The Fitter, Happier UnLibrarian's Blog of Young Adult Books

by Megan DeTour
LIBR 265-10 Materials for Young Adults
Spring 2009, Professor Wrenn-Estes
Master of Library & Information Science
San Jose State University, California

The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray

The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray

Publisher: Random House Childrens Books
Publish Date: December 2007
ISBN: 0385730306
Page #: 832pp
Reading Level: Young Adult
Classification: Fiction
Genre: Fantasy/Historical Fiction


Series: The Gemma Doyle Trilogy
A Great and Terrible Beauty (2005)
Rebel Angels (2006)

Subjects: Boarding School, Friendship, Magic, Victorian.

Annotation:

Seventeen-year-old Gemma Doyle and her friends Ann and Felicity are back in the final installment of the Gemma Doyle trilogy.

Summary:

The final volume of the Gemma Doyle trilogy has Gemma coming into her own as her experiences and developments of what she has discovered have bond the magic to herself, while forging unlikely new alliances. Through all of this, she wants to break through the norms of the corseted constraints placed on women. Libba Bray poses these issues without surrendering the gothic undertones of the previous volumes and we find Gemma deciding once and for all what role she is meant for.

Megan says:

The Gemma Dolye Trilogy is one of my favorite book series I read last year! The fianl installment, The Sweet Far Thing made the Top Ten YALSA 2008 list! The story concludes all the lose ends in the previous two novels and presents some real life issues that teens today may relate to. I really enjoyed the magic realms combined with 19th century London society. Many people who read the entire series did not like the way it ended, I on the other hand, did. Not all fairy tales end the way we want as there is something even more beautiful when they don't, or perhaps more thought provocking afterward. All in all I highly recommend this book and the entire series as it is a wonderful look into a magical world!

Stars: ★ ★ ★ ★