11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A new version of Little Red Riding Hood, August 3, 2010
This review is from: Sisters Red (Hardcover)
I was excited to read this book when I heard it was a re-telling of the story of Little Red Riding Hood. It's a fairytale with a lot of potential for reworking, so I had high hopes for Sisters Red. Unfortunately, the book didn't live up to its potential.
Sisters Red is the story of sisters Scarlett and Rosie March. Seven years earlier, a werewolf attacked the sisters and their grandmother. The grandmother was eaten, and Scarlett saved Rosie, but at a high price: She was left horribly scarred and she lost an eye. Since then, Scarlett has devoted her life to hunting werewolves, who are known as Fenris and are vicious killers with no souls. Rosie also hunts, although she hopes for something more out of life. The sisters' relationship is complicated by the return of their friend Silas, who was formerly Scarlett's hunting partner. Like Rosie, he wants something more out of life than just hunting and they soon develop feelings for each other.
All the elements of a great story are there, but Sisters Red just didn't work for me. I had a number of issues. The point of view switches back and forth between Scarlett and Rosie in alternating chapters. This isn't a bad device, but in the first half of the book I found myself losing track of whose chapter I was on because their voices just weren't that different. I did find that this improved as the book went on, and the Scarlett and Rosie's voices became more distinctive.
The romance between Rosie and Silas is a bit lacking. First of all, there's a five-year age difference, which isn't much for an older couple, but seems like a lot when the girl is only 16. Rosie seems to be attracted to Silas because he's hot, but all they have in common is that they don't want to devote their entire lives to hunting Fenris. This doesn't seem like enough to build a relationship, and the romance fell flat for me.
There are also some plot holes. For example, Scarlett and Rosie are on their own and they both stopped to school years before, but they've managed to fool the authorities all this time. It's only a small point, but it didn't ring true.
This book isn't terrible, but there are better fairytale retellings out there (The Bloody Chamber, Beauty, and Daughter of the Forest to name a few).
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
werewolves, sisters, and odd choices, March 24, 2011
The premise of Sisters Red is fabulous. This is Little Red Riding Hood modernized as two girls hunting down ravenous, girl-eating werewolves. What isn't to love about this? Besides the fact that I think it's incredibly ridiculous for people to wear cloaks in today's society (what is wrong with blood red hoodies? certainly those would have done the job and been less conspicuous?), I love modernized fairy tales and the first few chapters of the book don't disappoint. It's bloody and violent and the characters have some personality. Vim. Vigor. Whatever you want to call it.
Until they didn't.
Scarlett is the eighteen-year-old older sister, scarred from a werewolf attack that left her without an eye and a serious chip on her shoulder. Rosie is the sixteen-year-old sister, a hunter in training whom Scarlett loathes to let out of her sight, for good reason since Rosie seems to forget her weapons half the time or takes ill-timed walks in the woods. Silas, the 21-year-old love interest, has his moments, but really where this book starts to stumble all over itself is when Silas and Rosie start making eyes at each other while Scarlett is over there sharpening her weapons whilst looking down her nose at the girls (glittery "dragonflies," as she calls them) she's putting her life on hold in order to save.
I get Scarlett's anger, and her unrestrained jealousy toward girls who have the gumption to act however they want. Although, there are some scenes that do, in fact, read like she'd rather just slice a few girls up to teach them a lesson about where they can and can't go, or do, or be and this left such a sour taste in my mouth that I felt nothing for her. The scene in which she's "too late" to save a girl is particularly damning. Silas's eventual victim blaming takes the attitude the three have for those they're trying to save to a new level (those girls wouldn't dress the way they do if they knew werewolves were out to eat their hearts...surely! just why is it that people keep manufacturing short skirts, anyway? or make-up. or low cut blouses. or high heels. or perfume. or clothes.) It left me wondering...why the hell do they even care? Why are they so desperately putting their lives on hold to help people they seem to have such a low disregard of? Half the time, Silas and Rosie would rather be taking dance classes and Scarlett seems to literally hate everyone around her. What is the point? Why don't they just get jobs and hunt for sport?
Which brings me to the plot. Rosie and Scarlett drop out of school and are unemployed because hunting werewolves is apparently a full-time enterprise. I fail to see how this even works. Moreover, their quest to find the werewolf "potential" is convoluted, at best, and the whole concept of the potential doesn't seem to work. If the wolves can smell, or otherwise somehow figure out where the potential is, and he's basically one bowling alley down from them, shouldn't the wolves, who are specifically out looking for him have managed to kind of figure out he's eight feet from them? This little plot point is also tritely dealt with, and made me roll my eyes. How...convenient. That is exactly what I thought upon the end.
And the love story. Sixteen-year-old girl, with no resources to speak of other than a supposedly handy knife throwing technique, and a 21-year-old man. Very little time is spent on the age difference here, which disappointed me. Rosie could, at times, be a surprising character in that she manages to save herself instead of crumpling into a ball and waiting for the cavalry to save her, but otherwise her character seemed wasted on the love story. Scarlett, just in general, I disliked.
That all said, I thought the writing was far superior to many other recent young adult books I've come across recently. The bond between the sisters, while melodramatic, was touching. It should have been the component that helped ease the path of the love story, but ultimately Scarlett's demands were too much (seriously, who forces your sister into a lifetime debt because you saved her life when you were eight?) and Rosie's rebellion was a little too hilarious to take seriously (community dance lessons! OMG you can't learn how to tango, we need to hunt werewolves!).
