Devil and the Bluebird by Jennifer Mason-Black

What keeps them invested, however, are the complex relationships between many cast members. From the beginning, this book pulls readers in with political intrigue and action. Everyone will have to make a choice: Restore the old regime, support the First Protector and the new caste system he created, or look for a new way, no matter what the cost. However, not only is Lee competing against Annie, but rumors are circulating that some of the royal family have survived and have dragons of their own. Their dragons are finally mature enough for them to compete for Firstrider, a position of power that can give Lee back a small part of what his family lost. Nine years later, a new generation of dragonriders is emerging, children selected and trained on merit, not bloodlines. For too long the dragonriders held all the power while their people starved and lived in fear.

What happens to the world after the dust from a revolution has settled?įriends Annie and Lee were children from very different circles when Atreus killed Lee’s father, dragonlord Leon Stormscourge, ending the uprising on the bloodiest day in Callipolis’ history. Mason-Black’s poignant debut novel takes Blue from small-town Maine, “where lesbian musicians were an oddity, and gay kids still suffered at the hands of their peers,” on a tour of America’s marginalized, her mutism eliciting confusion, confessions, and sympathy along the way.Ī magical-realist adventure laced with folk guitar and outcast drifters unpacks the bonds of family-those we are born into and those we choose. The woman in red is never far away, compelling Blue to keep moving toward the family secrets she must uncover in order to rediscover the voice that is authentically her own. Blue meets an assorted cast of characters on her odyssey, all wandering for their own diverse reasons.

Hoping to find Cass along the way, Blue re-creates the journey that decades ago brought together her mother and Tish, her partner in music and life. But the woman in red is more interested in a gamble than an even trade, so she steals Blue’s voice and sends her off on a surreal all-or-nothing quest in which the rules of the game, and sometimes reality itself, shift and bend.

This urgency drives the white teen to meet the woman in the red dress at a crossroads at midnight and make a deal-her soul in exchange for her sister. Last year there was only a voicemail from Cass, and this year the call didn’t come at all.īlue, 17, knows she must find her older sister. Cass and Blue made a deal after their mother died of cancer: they would always talk on Mama’s birthday.

Devil and the Bluebird by Jennifer Mason-Black