RFAK No. 4: Crystal Blade, by Katnryn Purdie

So the trend, it appears, in YA fiction – LDS YA fiction, no less – is for strong heroines who have to have a semi-sexy scene in order to take the curse off, what I don’t know.

I feel like with every book I read, I’m sitting in the advertising executive’s room listening to the preliminary pitch for Simpsons’ Individual Stringettes:

A Wapcaplet: Sex, sex, sex, must get sex into it. Wait, I see a television commercial – There’s a nude woman in a bath holding a bit of your string. That’s great, great, but we need a doctor, got to have a medical opinion. There’s a nude woman in a bath with a doctor – that’s too sexy. Put an archbishop there watching them, that’ll take the curse off it. . . 

The archbishop there watching in the case of Kathryn Purdie’s “Crystal Blade” is probably the LDS audience (intended or not, I’m not sure since the book isn’t billed as LDS fiction) reading. There’s nothing explicit. The sexy scene – coming right after a minor character’s suicide, no less – is brief. But again, I can’t recommend it to my daughter saying “An LDS author wrote this, so it’s okay.” Because it’s not.

Other than that, I have no quibbles with Purdie’s novel, second in a series. In fact, of those I’ve read for this contest, it’s the one that’s captivated me the most to want to find its predecessor.

Okay, one quibble: Too many emotional descriptors. Just let your character be emotional – sad, angry, what have you – in what they say, not in how they set their jaw.

In this way, reading these books for the Whitney Awards is an excellent education in writing. I get to see what works and what grates – and then I get to translate that into my own fiction.

Purdie’s story is top notch, with a heroine seeing and acknowledging her flaws, wanting to use her powers as a means to an end, but seeing that means as evil, even if the end is good. More of Popeye’s philosophy of “Wrong is wrong, even if it helps ya.” So that’s a great aspect to this story.

The betrayal part – the novel’s tagline is “Betrayal Cuts Deep” is maybe augmented by reading the first installment. I mean there’s betrayal here, but I’m not sure at the depth of it.

So, a good story. One I might hesitate to have my daughter read, because of the aforementioned scene.

I will now continue to scour the earth for smutless fires.