I’ll start off by saying that Foiled was very much not written with someone like me, a man in his third decade, in mind. Amazon recommends the book for ages 9 through 12, which I would say is about right, as the story is rather, let us say, uncomplicated.
The book starts off with an opening narration by our heroine Aliera Carstairs, a young woman in the middle of high school and a skilled foil fencer. She gives the reader a Cliff Notes guide to her sport, offering a glimpse of her dedication and the pride she takes in the skill she has developed over the years. Like the protagonist, I was a fencer in high school, so I can say with some authority that Yolen does a great job portraying the sport. At one point Aliera mentions “surviving” the brutal heat while wearing fencing mask and jacket. This is neither exaggeration nor hyperbole. Wearing the protective gear for fencing is like being in a sauna, and that probably goes double for women, who have to wear a plastic shell under their fencing jacket to protect their breasts. Another good example is when Aliera takes a dig at saber fencers. I can’t speak for everyone, but my problem with saber fencers was they didn’t change their style when using other forms like foil or epee. In saber you both thrust and cut to score, but in foil or epee you can only use thrusts. In saber this is not a problem, because they use a much lighter blade, but when a saber fencer uses cuts with heavier weapons such as the foil or epee, their opponent is basically getting beaten with a steel rod.
The story also exposits Aliera’s life at school. Aliera does not fit into any of the social cliques and describes herself as comfortable being a loner. She does not have any school friends, or enemies, or any kind of relationships in school at all, apparently. Her practical invisibility at her high school is in direct contrast with her fencing school, where she is the stand-out pupil, an apparent shining star. Even there, however, she is largely disconnected from everyone else, with her strictly professional relationship with her coach the only exception.
Yolen’s choice to make such a totally isolated character is to me the most interesting in the book. Feelings of isolation are often a significant source of anxiety, especially for teenagers. I have to wonder if Yolen set up her protagonist in this way to deliberately offer her target audience a character they could connect with in this way, even if she’s very different from “the norm” in other ways.
Then movie-star handsome Avery Castle enters the scene as the new boy at school and instantly becomes the school heartthrob, a Prince Charming whom even Aliera cannot ignore. Even so, Aliera tries to avoid his presence until the two of them get paired up as lab partners in biology class. Cliche, but I suppose it was hard to avoid in this setting. Avery proceeds to thoroughly charm Aliera with his good looks and by talking like a serial killer. It is surreal. In one scene where she is thinking, once again, about how handsome he is, the image we see is of Avery hovering over a frog he is dissecting, scalpel in hand, looking for all the world like the doll from Chucky.
Despite Avery’s apparent sociopathy, Aliera is so smitten by his looks and outgoing personality, and is apparently so starved for some kind of relationship, that she makes an effort to form a bond with him when they are together in class. I doubt it was Yolen’s intention, but to me this suggests that Aliera is both shallow and a poor judge of character. We do learn at about this point that Aliera does, in fact, have a healthy friendship with her cousin Caroline. The two have been close since they were children, and they get together every Saturday to play role-playing games together. Caroline is crippled by rheumatoid arthritis, and the cynic in me has to wonder if her character was created just to counter the earlier impression the we get of Aliera as shallow and aloof.
Aliera’s comfortable routine is thrown out of whack when Avery invites Aliera out on a Saturday date. She feels torn, because she has both fencing practice that day and her weekly get-together with Caroline, but quickly agrees to meet him at four that afternoon, anyway. That Saturday, she is so distracted by thoughts of her upcoming first date that she performs horribly in fencing class, and her coach grows so frustrated with her that he sends her home early. That gives her just enough time to meet up with Avery at Grand Central Station for their date, but not enough time to drop her fencing gear at home first. While she is waiting for Avery to show, a bird that found its way into the station starts pestering her and grabbing at her hair. Unable to ward it off, she resorts to putting on her fencing mask to protect herself, and that is when things turn really bizarre.
I’ll leave the rest of the story unspoiled, but I will say that I think the story of her”‘real” life got short-circuited when the fantasy story was introduced at this point, and the fantasy story is inadequate by itself. The bad news is I feel like I only got half a story, as the fantasy part does not resolve itself, or even the first, non-fantasy part of the story, to my satisfaction. The good news is Jane Yolen is producing a sequel, Curses, Foiled Again, which should pick up where Foiled left off and will hopefully provide what I felt was missing. Overall, while Foiled doesn’t have the broad appeal that I think characterizes the best young adult material, for the intended adolescent audience, I think it will be well appreciated.
