The Sweet Far Thing (Gemma Doyle, Book 3) by Libba Bray
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Book Reviews of The Sweet Far Thing (Gemma Doyle, Book 3)
Book Review: Loved it but I want a different ending!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is such an epic, moving story I feel it wholeheartedly deserves five stars. But like many other reviewers here, I also really really really wanted a happier ending!
---WARNING SPOILERS---
I respect Libba Bray for not shying away from an ending that she felt kept the theme of her story intact. However, while self-discovery, idependence and self-ideation are strong themes in this series, I would argue that Gemma's self-discovery didn't have to lead to her being alone in another country.
All three books, and this final installment in particular, are heavy on feminism. I support that ideology but strongly disagree that feminism is exclusive of love, romance, marriage and motherhood. I don't think Libba Bray is trying to say that (she's married and a mother too), but the choices of her characters seem to reflect it. All three girls - Gemma, Felicity, and Ann - end up alone pursuing school/careers (or just interests in Felicity's case since she has plenty of money). Did it need to be like this in order to prove a point that women don't need men in order to be complete? I think we all need other people in order to be complete and thought it was extremely disappointing to see Gemma and Kartik pulled apart in the end. I know they can still communicate through dreams, but it's not the same. Couldn't Gemma have had an adventurous life WITH Kartik? Couldn't she have had everything she wanted with him by her side? I don't agree that they couldn't be together because she was English and he was Indian. People have been having *forbidden* romances since the beginning of time and they could have found a way. While the ending may have been poignant and bittersweet, I think the story could have been just as powerful with a more emotionally satisfying conclusion.
As for Felicity's sexual orientation - some people felt that it was unexpected and completely out of the blue. I have to disagree on that point. I thought there were signs from the beginning of the series, even in some of the first scenes with her in AGTB. And overall the subject fit in well with the theme of self-discovery, adding complexity to Felicity and Pippa's characters while creating greater depth to Felicity's friendship with Gemma. I'm glad to see this subject being explored more in popular lit.
Of all the YA series I've read, this one is the best. I think Libba Bray is a fantastic writer with an incredible imagination and I'm just sorry to see the series end. I'd be happy if it went on forever (preferably with Gemma and Kartik in India with their kids visiting the realms whenever they want!!) but I guess all good things must come to an end. I look forward to reading Libba Bray's future novels and just hope she gives us a happier ending next time around. Please Ms. Bray, if you create another Kartik, don't kill him off or turn him into vegetation!!! It just makes us sad!
Book Review: All about Gemma
Summary: 5 Stars
The last book in the trilogy of Gemma Doyle has twists and turns for the worse and the more worse. From having to deal with an addict of a father, an incompliant brother, a prohibited love, to people struggling over the power deep inside her. Not all stories have happy endings, including this one. Although Gemma goes through tough vigorous trials, so do her friends Felicity and Ann.
Gemma, Felicity, and Ann are coming to their last year at Spence Academy. Although not all of the girls well be entering their season to come. Miss Ann Bradshaw is going to be a full time nanny, while Gemma and Felicity will be; attending balls, rapped in gossip, and will be lead through the rest of their lives as though they were horses with blinders and they will not stand for it. In this outstanding literature by Libba Bray, these girls go through trials testing to the farthest degree their loyalty, friendships, desires, and their hearts truest ambitions.
Felicity is a warrior princess in her heart and does not want to enter into the suffocating threshold of conformity in the 1893 London society. As she struggles with inside demons and hearts desires, she also has to ward off nymphs, trackers, and all the rest of the creatures deep inside the Winterlands, all the mean while Ann is trying to find a way out of becoming a slave to the two brats at her uncle and aunt's home.
Miss Ann Bradshaw has an extraordinary talent, but is too timid and without having any money she is doomed to a life serving for those who do. But this will not settle with Felicity's ragging heart, and Gemma's hatred for entrapment, they will find a way to save her (or at least try).
