Book Review – Wings to the Kingdom
Author: Cherie Priest
Cover Artist: Nicole de las Heras
Publisher: Tor
Binding: Paperback
Publication Date: October 2006
Gather round, kids. Paul is going to share a little bit about himself in this review of Cherie Priest’s Wings to the Kingdom. This better be good, you say? You better shut your mouth else I shut it for you. Sorry about that, I’m a little on edge after reading about ghosts and haunted battlegrounds. All right, here it is then—I love discovering things. I listened to Fall Out Boy back when they were producing such unheard albums like Fall Out Boy’s Evening Out With Your Girl. I also read the first two Harry Potter books back in the late 1990s, long before the movies came out which really raised awareness of their existence to Muggles. I’ve shown everyone I can why Suikoden is a wonderful RPG series that is relatively pushed aside for the big names like Final Fantasy and World of Warcraft.
What? I’m rambling? All right, fine. Here’s the point—I’m more than ecstatic to have discovered Cherie Priest so early on. Ten years down the line when she’s got a handful of books out and everyone is tossing her name around like she’s Stephen King’s holy granddaughter, I’ll gladly smile and nod, maybe throw out a “I knew her when…” or two, and move on. All right, share time is over.
Wings to the Kingdom, a standalone sequel to Priest’s 2005 debut Four and Twenty Blackbirds, once again features Eden Moore, the outspoken and determined young woman who can see ghosts. But this time she has actual friends, which helps take her mind off those ghastly things. Unfortunately, Old Green Eyes, a spirit of legend, has abandoned his watch over the Civil War fields in Chickamauga, Georgia. This has gotten the spirits all stirred up. They’re appearing more often, pointing off in the distance, trying to communicate with anyone that is able to hear them. This is where Eden and her friends come in though it is anything of a free choice. But something else is out on the fields, armed with a rifle, keeping both the dead and alive away, searching for something as well. A deal has been broken, revenge is being sought.
One thing that I found lacking in Four and Twenty Blackbirds was just how alone Eden was. In the beginning it seemed like she had friends, but for the rest of the novel it was just her doing her thing. In Wings to the Kingdom we find Eden being more of a socialite: there’s Jamie, a boy with girls on the mind most of the time; Benny, the techie of the group; Dana Marshall, one part of the famous ghost-hunting media duo. And these characters are great; they’re fun, full of personality, each distinguishable from the other, and I couldn’t help but enjoy watching Eden interacting with them.
One doesn’t necessarily have to have read Four and Twenty Blackbirds to understand the plot of her latest, but they will probably miss out on a lot of small things. Malachi’s involvement in the story, for one thing. The other is her relationship with her aunt and uncle, a sort of “on/off” thing troubled by the fact that she continues to keep secrets from them. Priest’s skills with setting and creating a strong mood throughout the story are sound, and her ability to toy with language even better.
I’m eagerly looking forward to the third and final part of this series (Not Flesh Nor Feathers) as I heard it will contain exploding zombies. Yup, that’s right. So hurry up all you yuppies and get to reading Four and Twenty Blackbirds and Wings to the Kingdom else you’ll have to try and jump on the bandwagon, which might be hard considering how full it’s going to get real soon…
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