young adult – BELINDA CRAWFORD

Able to Love Herself: Angelina J. Steffort on Romance in YA

July 22, 2019 by Belinda Crawford

BELINDA: Hot topic first. Do you think love is killing the teenage heroine and why? ANGELINA: A really good question, and almost impossible to answer in one sentence or two. The question I ask myself is: What is a teenage heroine? What expectations do we have toward a teenage girl; or teenage girls toward themselves? … Read more

Meet Fink

October 25, 2012 by Belinda Crawford

Meet Fink. He’s the size of a horse, has a tail, six legs and is Hero’s best, if not only, friend. Weighing in at six-hundred and twenty-two kilos with twenty-six claws and a mouth full of pointy teeth, most people find Fink intimidating, but underneath all that fur beats the heart of a teddy bear. … Read more

Alanna of Trebond – a childhood hero

October 15, 2012 by Belinda Crawford

I first devoured the Song of the Lioness series when I was ten; to say that it was my favourite set of books ever is to understate the case. Alanna, the series protagonist, was my childhood hero, and not just because she had a magic sword and a talking cat. Alanna was my hero because she was doing something forbidden and getting away with it.

It wasn’t an especially bad thing that she was doing, like selling drugs or stealing, she was just doing what the boys did – playing with swords, riding horses, going to war – and if that meant she had to lie about her gender, well, that only added to the tension.

Meet Hero

October 8, 2012 by Belinda Crawford

Meet Hero, the star of Hero-Fink, a novel set in the far distant future, on a far distant world. Hero Regan is special, and not in a way she likes. She hears voices, the kind of voices that other people can’t hear. Ever since she can remember, she’s been forced to take meds and prodded … Read more

Bloodhound by Tamora Pierce

August 31, 2012 by Belinda Crawford

Bloodhound is the second book in the Beka Cooper series by Tamora Pierce. The story follows Beka, now a first-year Dog (aka police officer), as she and her partner Goodwin track down a group of colemongers (aka counterfeiters). Along the way she picks up a scent hound named Achoo, falls in love and saves the day.

What I liked and didn’t like

Bloodhound is written in a journal style. I haven’t read many books in this style but I find it very difficult to believe that someone could recount their day with as much detail as Beka does. Perhaps Pierce should have ditched the journal idea and just made it first person?

Beka is the many times great grandmother of George Cooper, a prominent character from The Song of the Lioness series. Generally these types of books, in which characters from previous novels make cameo appearances, drive me batty, but given that there’s a few hundred years between this book and the Alanna series, there wasn’t much chance of that happening.