30. In the Time of Dragon Moon by Janet Lee Carey
Uma’s father is the village medic, known as the Adan. Uma is working as his assistant in the hopes that she someday will be his successor. They both know that girls “cannot” become anything other than mothers according to the laws of their village, yet Uma acts surprised when her father returns from meeting with the village elders and confirms this.
Then the king’s soldiers march into the village, demanding the help of the Adan. Even though the king and queen have a grown son, ready to ascend to the throne soon, it seems the queen is desperate to have another baby. Uma joins her father in the prison wagon and they are taken to the palace as most of the soldiers remain to hold the village hostage.
This could have been a good story about a young woman discovering her inner strength and developing some independence, but Uma never shows these traits very well. Take the masked ball, for example. Uma tries on the costume provided for her. At first, she loves it. Then she thinks on all the times her family and neighbors would dance at the Moon festivals - and the times they were not allowed to or not able to. She thinks about the soldiers holding her entire village hostage to make sure she cures the queen and about how they are most likely not being allowed to dance at this Moon festival. She decides to remove her costume as a show of sympathy, support and solidarity to her villagers. She goes to the king to ask their release. This is all well and good, but later that same evening, she’s at the ball in costume. It seems she forgot rather quickly about her village.
Also, at that very ball, Jackrun is dancing with a “woman wearing wings” on her costume. But Uma tells Jackrun that he was “dancing with a mermaid.” While costumes can get very creative, I have never seen any version of a mermaid that had wings.
There are other problems too. In the back story of Uma’s parents, they move faster than is believable. They met when she was new in the village and he was trying to save a mother giving birth to twins. The two of them work together and succeed. The problem here is that it’s described as “saving the life of a mother and her newborn twins.” This makes it sound as though only one life was saved. The way I count, one mother plus two babies equals three lives saved.
The next morning, the two of them celebrate their success by bathing in the river together. They soon discover that their shared bathing means they have a baby of their own on the way. These two have gone from total strangers to expecting their first child in less than twenty-four hours! While some people might move pretty quickly, this is ridiculous!
There are some grammatical errors that are relatively minor, but they are jarring enough to warrant a mention here. There are many times the author misuses the phrase “will-o-the-wisps.” This is not correct. It should read “wills-o-the-wisp.” The “o-the-wisp” part is a prepositional phrase and as such is never correct when written in the plural form.
Also, there is the phrase “bring it out to Tabitha in the foreyard.” There rule is, “bring it here, take it there” with “here” and “there” designated as being from the speaker’s perspective. With Uma as the speaker, “here” would be in the kitchen and “there” would be in the foreyard. Therefore, the correct version of that sentence would read: “take it out to Tabitha in the foreyard.”
Overall, this book was a study in wasted potential. Uma is too passive a character to be worth following through the entire story. It’s one thing to have a protagonist who is essentially a child who must grow into adulthood through trials and hardships. At least then she would be interesting, because we could watch her grow in strength and confidence as she gains experience. After all, that is the point of a story arc. But it’s quite another to keep that character stuck in immaturity throughout the entire narrative.
Plus, the poor editing instantly and repeatedly jarred me from being able to sympathize with Uma’s story.
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