This book was very intriguing in many ways, from the magic to the romance. I liked how Libba Bray used many metaphors to help us understand the meaning to what was going on. "We're like pretty horses, and just as on horses, they mean to put blinders on us so we can't look left or right but only straight ahead where they would lead" (page 601). Another thing that the author, Libba Bray, did that I enjoyed was that she brought the plots points to a head. The book also moved at a decent speed, but not as fast as the other two in the trilogy did. If I had to choose a genre for this book, it would be fantasy, although, there is thrilling mystery, pulsating romance, and real facts to the historical plot of the literature.
I would recommend this book to young women who are intrigued to reading about forbidden love and lust, mysteries, and just fantasy stories that drag you into the tribulations of the characters. Because of all the different plots of this trilogy you would need to be a keen reader and insightful of what is to come, although in this book it takes so many twists and turns that you really wouldn't know which way is up and down.
Book Review: A breathtakingly beautiful finale
Summary: 5 Stars
It's 1896, and Gemma Doyle's time at Spence Academy for Young Ladies is about to come to an end in a whirl of parties and balls that will mark her and her classmates' debutante "season." For Gemma, the departure from Spence is bittersweet. As eager as she is to get far away from authoritarian Mrs. Nightwing and the mean, snooty girls who torment her and her friends, Gemma is also uneasy.
Can her headstrong friend Felicity overcome her notorious history and her willful ways in time to have a successful debut? Will scholarship girl Ann find any way to escape her fate as the governess to some particularly nasty young relations? Will Gemma finally be able to answer her questions about the Realm, the mystical land to which she and her friends have been journeying? And will she ultimately reunite with her mysterious lost love, Kartik?
Despite Gemma and her friends' efforts, the boundaries between this world and the Realm beyond seem to be breaking down, with potentially devastating results. The workers who are rebuilding the school's East Wing, where tragic events a quarter century earlier set Gemma's story in motion, unearth relics that perhaps should have remained covered.
Gemma is doing her best to remain in control of the Realm, but it's rough going. Although Gemma has "come into" her magic the same way she will "come out" in society, she still lacks control. And her efforts to heal a girl's blindness, for example, or to rescue the girls' friend Pippa, who is stuck in a sort of limbo, are fruitless. What's more, the evil forces Gemma had thought were trapped seem again to be threatening all that she and her friends hold most dear.
Libba Bray's highly successful trilogy, which began with A GREAT AND TERRIBLE BEAUTY and continued with REBEL ANGELS, comes together beautifully in THE SWEET FAR THING. One of my earlier criticisms of Bray's novels was that they failed to adequately blend the more realistic elements (which often focus on minutiae of Victorian social customs and class issues) with the fantastic ones. Here, she does so masterfully, as Gemma strives to use her supernatural powers to grant herself and her friends futures more fulfilling than those proscribed by their rigid Victorian society.
A SWEET FAR THING can seem to move slowly at times, and this 819-page epic can get bogged down in those details (whether of society etiquette or of Realm mythology). But I prefer to think that the leisurely pace of this final installment is a sign that Bray just doesn't want to say goodbye to these characters. I have a hunch that her many readers will be just as reluctant to leave Gemma, Felicity and Ann --- despite the happy endings and surprise joys that lie on the far side of danger.
--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl
Book Review: Bray has outdone herself with this wonderful treasure!
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Sweet Far Thing" is the perfect conclusion to a wonderful story written by Libba Bray!
Bray begins her story with a prologue that illustrates two men scavenging for useful items which is three years before the actual events in the book. Soon enough, they find the body of a dead girl that has the same amulet Gemma wears.
Back at Spence Academy, Gemma is struggling to open the door to the realms. As Felicity and Anne begin relying on Gemma to help them with her magic in their daily lives, Gemma's stress accumulates. Eventually, Gemma finds a way back into the realms through the means of a secret door. As soon as she and her friends enter the realms again, they soon find Pippa along with girls Pippa claims to have rescued before they entered the Winterlands. Since Pippa is still nostalgic for her true home, she is attempting to raise the girls according to her lifestyle before she decided to stay in the realms. Eventually, Pippa begs Gemma to help her cross over but since she's been in the realms too long, it's impossible for her to crossover.
