Tuesday, February 12, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Blanca & Roja by Anna-Marie McLemore



Blanca & Roja is a member of a genre that I've seen a lot recently - the alternate adaptation of one or more fairy tale stories, often in a way that puts these stories into modern settings or changes the characters to fit more modern values.  In this case, the book is a fusion of multiple fairy tale stories - Rose Red, Snow White, and Swan Lake most notably - although this fusion mainly exists to provide the background for the stories of the four main characters to proceed.

For Blanca & Roja is really a character-based story, mainly of the eponymous sisters, but also of boys Page and Yearling, as the quartet each tries to fight outside pressures - both human and supernatural - which attempt to define them as they try and discover themselves.  It's a story of romance and sisterly love.  And for the most part, it works fairly well, although it maybe bites off a little more than it can chew.


-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------
The Del Cisne family has long been cursed.  Each member of the family will bear two girls, and one of the girls will be forced to transform into a swan.  Should the girls resist, it's possible that both will be forced out of human shape and to join the flock of swans.

Sisters Blanca and Roja have known of the curse all their lives, but the two have tried everything to prevent it from taking the other.  Blanca is the more typically beautiful, with blond hair and traditional beauty while Roja has dark dirty red hair and a more rough appearance, and everyone assumes that Roja will be the one taken by the swans.  But neither sister wants the other to be taken, and Blanca has spent their childhood trying to assure Roja that she won't be taken.

Yet when the time seemingly comes for the swans to take one of them, they are temporarily saved by the appearance of two animals that change into boys - boys who have been missing since they went into the forest a year ago.  And as these two boys - the betrayed by his family Yearling, and the non-binary boy Page - get involved with Roja and Blanca, it becomes clear that the sisters' fates might depend upon the love of the two boys, and that the relationship between the sisters might not survive after everything is done and through.....and the Swans are still out there, demanding a sacrifice.
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Blanca & Roja reminded me a lot of two other books I've read this year in a few ways.  Superficially it felt a lot like The Sisters of the Winter Wood (by Rena Rossner) in that it involved a pair of sisters trying to protect each other, with one transforming into a swan.  But really it reminded me a lot more of Tessa Gratton's Strange Grace, another story with magical realism and a trio of teenage characters trying to figure out their own identities and their relationships to each other, in the face of a magical curse.  Like Strange Grace, a magical curse lies threatening in the background of this story, as the quartet of main characters attempts to figure out their own feelings, both towards themselves and then towards the others.

All four of the main characters are pretty strong in their own ways - Blanca has always been told she's the wanted girl, but she wants for her sister to be that instead...and tries to do whatever it takes for her sister, but can't help but be attracted to Page anyhow despite the fact that such an attraction could allegedly doom the sister she loves.  Roja has always been told she's the unwanted one, the cruel and rough one, but she finds love in both her sister and Yearling.  Page has basically found herself not as accepted as she herself would want - Page is non-binary and likes to be considered a "boy" but still likes to use both gender pronouns at different times, and the only one she has found to accept that has seemed to be Yearling.  And Yearling found himself the unloved one of his family and the only one ashamed of his family's secrets, and has found it hard to accept others as a result of fear that others are just like his family.

I've really done a barebones job above describing the quartet, which is a shame because each of them, with each getting POV Chapters, goes through a journey of self-discovery in the book, a journey that really is the true heart of the story.  And the resolutions of all four are rather lovely in the end, so it works really well in that regard.

What's a bit more of a mixed bag is the romance elements, which generally work despite some occasional wrong impressions it gave me. (the story made it seem at first like Yearling might have romantic feelings for Page, but apparently that was more brotherly love?  It's kind of confusing).  The love between Page and Blanca is pretty great, with that Blanca being the 2nd person to truly accept Page for who she is and the two of them finding themselves in each other.  The love between Roja and Yearling is a little more half-baked, and I'm not really sure I bought it as much as just being a plot necessity.  Of course the sisterly love between Roja and Blanca is done really damn well, so it's really just that one relationship that kind of didn't work greatly for me.

The other main complaint I'd have with this book, especially in contrast to the books I mentioned above, is that the book really doesn't do a great job establishing the lives and characters outside of the main quartet.  Page and Yearling's grandmothers, as well as Yearling's brother Liam, are the three characters who have a decent sized role and development, but other side characters disappear and reappear after long stretches, with those characters seemingly being important in the minds of our main quarter anyway.  In particular there's Roja and Blanca's parents, who each give advice to one of them, then disappear for the rest of the book until the ending, where their relationships are suddenly significant again - which just felt weird.  Page's parents also were sort of missing, as his relationship with them is supposed to be important but they're basically never seen or mentioned in the thick of it all.  This is not a huge complaint, but with these relationships suddenly mattering in the ending, it made the ending not quite land as strong as it could have.

Still for a YA fantasy book featuring a medley of fairy tales, self-realizations, LGBTQ characters, and some romance, Blanca & Roja is very solid.  Worth a try, even if I wouldn't say it's truly great.
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