Of course, Laurel is also a regular high-school girl. As the series progresses, Laurel faces more and more peril as she comes into contact with the faery world of Avalon, and the dangers that lie within her home world. It’s a big deal, because along with being a faery, are all the joys and threats that come with it, like: having a giant flower behind your shoulders, magic and troll attacks. Laurel, our protagonist, discovers she’s a faery. This year, I made it my mission to read more of Bee’s books, and the Wings series is possibly my favourite thing so far. They were some of the first YA books she read, and mark the genesis of her love for faery fiction. beautiful, glittery pink books have been on Bee’s shelves for as long as I can remember.

Catch the Next Big Thing before it catches fire.Īprilynne Pike: Wings The King’s English Bookshop, 1511 S. All that, and Pike delivers a satisfyingly propulsive adventure narrative.

And she takes it to another level by giving Laurel the kind of Joseph Campbell-approved personal-discovery arc that has fueled everything from Star Wars to Harry Potter.

She takes the raw material of faerie stories and incorporates new twists, from the biology of the creatures to tie-ins with trolls and the legend of King Arthur. Like Meyer, Pike anchors her more fantastical elements in the basic psychology of teenager-hood, including the difficulty of choosing between the nice guy and the mysterious guy. Soon Laurel learns unbelievable facts about her own history: why she was left on the doorstep of her adoptive parents why she never seems to bleed why she can only eat such a restricted diet. But making friends and doing homework soon become the least of her worries, when she discovers one morning that the blemish in the middle of her back has sprouted into something resembling the petals of a flower, or wings. Her protagonist, Laurel, is a 15-year-old Northern California girl making her first foray into public education after a decade of home schooling. Pike has learned a few things from Meyer’s gift for re-inventing a mythology, and added her own intriguing spin. It’s easy to understand why Twilight author Stephenie Meyer was blurbed on the cover of local author Aprilynne Pike’s new young-adult fantasy novel Wings.

Wings pike novel