Later, Kartik joins the story again only to ruthlessly tell Gemma they weren't meant to be. Kartik explains that he has enlisted as a sailor and intends on leaving. Before his departure, Kartik joins the gypsies and even agrees to help Gemma have a meeting with the Rakshana since Gemma wanted to command them to leave her unsuspecting brother, Tom, alone. The ruthless Mr. Fowlson unsuccessfully attempts to capture Gemma and Kartik; though, he successfully reveals that Gemma has magic which she has been hiding from all but Felicity and Anne.
In time, previous visions Gemma tried to suppress are now becoming an important factor in her life. She later pleads for these visions to solve the purpose of them. Gemma soon decides to lead her friends to the Tree of All Souls in the realms as soon as she suspects the answers will be there. Gemma's vision upon touching the Tree of All Souls leads her to have a discussion with Eugenia Spence who also provides the answers to the visions Gemma has had. Eugenia also leads Gemma to believe that the woman in Gemma's vision was unstable and untrustworthy.
Throughout this story, Gemma is forced to confront those that may betray, or have betrayed her. Her relationships with friends, family, and of course Kartik are complicated and to be treasured! Her painful journey continues to capture the heart of many. Libba Bray has outdone herself in this book and concludes with a bittersweet moment filled with beauty that only Bray could fully depict. This is a great story for young adults and adults alike; I would recommend this to anyone who can see the magic in living!
Book Review: Roses and Thorns
Summary: 5 Stars
Well, I spent the first 3/4 of this book racked by horror movie syndrome: you know, when you're watching the girl go down the long, dark hall and reach for the doorknob, having split off from the rest of the group, and you're yelling, "Don't do it!" at the screen? Only in this case, I was yelling at Gemma not to trust all the wrong people and misuse the magic she holds. She does both, repeatedly, for hundreds of pages.
Yet Bray's point seems to be that it's hard to know what to do when you're a 17-year-old girl, let alone when you carry far too great a responsibility and everyone around you is clamoring for you to hand it over to them. So while Gemma naturally distrusts the authoritarian Order and the Rakshana, she is more conflicted about her supposed allies in the realms, particularly two--make that three--individuals who are not nearly as dead as they should be.
At the same time, Gemma and her friends are trying to figure out what to do about their oh-so-scripted futures, not to mention troubles with family members. And Gemma worries over her feelings for Kartik, who pulls away, then doesn't, then does, even as she tries to make sense of events in the Realms and the warnings she is receiving in visions.
It kind of reminds me of how Harry Potter and his friends spend the middle of the last book glumly hiding out and quarreling because they lack all kinds of important information--and simply because they're teenagers and really don't know what to do next.
The Sweet Far Thing is a long read, but it is incredibly well written and moves at a surprisingly fast clip. (Watch for some lovely metaphors tucked here and there in Bray's prose.)
As for the ending, I would normally object, but I think this story is clearly focused on Gemma's efforts to make good choices and know, truly know, who she is, rather than on a stereotypical happy ending. A key theme of The Sweet Far Thing is that Gemma feels she is all alone, in spite of her friendships and allies and family--a feeling that this book ultimately confirms, though Gemma does manage to make peace with that knowledge.
The most telling moment for me is when the gate of the Winterlands demands each girl's greatest fear and greatest wish. Gemma's wish is this: "I don't know! I don't know what I want, but I wish I did. And that is the truest answer I can give."
For my part, I wish it were easier for Gemma to untangle the deceit and confusion that buffet her like storm winds, but in the end, she and her friends do what all of us have to do--the best that they can under the circumstances. And yes, they save the world. Bravo, Libba Bray!