Wings (Aprilynne Pike ) (Wings, #1)

by Aprilynne Pike

An extraordinary faerie tale of magic and mystery, romance and danger, described by Stephenie Meyer as `a remarkable debut'.

Laurel is an ordinary fifteen-year-old high school girl. But something incredible is happening to her. She is changing.

Now Laurel is about to discover that a deep and powerful magic holds the key to her destiny.

• ISBN10: 0061668052
• ISBN13: 9780061668050
• Publish Date: 3 May 2011 (first published 30 April 2009)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: HarperCollins Publishers
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 320
• Language: English

Reviews

"Personally I don't think enough people say what they really think." (Chelsea Harrison)

I last read this book in sixth or seventh grade and I remember loving it. When I was reorganizing my bookshelves, I found the first three books in the Wings series and I couldn't remember much about it. Honestly, Wings was much better than I thought it would be.

The premise of Wings is a simple one. Laurel moves into a new town with her parents and after years of being homeschooled, starts Grade 10 at a public high school. In Biology class, she meets her first love interest, David. (Shows just how much of an influence Stephenie Meyer and Twilight had on YA literature.) One morning, Laurel wakes up with a bump on her back and later from the lump, sprouts petals. Yes, you read that right, there's a flower growing on Laurel's back. Instead of telling her parents about it, she runs to the boy that she met a few weeks ago, David, and after looking at the petal through a microscope, Laurel finds out that she's a plant. And yes, you also read that part right too: Laurel is A PLANT. And I'm a prickly cactus!

The idea of plant cells existing in a human body is certainly imaginative and I had to suspend disbelief in order to get through Wings. However, the whole concept of faerie's being plants is unique.

The characters are also flat. Laurel is a Mary-Sue, Chelsea's a honest and straightforward friend and Laurel's parents aren't really present. There's also a love triangle that I don't really care about. David is quite sweet, but I don't feel the chemistry between him and Laurel and Tamani's feelings of overwhelming love and desire towards someone who barely knows him is just too much.

And then there's the plot. The first two thirds of Wings drags as it's all about Laurel finding out that she's a plant. In the last third, the plot picks up, but I never felt that the characters were in immediate danger.

Wings has shown me how dramatically my reading tastes have changed in seven years.

"Yeah, but everyone thought Clark Kent was a nerd too, and look how that turned out." (David Lawson)

[emruth13]

I love this series so much. But on this book, I just love it for introducing a different kind of faerie. It's just a delight to read.

[Baroness Book Trove]

Wow. This book is totally different than what I thought it would be. I wasn’t sure what to think when I read the plot for the book but oh my god it was so good. Totally didn’t think that it was going to be about faeries and that they would be like they are in the book.

Aprilynne Pike is totally a great author and is good at spinning tales about faeries. Though the one thing that I didn’t like is this little love triangle thing that seems to be coming for Laurel, David, and Tamani. But then again what can I say it seems to be a thing for young adult stories and it actually does work quite well with the story. This whole book was really good. I finished it today and it was so good. It grabbed me from the first chapter and that usually means that this will be a book that I won’t be able to put it down unless I really needed to.

Anyways this book is really good and I’m giving this book a five butterflies. If anyone asked me about this book I would totally say it would be a great read especially if you like faeries. Even if you don’t like faeries it still is a good book and it’s totally something that I think a lot of people would love to read. Aprilynne Pike is a really good author and I am glad that I found this book.

[Kim Deister]

I came across this series when it appeared on my reading class for a literature class called Women of Faerie. I love all things magical and fae so I was excited to read this series.

From a technical standpoint, this book was written from the point of view of a narrator, something that I see less and less of in YA literature. I generally like first-person stories better because I feel like I get the main character better, but this really worked for this story line and the characters involved in it.

The faery mythology in this book was different than most of what I have read before, these faeries very different from the traditional winged creatures we are used to in literature. Instead, these faeries really tied in the concept of nature by being less humanoid and more plant-based. With that, a faery's appearance changed in accordance with the kinds of food they, as in their hair and eye colors. I loved that little detail! Also interesting is the fact that their "wings" had a real purpose beyond being pretty or for movement. All of these things created an interesting and refreshingly different world.

