I leave for Okinawa in the morning.
I've dreamed about this trip for literally years. I've worked on my Japanese, worked on my karate, spent lot of time, money, and energy to even be able to go on this trip. I'm not likely to get the opportunity again, and I don't want to miss it.
But now I'm terribly torn about going.
I know it will be all right. There isn't anything major medical happening for Rob in the next 12 days. He has one CT scan, and some papers to sign - that's it. We have Skype, so we'll be keeping in close touch. He wants me to go - has insisted repeatedly that I not cancel out. And yet, I don't want to go away - to walk off and leave him right now.
I guess, since I am going, that I had better get everything out of this trip I can. Bad enough to go right now, worse to leave and have a bad trip because I can't get my head to come with me. To both miss the point of the trip, and be apart from Rob would be a crying shame.
Deep breath. I'll post when I'm home again. See you all June 20th.
Sunday, June 08, 2014
Friday, June 06, 2014
I Pronounce It "Eye-gore"
Well, not actually. The doctor's name down in Vanderbilt is Igor, pronounced the usual way. We're still getting a kick out of Rob potentially getting experimented on by an Igor, though.
The trip to Vandy was very good for our psyches. Firstly, Rob has been declared an excellent candidate for the trial. He needs to get a new CT scan, but unless it shows regression, he's in. If he does show regression, we don't want to mess with it anyway. Igor (actually Dr. Puzanov, but it's too much fun calling him Igor) was very informative, and was able to reassure us on what would happen if he ended up in the control group, and how they dealt with patients who weren't responding well to the treatment.
The trial has three branches: One gets the trial drug (MPDL4280A, or PD-1 for shorthand) alone. One gets PD-1 combined with bevacizumab, which is a TKI, or anti-angiogenic drug. One gets Sutent alone - which is the most commonly used of the TKIs in current therapy. Or in other words, branches A&B are the experimental groups, and C is the control. Thankfully these days cancer trials are run vs. the standard of care, rather than vs. a placebo.
Additionally, if the patient doesn't respond to the Sutent, they can be moved into the A group, since at that point they would be stopping Sutent therapy under the standard of care anyway. As to another concern of ours - that TKI therapy can inhibit later IL2 therapy by causing heart toxicity, Dr. P said that they had noted that, and had developed an in-house protocol for doing IL2 specifically for patients coming off of TKIs that has been working well for them.
So we came home with a pile of paperwork for Rob to read through and sign, and he should be getting his repeat CT within the next week or so. Entry into the trial won't be before I get back from Okinawa at the earliest.
The other exciting bit of news was from Dr. R - our local guy. He spent the weekend at the ASOCO annual meeting, and went to the presentation of results from the first trials of PD-1. Results are incredibly promising - 26% of patients with durable remission. Keep in mind, the durable remission numbers for IL2 are something like 4%, with another 15-20% getting a durable partial remission. PD-1 trials for melanoma were also presented, and apparently it's the first drug to show real life extension with advanced melanoma cases. He thinks that with numbers like those, it should be FDA approved for renal cell carcinoma and melanoma before the end of 2015. Knowing the FDA, I'm a little more dubious, but since it's already approved for some other cancers, it's possible.
In other random good bits, Dr. P commented that Rob's expected untreated lifespan wasn't "average of three years", which had been told to us a couple of times as the usual for stage IV RCC, but that given his blood markers and the nature of the spread, he would say "minimum of three years" if untreated. Which sounds a heck of a lot better to us. Particularly the "if untreated" part, since we're hardly going to leave this untreated. Not as good as "durable remission", but still a more upbeat take.
Three days to Okinawa! Packing! Last day of school! - busy, busy the rest of the week.
The trip to Vandy was very good for our psyches. Firstly, Rob has been declared an excellent candidate for the trial. He needs to get a new CT scan, but unless it shows regression, he's in. If he does show regression, we don't want to mess with it anyway. Igor (actually Dr. Puzanov, but it's too much fun calling him Igor) was very informative, and was able to reassure us on what would happen if he ended up in the control group, and how they dealt with patients who weren't responding well to the treatment.
The trial has three branches: One gets the trial drug (MPDL4280A, or PD-1 for shorthand) alone. One gets PD-1 combined with bevacizumab, which is a TKI, or anti-angiogenic drug. One gets Sutent alone - which is the most commonly used of the TKIs in current therapy. Or in other words, branches A&B are the experimental groups, and C is the control. Thankfully these days cancer trials are run vs. the standard of care, rather than vs. a placebo.
Additionally, if the patient doesn't respond to the Sutent, they can be moved into the A group, since at that point they would be stopping Sutent therapy under the standard of care anyway. As to another concern of ours - that TKI therapy can inhibit later IL2 therapy by causing heart toxicity, Dr. P said that they had noted that, and had developed an in-house protocol for doing IL2 specifically for patients coming off of TKIs that has been working well for them.
So we came home with a pile of paperwork for Rob to read through and sign, and he should be getting his repeat CT within the next week or so. Entry into the trial won't be before I get back from Okinawa at the earliest.
