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A review by sausome
Flora's Dare by Ysabeau S. Wilce
5.0
Fantastic! This series is so wonderful, full of magic, mystery, houses with rooms unknown, and an amazing strong-female protagonist who gets better with every book. I can't believe I'd never heard of this series before, and now I can't wait for another one to come out. The author has a great sense of humor that pulses through the dialogue and the prose and the characters themselves.
I love that 'magick' can only be mastered by becoming proficient in a language called "Gramatica", which is terribly difficult to master. Spoken incorrectly, with the wrong inflection, tone, conjugation, feeling/emotion, and swiftness, the intended 'magick' can go horribly wrong. When attempting a Translocation (using 'magick' to go from one place to another) it is always tricky because you could end up inside a wall if you do it slightly incorrectly. I love that Flora is so strong-willed, yet fearful of punishment and being caught at the same time. A truly precocious leading gal, which makes a story so great!
The first book was called: "Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog"
This second book's entire title is: "Flora's Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room)"
The titles themselves give you a taste of the humor, the wit, and the precocity of Flora, which you'll find throughout the books.
Nini Mo is Flora's idol -- a real ranger (one who uses magick for good, etc.; Flora's family, the Fyrdraaca's, have always gone into the military, and Flora is expected to as well, and they think of magick as nonsense). Flora constantly quotes Nini Mo from her various adventure books and looks to her words for what to do when she gets into various troublesome situations. This little precursor leads me to a paragraph I found quite entertaining:
"I am going to be a ranger. And rangers do not waste their time sitting in a classroom. The greatest ranger of them all -- Nyana Keegan, better known as Nini Mo -- chronicled her adventures in a series of yellowback novels called Nini Mo: Coyote Queen. (Coyote being the slangy term for ranger, of course.) There is no yellowback called 'Nini Mo sits in Math Class,' or 'Nini Mo and the Curse of the Overdue Library Book,' or 'Nini Mo vs. the Term Paper on the Orthogonal Uses of Liminal Spaces in the Novels of Lucretia McWordypants.'"
---> Favorite new words from this paragraph: "slangy" and "McWordypants"
I also love that Flora is fine with what she looks like, and would rather not be all looks-obsessed. In one moment she shouts back at Valefor, her house's cast-off butler who had been taunting her for her weight: "Shut up. I'd rather be round than look like a stick." That's pretty awesome.
Another excerpt: "Climbing across the roof is the trickiest part because it's small, slanty, and tiled, and those tiles can be pretty slickery."
---> Favorite new words: "slanty" and "slickery"
The most scandalous "curse words" Flora uses are: "fike" and phrases like this: "Pigface Psychopomp on a Pogostick!"
What more do you need to know? Read these books!
I love that 'magick' can only be mastered by becoming proficient in a language called "Gramatica", which is terribly difficult to master. Spoken incorrectly, with the wrong inflection, tone, conjugation, feeling/emotion, and swiftness, the intended 'magick' can go horribly wrong. When attempting a Translocation (using 'magick' to go from one place to another) it is always tricky because you could end up inside a wall if you do it slightly incorrectly. I love that Flora is so strong-willed, yet fearful of punishment and being caught at the same time. A truly precocious leading gal, which makes a story so great!
The first book was called: "Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog"
This second book's entire title is: "Flora's Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room)"
The titles themselves give you a taste of the humor, the wit, and the precocity of Flora, which you'll find throughout the books.
Nini Mo is Flora's idol -- a real ranger (one who uses magick for good, etc.; Flora's family, the Fyrdraaca's, have always gone into the military, and Flora is expected to as well, and they think of magick as nonsense). Flora constantly quotes Nini Mo from her various adventure books and looks to her words for what to do when she gets into various troublesome situations. This little precursor leads me to a paragraph I found quite entertaining:
"I am going to be a ranger. And rangers do not waste their time sitting in a classroom. The greatest ranger of them all -- Nyana Keegan, better known as Nini Mo -- chronicled her adventures in a series of yellowback novels called Nini Mo: Coyote Queen. (Coyote being the slangy term for ranger, of course.) There is no yellowback called 'Nini Mo sits in Math Class,' or 'Nini Mo and the Curse of the Overdue Library Book,' or 'Nini Mo vs. the Term Paper on the Orthogonal Uses of Liminal Spaces in the Novels of Lucretia McWordypants.'"
---> Favorite new words from this paragraph: "slangy" and "McWordypants"
I also love that Flora is fine with what she looks like, and would rather not be all looks-obsessed. In one moment she shouts back at Valefor, her house's cast-off butler who had been taunting her for her weight: "Shut up. I'd rather be round than look like a stick." That's pretty awesome.
Another excerpt: "Climbing across the roof is the trickiest part because it's small, slanty, and tiled, and those tiles can be pretty slickery."
---> Favorite new words: "slanty" and "slickery"
The most scandalous "curse words" Flora uses are: "fike" and phrases like this: "Pigface Psychopomp on a Pogostick!"
What more do you need to know? Read these books!