhymes with rains), the niece of the mysterious and never seen Macon Ravenwood.  Lena starts school with a literal bang (exploding windows) and is immediately cast as the outsider.  In a town like Gatlin anything different is not welcome and Lena is about as different as they come. Ethan notices this and oddly enough takes an intense liking to this dark haired, black wearing, poetry writing new girl.  At first Lena is standoffish, not trusting that Ethan actually wants to be friends, she has had bad experiences before and while she desperately wants the typical teenage experience, isn't sure how to trust someone enough to get it.  You see Lena as we discover quit quickly is not a typical teenager, she is Caster, a person who has powers.  She is approaching her 16th birthday in which every

Caster must choose to go to the Light or the Dark (very Jedi, use the force vibe here).  For Lena this not a choice, she comes from a family of Casters that does not get to choose to Claim the Light or the Dark, but rather the Light or Dark Claims her.  This is all a bit confusing and never really gets fully explained, but more on that later.  Ethan discovers her powers and her fear of being Claimed by the Dark on her sixteenthwho can get people to do what they want,

birthday, turning her into a heartless, soulless creature who uses her power only for her own pleasure.  Her cousin Ridley (who used to be her best friend) was claimed by the dark on her 16th birthday and is now banished from the Light and Unclaimed side of the family (again the reasons never being fully explained) and this has Lena scared that she too will be claimed by the Dark.  Ethan decides that he is going to help Lena find a way to have some sort of choice in the matter.  Along the way they find a locket that shows them the past, and her we see what caused Lena's family to give up their right to choose Light or Dark.  One of Lena's ancestors used The Book of Moons to attempt to bring her Mortal lover back to life, the cost being that all her descendants would loose the chance to Claim the Light or Dark and instead be Claimed by the Dark or Light. We learn that there are many different types of casters,  Sirens,  Palimpsests who can see a place through all layers of time and so forth.  A Caster does not entirely know what type of power they have until they are Claimed, but with some you get an idea beforehand.  In the family it is thought that Lena is most likely a Natural, a Caster with a massive amount of power and one that is rare.  While attempting to help Lena (who he has fallen hopelessly in love with), Ethan discovers that his mother knew about the Casters and was in fact one of the Keepers of the Caster Library, a job that got passed down to her best friend after her death.  Ethan's Amma (his nanny/housekeeper/surrogate mother) also is shown to have certain powers as a Seer (somebody who has the Sight and can call on her ancestors for certain types of help).  Through out all of this discovery of magic, ancestors, and secrets Ethan and Lena attempt to have as normal a life as they can.  They are hampered in this effort by the close minded attitude of the towns folk.  They do everything in their power to get Lena to leave the school and the town.  Ethan also gets shunned for his association with Lena.  Finally the day of Lena's 16th birthday arrives and as one can guess chaos ensues.  We discover that Lena's mother (who was previously thought dead) is actually on of the most powerful Dark casters in existence.  She tells Lena that she has a choice, that she is a Natural Caster and that she is the second one born into the family.  Her mother tells her that according to some random prophecy or spell or instruction or something that the first Natural born into the family will be claimed by the Dark and become the Cataclyst, (which is what Lena's mother has become), but the second Natural born into the family, Lena, can actually choose to go Light or Dark.  The big secret everybody has been keeping is that if Lena chooses to Dark, every Light Caster will die, and if she chooses the Light, every Dark caster, including her beloved Uncle Macon will die.  Her mother also ups the ante by telling Lena she has a way that her and Ethan, a Mortal can be together forever.  A big confusing battle ensues and Lena finds a way out of Claiming either the Light or the Dark.  Ethan is mortally wounded, but is saved when in a recreation of earlier events, Lena uses the Book of Moons to bring him back to life, inadvertently causing the death of her Uncle Macon in payment.  The book ends with Lena being neither Dark or Light and an opening for all the sequels to follow.

This book comes in at a whopping 563 pages so the above synopsis is about as bare bones as you can get.  The funny this is I actually liked the in between parts of this book the most, the ones that are not necessarily essential to the overall EPIC plot.  I liked the moments where the characters just lived their lives, the times when no matter what else was happening, life still carried on. It was these moments that made this book so enjoyable. Considering that this is written in first person narrative, but two female writers writing from a male perspective I surprisingly enjoyed most of the tone and pacing of the book. Overall the Caster/Claimed/Light vs Dark plot had a weird vibe of overdone, yet incoherent at the same time.  There were things that I never got, like what actually happened when you went Dark or Light? Why were you banished when you went Dark?  Why did Lena get to choose and not anybody else?  Why if the manor was so thoroughly protected against Dark Casters was Larkin able to hang out there for so many years? Does Ethan have power, if so what is it and where did it come from? What makes a person more susceptible to be Claimed by the Dark or Light?  And so many more questions that just did not seem to add up.  That part was frustrating, on the other hand they did a decent job showing the different types of powers you could have, not everybody was the same strength or had the same talents, and the various ways one could learn to use such talents was pretty cool.  Most of the characters were pretty much one dimensional stock characters.  You had your pretty, popular girls and her followers, the goofy best friend, the spiritual wise woman, the pinched faced ultra-conservative groups, so on so forth. The only characters that had any real depth to them were Ethan and Lena, and of these two Lena seemed to have the most range.  The authors did a great job showing a teenage girl in the middle of this horrible and strange perdiciment, who's biggest desire was to just be normal.  I liked how at times Lena
could find her inner strength and kick ass, and other times it was all to overwhelming and she melted into an emotional puddle that just needed somebody to hold her.  This seems to be a fairly accurate representation of what it is like to be a sixteen year old girl, not all kick-ass, not all helpless, not all powerful, not all kind and sweet and not all bitchy, but a mix of all these, as most people are.  Ethan was a little bland, most of his personality came from being around different people.  However I loved it when the authors explored his life after his mother was killed, how the town treated him differently, how his father withdrew completely, how he is living this surreal life of fragile normalcy, again a fairly accurate portrayal of attempting to move on from a massive loss. Overall I enjoyed the book, I got through it in a couple days, and I only found myself rolling my eyes on occasion.  It is not a work of epic astoundingness, there is a lot of things that feel like they were taken from previous works (seriously there is a scene that is almost exactly like the prom scene from Carrie), but the pacing was good and it kept my interest for most of the book.  The ending was a bit chaotic and confusing for my taste, but other then that I would recommend it to anybody who likes YA paranormal romances and isn't offended by a bit of witch craft.  I give it 7 out of 10 Civil War Re-enactments.
What do you think of the double author debut novel?  Does it feel like they threw in everything and the kitchen sink, or do they have a plan for the future novels?  What is your readers OCD?