A review by dandelionsteph
Curse of the Phoenix by Aimée Carter
adventurous
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
The Fablehaven comparison may have affected my review. While it does have a Fablehaven-like premise, it carries it out much less effectively. Though it takes a while for characters to traverse, the preserve feels smaller than Fablehaven's, as does its very world. After reading Fablehaven and Bruce Coville's series about unicorns, I was disappointed that most of the supernatural creatures, centaurs exempted, are little more intelligent than trained horses. The phoenix, despite being immortal, critical to the plot and capable of complex, non-animal-like plans, never actually speaks. The phoenix communicates only by conveying snippets of its memories to someone it really likes, leading the other person to interpret it. It feels like a sort of dehumanization and what ought to be the most "human-like" supernatural character, insofar as its mental capacity is critical to its role in the plot. It reminded me of The Dragon of Trellian and perhaps The Pit Dragon Chronicles, if I'm recalling the latter correctly.
It also felt like a cop-out to reveal near the end that their mother died of a freak aneurysm. Her sudden and unexplained death is critical to the plot. As the plot unfolds, the idea that the curse of the phoenix kills people who stay away from the preserve for too long is important to another character's motivations, as is the idea that the phoenix mysteriously granted their mother an extension of her return deadline, but she was unable to meet the extended deadline each August (as she usually does) because of one of the protagonists being in the hospital. If the author wanted to write a story where the phoenix had nothing to do with her death and was falsely blamed, I believe it could have been written better than revealing it was only a freak aneurysm a few pages before the end. For example, the characters could have overheard a few specific details from an autopsy and perhaps a few risk factors their mother had for an aneurysm, but they dismiss it or don't pay attention to it at first, only to realize that it must have been true a little farther away from the story's end. One of the protagonists spent nearly her whole summer blaming the phoenix, and the phoenix is surely smart enough and benevolent enough to have revealed critical information on the mother not having the curse at all earlier in the plot.
On a more minor note, I'm kind of disappointed the protagonists have no Asian heritage (or, at least, it's never confirmed). Vivienne To usually illustrates books with Southeast Asian or Indian main characters, "Lu" sounds like it could be a Southeast Asian name (or perhaps a nickname derived from one), and the facial features on the cover suggest a broad-faced sort of Korean phenotype. I was initially pleased that Southeast Asian children could be the protagonists of a story set in Britain with Western dragons and unicorns, instead of always corralling people of particular ethnicities into stories based on the mythology of their ethnic origin. But no: there's no sign this is the case.
It also felt like a cop-out to reveal near the end that their mother died of a freak aneurysm. Her sudden and unexplained death is critical to the plot. As the plot unfolds, the idea that the curse of the phoenix kills people who stay away from the preserve for too long is important to another character's motivations, as is the idea that the phoenix mysteriously granted their mother an extension of her return deadline, but she was unable to meet the extended deadline each August (as she usually does) because of one of the protagonists being in the hospital. If the author wanted to write a story where the phoenix had nothing to do with her death and was falsely blamed, I believe it could have been written better than revealing it was only a freak aneurysm a few pages before the end. For example, the characters could have overheard a few specific details from an autopsy and perhaps a few risk factors their mother had for an aneurysm, but they dismiss it or don't pay attention to it at first, only to realize that it must have been true a little farther away from the story's end. One of the protagonists spent nearly her whole summer blaming the phoenix, and the phoenix is surely smart enough and benevolent enough to have revealed critical information on the mother not having the curse at all earlier in the plot.
On a more minor note, I'm kind of disappointed the protagonists have no Asian heritage (or, at least, it's never confirmed). Vivienne To usually illustrates books with Southeast Asian or Indian main characters, "Lu" sounds like it could be a Southeast Asian name (or perhaps a nickname derived from one), and the facial features on the cover suggest a broad-faced sort of Korean phenotype. I was initially pleased that Southeast Asian children could be the protagonists of a story set in Britain with Western dragons and unicorns, instead of always corralling people of particular ethnicities into stories based on the mythology of their ethnic origin. But no: there's no sign this is the case.