The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a diversion. Besides the mostly off-stage issue of a parent’s severe illness there’s not much here to challenge most readers-driving, beer-drinking, divorce, a moment of surprise at the mothers smoking medicinal pot together. In the background the two mothers renew their friendship each year, and Lauren, Belly’s mother, provides support for her friend-if not, unfortunately, for the children-in Susannah’s losing battle with breast cancer. Belly’s dawning awareness of her sexuality and that of the boys is a strong theme, as is the sense of summer as a separate and reflective time and place: Readers get glimpses of kisses on the beach, her best friend’s flirtations during one summer’s visit, a first date. Han’s leisurely paced, somewhat somber narrative revisits several beach-house summers in flashback through the eyes of now 15-year-old Isabel, known to all as Belly.īelly measures her growing self by these summers and by her lifelong relationship with the older boys, her brother and her mother’s best friend’s two sons. Nonetheless, this adventure, filled with intrigue, friendships, combat and magical allies, is a winner. It’s too bad this excellent portrayal of a disabled action-heroine concludes by retroactively turning disability into a metaphor for ignorance. Fast-paced excitement carries Eon through this tension-packed adventure, where victory can only come with self-knowledge. In a fantasy world loosely and uneasily based on Imperial China, Eon’s unexpected presence disturbs those who would overthrow the Emperor. Raised instantly from slave to lord, Eon is thrust into deadly court politics. Indeed, the Rat Dragon doesn't choose Eon the Mirror Dragon, lost for more than 500 years, chooses him instead. More importantly, everybody knows that Dragons won't choose girls, and that’s just what Eon is, though he-she-has been in disguise for so many years she barely remembers what it means to be female. Crippled by an old injury, he can scarcely manage the sword forms Dragoneye candidates perform. Eon knows his chance of becoming the Rat Dragoneye is almost nonexistent.
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