Growing Wings
Mar. 7th, 2011 02:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
booksofafeatherShort review: A girl discovers that she is born into a lineage of winged people... but also into a lineage that secretly disagrees on what should be done about their wings. She's taken to a remote sanctuary and given time to find herself, and think about her place in the world. A good story, with a sombre feeling, that focuses realistically on life with wings without making it sound too ideal or too horrible.
Writing: The writing style is good... it doesn't stand out as truly good or truly bad. The plot is realistic and the story has a slight melancholy feel, but not as much as Night Flying. It's rather a feel that makes you take it seriously.
From a winged person's perspective...: This book is all about the winged person's perspective and has a lot of little details that make the book feel very real! There is no specific question of whether the people feel they have a "winged person identity" or a "non-winged person identity", but there are many clues that the thought of losing their wings would horrify them. They feel restless indoors and the need to stretch their wings and the urge to fly, and small details are noticed and described that are unusual in most books, like the feeling of rain on bare wings (I really loved that one!). The description of the backs of their clothing to fit the wings seemed very realistic too. The flight abilities are also treated as realistic. I think it's very well done.
Trigger warnings: Cruelty to wings: binding wings to deform them and cutting them off is mentioned often and graphically. Characters with this done are called "cutwings" in a casual manner. This book is not easy on the stomach. Also some describing of the characters as "freaks" and "mutants" by themselves, sometimes in a joking way.
More thoughts...: I had read this book before actually, but I wanted to re-read it again to review it. Before, I had the thought that it could have been a better book, and surely, it could have. But since I've read so many books on this topic lately, now I appreciate this one a lot more, I think. I don't know whether that's a sad comment on how many bad books are out there or a positive review of this book... either way it's worthwhile.
This book has such a lot of parts that really make you feel it wants to immerse you in the feeling of having wings, or thinking about what that would be like. Every chapter has a quote at the top which definitely helps the mindset, of thinking "what is it to be a winged person?" Some of the quotes are simple science and some are more philosophical, but together they create a feeling. It feels like this book is meant to be taken seriously and that's something rare amongst the other books of this kind.
Or rather... what I think I should say... is that it tries to link into the part of us that seeks flight, whether we are winged people or not. Often books treat the wanting to be winged as silly fantasy or inconvenience. This book tries to connect with a deep need in many people, by showing famous quotes and poems throughout time. You feel reading this book that your identity as a winged person is respected. I find this very comforting, with many other books that will treat it as a "childhood thing" (not that childhood dreams are bad, but it is the way they are treated in society, see my other entry on this).
I liked also some of the parts that touched on identity in a small way. They never brought it out fully but there were hints. Often, in this kind of book, the protagonist will see her wings as a deformity, but here that is subverted:
After that, nothing else is said, but it's a nice change from a human-centric way of looking at beauty.
Two other things caught my attention: a discussion of whether it's more important to fly (have the experience of being lifted), or to look like you're flying (with your own wings). They decide that both are important. Of course, having an experience of yourself as a winged person, that's probably what you would feel, about your identity. So I liked that. There's also a part where one of the older characters is going out and asks what she should bring back to the house, and another character says, "Boys." And the older character responses, "with or without wings?" It's a joke but the narration makes it clear that something serious is going on too. It's the closest I've seen a novel come to the idea that winged people might find winged people more attractive, except in The Black Gryphon where obviously the species were very different in every way.
The one big problem that some people might find with this novel is that it is very graphic about wing issues. Some characters have deformed wings and others had their wings cut off completely, because of child abuse. If you were born in a family that wanted to limit your freedom or your identity using abuse, even if it's not about the matter of wings, this may be very hard to read. I didn't have an abused childhood but the thought of all that potential being lost makes me sick. This is a book to be very careful with. Otherwise though, I think this book deserves four and a half out of five. The half, only because it has more of a melancholy feeling, and circled around the discussions of identity, instead of talking about them.
Writing: The writing style is good... it doesn't stand out as truly good or truly bad. The plot is realistic and the story has a slight melancholy feel, but not as much as Night Flying. It's rather a feel that makes you take it seriously.
From a winged person's perspective...: This book is all about the winged person's perspective and has a lot of little details that make the book feel very real! There is no specific question of whether the people feel they have a "winged person identity" or a "non-winged person identity", but there are many clues that the thought of losing their wings would horrify them. They feel restless indoors and the need to stretch their wings and the urge to fly, and small details are noticed and described that are unusual in most books, like the feeling of rain on bare wings (I really loved that one!). The description of the backs of their clothing to fit the wings seemed very realistic too. The flight abilities are also treated as realistic. I think it's very well done.
Trigger warnings: Cruelty to wings: binding wings to deform them and cutting them off is mentioned often and graphically. Characters with this done are called "cutwings" in a casual manner. This book is not easy on the stomach. Also some describing of the characters as "freaks" and "mutants" by themselves, sometimes in a joking way.
More thoughts...: I had read this book before actually, but I wanted to re-read it again to review it. Before, I had the thought that it could have been a better book, and surely, it could have. But since I've read so many books on this topic lately, now I appreciate this one a lot more, I think. I don't know whether that's a sad comment on how many bad books are out there or a positive review of this book... either way it's worthwhile.
This book has such a lot of parts that really make you feel it wants to immerse you in the feeling of having wings, or thinking about what that would be like. Every chapter has a quote at the top which definitely helps the mindset, of thinking "what is it to be a winged person?" Some of the quotes are simple science and some are more philosophical, but together they create a feeling. It feels like this book is meant to be taken seriously and that's something rare amongst the other books of this kind.
Or rather... what I think I should say... is that it tries to link into the part of us that seeks flight, whether we are winged people or not. Often books treat the wanting to be winged as silly fantasy or inconvenience. This book tries to connect with a deep need in many people, by showing famous quotes and poems throughout time. You feel reading this book that your identity as a winged person is respected. I find this very comforting, with many other books that will treat it as a "childhood thing" (not that childhood dreams are bad, but it is the way they are treated in society, see my other entry on this).
I liked also some of the parts that touched on identity in a small way. They never brought it out fully but there were hints. Often, in this kind of book, the protagonist will see her wings as a deformity, but here that is subverted:
"...a deformity. No, not a deformity. The beauty of their wings would not allow her to think of them that way."
After that, nothing else is said, but it's a nice change from a human-centric way of looking at beauty.
Two other things caught my attention: a discussion of whether it's more important to fly (have the experience of being lifted), or to look like you're flying (with your own wings). They decide that both are important. Of course, having an experience of yourself as a winged person, that's probably what you would feel, about your identity. So I liked that. There's also a part where one of the older characters is going out and asks what she should bring back to the house, and another character says, "Boys." And the older character responses, "with or without wings?" It's a joke but the narration makes it clear that something serious is going on too. It's the closest I've seen a novel come to the idea that winged people might find winged people more attractive, except in The Black Gryphon where obviously the species were very different in every way.
The one big problem that some people might find with this novel is that it is very graphic about wing issues. Some characters have deformed wings and others had their wings cut off completely, because of child abuse. If you were born in a family that wanted to limit your freedom or your identity using abuse, even if it's not about the matter of wings, this may be very hard to read. I didn't have an abused childhood but the thought of all that potential being lost makes me sick. This is a book to be very careful with. Otherwise though, I think this book deserves four and a half out of five. The half, only because it has more of a melancholy feeling, and circled around the discussions of identity, instead of talking about them.