The characters in this book were fantastic. Laurel is our main characters and is seemingly your typical teenage girl. She is the new girl, in public school for the first time in her life. She is beautiful and she knows it without being stuck on it, slim with blonde hair and green eyes. Instead, she is feeling shy and out of her comfort zone when we first meet her. She has been homeschooled until now, living in a tiny town, giving her a complete lack of social interaction with kids her age. That awkwardness makes her real. I loved her loyalty to her friends, even despite all she learns about her history as a faerie. She doesn’t forget them when she discovers the truth about herself. Her “back and forth” between Tamani and David sometimes bothered me, even though I understood it and it was essential to the story line. David is fascinating in that his character accepts Laurel with very little hesitation, perhaps even before she accepts herself. He is highly intelligent and very much a scientific mind which I think helped him accept her. Tamani is interesting because he is rather otherworldly. He is fae, like Laurel, and has lived in the human world just about as long as she has. But they are very different people despite this. She was raised in the human world, living with the ideals and ways of humans. Tamani, even though he technically lived in the human world, lived apart from it. He understood human ways on the surface, but always came across as aloof from human ways.

Things to love about Wings...

--The mythology. As I talked about, it was very different than most books today and I really enjoyed that. It helped to emphasize the nature elements of fae culture.
--The tie-in with established mythology. This book blended Pike's created fae mythology with the mythology of Avalon, my pet favorite.

Things I wanted more or less of...

--A little less Twilight feel. At the beginning, there was a bit of that Edward/Bella feel to it, the pacing maybe a little slow for some reason. Despite my lack of love of that Twilight feeling, I do think that the pace actually served to further the impact of Laurel's self-discovery.
--A little more explanation. I never really found out why gaining access to the Gate to Avalon suddenly became so important to the trolls. Why now? And was it for their use, or someone else’s?
--A little less judgment. Laurel's mother and her reaction to Laurel's reality bugged me.

Some quotastic goodness...

--Typical mother advice. Sweet, honest, and completely useless (7).

--This was way more than some strange manifestation of puberty. Mood swings, disfiguring acne, even periods that went on for months were at least semi-normal. But growing oversized flower petals out of your back from a zit the size of a softball? This was something else entirely (49).

--Her lips filled with the sweetness of his mouth, and Tamani held her against him as if he could somehow pull her inside of him, make her part of him. And for a moment, she did feel like part of him. As if their kiss bridged the gap between two worlds, even if only for that one brief, sparkling moment (289).

My recommendation: A fantastic read for anyone charmed by fae lore, Avalon, and the epic struggle between good vs. evil.

[inlibrisveritas]

I didn't expect too much from this series to begin with, mainly because I haven't heard really anything about it. The description was kind of okay but didn't really make me want to buy it, so I suppose it was a bit of luck when it popped up for free briefly for the Kindle.

The story isn't terribly difficult to understand and there isn't much in the way of true plot depth either, however it is an interesting and relatively short, story that's worth reading if you get the chance to or have some down time. I suppose it's what can be considered a 'fluff' story, but it's not so fluffy as to be one note. The introduction to the Fae was different in a somewhat refreshing way, it wasn't the typical 'bad experience' lead in so that way nice. Overall the Fae seem fairly pleasant in this novel, aside from the bad guys, and they are pretty unique when it comes to their characteristics. There are certain aspects that are common to the young adult genre but it didn't seem too forced. Like the inevitable love triangle, or the main character trying to balance an overly odd personal life and their school life. The characters are pretty likable as well but I can't say they are hugely relate-able because they can be fully described with a few words; Laurel is sweet, David is caring and loyal, and Tamani is suave and humorous.

I can say that the main plot was a little divided. On one hand you have Laurel dealing with her appearance change and identity and on the other you have the bad faeries who are trying to get to the good faeries. The first half of the book seems like nothing but a fantastical coming of age kind of story and then suddenly you are given that fact that this particular person is sort of creepy and then that part starts to unravel.

Overall I gave this 3 out of 5. I don't think I'd recommend buying it unless you just have to own it, but it is good enough to check out. I'll try to check out the sequel (Spells) when I can.

[Eve1972]

I was surprised at how much I really enjoyed this little book! It is a quick read that sucked me in from the start. The characters are well written and the story quite unique! I am looking forward to reading the other titles in the series.

[sstaley]

WINGS is a story about an ordinary girl who discovers she is a faerie and is sent to guard the gateway to Avalon in the mortal world. When she is thrust into the midst of a centuries old battle between faeries and trolls, she's torn between a mortal and a faerie love, as well as her loyalties to both worlds.



This book is right up my alley...my fantasy alley. The author, Aprilynne, is an intelligent woman who is full of spice, and has an absolute love for writing and reading. It really shows when she is talking about her upcoming book which is the first in a series of books. She wrote this first book in three months! That amazes me!!



Here is a direct quote from Aprilynne's blog where she talked about how she wrote Wings and the sequel:



"When I wrote WINGS, I did write it in a flurry . . . actually, I wrote the sequel in a bit of a flurry too. Three months of long days seems to work well for me. I found a story I was passionate about (that's the ingredient that NO book should be without"

WINGS is a creative take on Fairies that fantasy lovers will latch on to. I look forward to reading the other books in this series.