And don't worry. In the end, kids, you'll learn that you actually can't have it both ways. It's either tango or kill monsters. Take your pick.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Flawed, But Still Brilliant, August 29, 2011
"I am a hunter. If I can't hunt ... I am nothing." - Scarlett March
"I don't answer, because therein lies the problem. Hunters don't want more - at least, not hunters who are related to Scarlett March. It's sort of hard to justify taking dance classes when your older sister is trying to save the world." - Rosie March
It happened seven years ago, the attack that was the beginning of all this. Before then, Scarlett and Rosie March were normal little girls, living in a normal world. But that changed when the Fenris showed up at their grandmother's country cottage. When the man transformed, when he turned to wolf and attacked, he took everything away from Scarlett and Rosie - their grandmother, their normal life, their belief that their world was safe and free from monsters. And so the two little girls were changed forever.
Scarlett lost an eye and gained a body covered in thick, ugly scars protecting Rosie that day. In the seven years that have passed, Scarlett has honed her hatred and her need for revenge until she lives for just one thing - to hunt Fenris and to kill them. Rosie - sweet, beautiful, unmarred Rosie - can be just as fierce a hunter as her sister, but destroying the Fenris is Scarlett's passion, not hers. Rosie owes Scarlett her life and this is the cost of that debt, to stand beside her sister and slay monsters. But sometimes, Rosie dreams of a different life, a life where she is something more than a hunter, has something more to aspire to than killing Fenris. She feels that ache for what can't be all the more strongly whenever she's near Silas Reynolds, Scarlett's hunting partner and only friend. Rosie loves Scarlett with all of her heart, but that might not be enough to keep them together.
As the Fenris gather and gain power, as the young girls of Atlanta begin dying at an alarming rate, Rosie March will come face to face with the most difficult of all decisions. Will she devote her life to hunting, as Scarlett has? Or will she take a chance on that elusive something more?
I liked this book very much. In fact, there were many passages that I truly loved. So, while I found a couple of flaws with this novel (more on that later), I still feel like it's better than most of the Y.A. paranormals being published these days. Ms. Pearce does a brilliant job building the atmosphere. This is a dark, gritty novel and an aura of tension, and of menace, hangs over every page. The evil of the Fenris is palpable throughout, like the leftover steam from a shower you can't help but to breathe it in as you uncover the fear the creatures both inspire and thrive upon.
The combining of an unique werewolf mythology, the modern world and a very loose adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood is another one of Sisters Red's great strengths. The plot and the setting are fresh and original, yet there are these little pings of familiarity - the red cloaks, a basketful of fresh-baked goodies - that somehow make the action more immediate and intimate.
It can't have been easy to write a 300+ page novel with just three characters and a pack of monstrous villains carrying most of the action, but Ms. Pearce was more than up to the task. Scarlett's world, and perforce Rosie's world, is small, circumscribed by the events of the past and by Scarlett's own need to eliminate the Fenris at all costs. Outside of the hunt, all the world has lost meaning for Scarlett. Only Silas, Rosie and the need to kill Fenris exists for her. Even the unknown girls she seeks to protect - those who live without knowledge of the Fenris - make little impression on her. Silas has seen more of the world and has openly refused to be JUST a hunter. He will hunt and he will kill, but he also wants more from life. He is less driven, and therefore more open to the rest of the world. Rosie March falls somewhere in between Scarlett and Silas, both in her character and in her role in this novel. Just sixteen, Rosie has just begun to look at the world with her own eyes, has only started to regret a future that holds only hunting. The way in which these three characters interact, the way their bonds form and stretch and break and form again, is both the heart of this compelling novel and the core of the narrative plot.
Those are the things I loved about Sisters Red, which brings me to the things I saw as flaws. So, I have to warn you:
**********BELOW THIS LINE BE (MILD) PLOT SPOILERS**********
I have to mention the difference in Silas's and Rosie's ages (21 and 16, respectively), though I wasn't nearly as bothered by it as some reviewers. Taken in the context of the novel's modern setting, the relationship between a young man with some experience of the world and a girl who has been essentially sheltered from all worldly things treads a treacherous border - bad taste on one side, perversity on the other. But, as I said, it didn't bother me as much as it might have, mainly because their love has a sweet, pure feel to it that fits with the notion of a fairy tale romance and Sisters Red is a fairy tale in the best, dark-hearted tradition of the Brothers Grimm.
My second problem with the novel was something that felt to me like a flaw in the logic of Scarlett's character. Scarlett vehemently and repeatedly stresses that those who have knowledge of the Fenris have a responsibility to hunt, thereby protecting those who live in ignorance. Yet no mention is ever made of trying to enlighten the general populace. Scarlett does have a thought, in passing, to the effect that the young girls designated to be the victims of the Fenris would never believe her if she told them about the monsters, but no real effort is ever made to bring the monsters' existence to light, nor is there any indication that such an attempt was made in the past. It seems to me that if Scarlett's sense of responsibility is as strong as she purports, and I have no reason to doubt that it is, than she would have tried, at least once, to let people know that the Fenris exist.
The third problem I had with this book is a major plot flaw, at least to my way of thinking, and it is also where the spoiler comes in so here's your last chance to look away. The reason given for the increase of Fenris around Atlanta, the whole motivation for most of the action in the novel, is that the Fenris packs are actively seeking a Potential - a man who, for one moon phase only, can be made into one of them. Adding this one member to their ranks is so important to the Fenris that every Pack Alpha has sent out all available members to find him. In other words, increasing their membership by just one is vitally important. Yet Scarlett has killed more than 90 Fenris in the past seven years and appears to have made little to no impression on the packs. She's reduced their numbers by more than 90, yet the Pack Alphas aren't even aware of her, aren't seeking her, aren't even trying to figure out what happened to their 90+ brothers. This while turning all of their resources to adding just one man to the Fenris ranks. It makes absolutely no sense.
Okay, I've rambled on for far too long and I've gotten all of my gripes of my chest, so I should wrap this up. I still think it bears repeating, though: this novel is brilliant - flawed, yes, but still brilliant.
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