The other exciting bit of news was from Dr. R - our local guy. He spent the weekend at the ASOCO annual meeting, and went to the presentation of results from the first trials of PD-1. Results are incredibly promising - 26% of patients with durable remission. Keep in mind, the durable remission numbers for IL2 are something like 4%, with another 15-20% getting a durable partial remission. PD-1 trials for melanoma were also presented, and apparently it's the first drug to show real life extension with advanced melanoma cases. He thinks that with numbers like those, it should be FDA approved for renal cell carcinoma and melanoma before the end of 2015. Knowing the FDA, I'm a little more dubious, but since it's already approved for some other cancers, it's possible.
In other random good bits, Dr. P commented that Rob's expected untreated lifespan wasn't "average of three years", which had been told to us a couple of times as the usual for stage IV RCC, but that given his blood markers and the nature of the spread, he would say "minimum of three years" if untreated. Which sounds a heck of a lot better to us. Particularly the "if untreated" part, since we're hardly going to leave this untreated. Not as good as "durable remission", but still a more upbeat take.
Three days to Okinawa! Packing! Last day of school! - busy, busy the rest of the week.
Monday, June 02, 2014
Plans for the week
Today is/was Rob's first full day back at work. He's not quite at the end of the day yet, but seems to be chugging along with no more complaint than a slight tension headache. Go Rob!
Tomorrow is also work, but he'll be cutting out a little early for his next appointment with the urologist. We don't expect any new information from this one, just a recheck to make sure everything is continuing to heal post-surgically. Also, Dr. P is supposed to be asking his friends at NIH about any other interesting studies being done with RCC in case the ones we're already pursuing don't pan out.
Wednesday we head out for Vanderbilt so they can evaluate Rob. We've gone back and forth with them a couple of times on this, where we thought we weren't going, because the study was closed, but then they called back and said we should come ahead. So we're less confident than before about Rob getting into the study, but it's apparently still possible. Dr. Rez is also looking into University of Chicago, as there is apparently another study recruiting patients there.
The more common name for the study drug we're looking at here appears to be PD-1 or PDL-1, rather than PLN1 - I'm not sure if that's me mishearing Dr. Rez, or an alternate name for the drug. The ASCO meeting presentation on it was supposed to be today. I'm hoping that one or another of the doctors we'll be seeing this week can tell us something of those results.
This is also the boys' last week of school (at least until they start up again on July 31 -short summer). They'll be on their own a lot next week, since Rob will be back at work, and I'll be in Okinawa, but the week after their Uncle Doug is coming (Thanks Doug!), which should help a lot. Fortunately at 15 and 13, they're capable of looking out for themselves during the day pretty well. They're both reacting to Rob's cancer in their own way - Robbie in the very helpful mode of suddenly taking his homework and responsibilities much more seriously. Actually, it's so helpful that I have to keep reminding myself that it is a stress response, and I need to give him attention and support too. Aaron seems to be reacting through his digestion, as always. He's been having a lot of morning nausea and vomiting, and then this morning, when it seemed like we had that under some control, he started having esophageal spasms - basically nasty cramping chest pains that would double him over. Fortunately they're basically benign - really uncomfortable but nothing that's doing harm. Suggested treatment from the pediatrician was ibuprofen and either cold or warm drinks - whichever better soothed the spasms down (cold seems to be doing the trick, so Brazilian frozen limeade has been most of his calorie consumption today, as solid food doesn't go down well unless really thoroughly chewed to a pulp).
For the curious: 5 T lime juice, 5 T sugar, 1 c. light coconut milk, 2 c. crushed ice: stick in a blender until smooth - serves 2.
Also this week, I need to set up stuff for Art on the Parish Green, which will happen while I'm gone. Rob will be manning the booth, so I need to set up everything I can ahead of time. Plus packing, getting some Yen, and all the other stuff that goes along with an overseas trip. Busy, busy week.
Tomorrow is also work, but he'll be cutting out a little early for his next appointment with the urologist. We don't expect any new information from this one, just a recheck to make sure everything is continuing to heal post-surgically. Also, Dr. P is supposed to be asking his friends at NIH about any other interesting studies being done with RCC in case the ones we're already pursuing don't pan out.
Wednesday we head out for Vanderbilt so they can evaluate Rob. We've gone back and forth with them a couple of times on this, where we thought we weren't going, because the study was closed, but then they called back and said we should come ahead. So we're less confident than before about Rob getting into the study, but it's apparently still possible. Dr. Rez is also looking into University of Chicago, as there is apparently another study recruiting patients there.
The more common name for the study drug we're looking at here appears to be PD-1 or PDL-1, rather than PLN1 - I'm not sure if that's me mishearing Dr. Rez, or an alternate name for the drug. The ASCO meeting presentation on it was supposed to be today. I'm hoping that one or another of the doctors we'll be seeing this week can tell us something of those results.
This is also the boys' last week of school (at least until they start up again on July 31 -short summer). They'll be on their own a lot next week, since Rob will be back at work, and I'll be in Okinawa, but the week after their Uncle Doug is coming (Thanks Doug!), which should help a lot. Fortunately at 15 and 13, they're capable of looking out for themselves during the day pretty well. They're both reacting to Rob's cancer in their own way - Robbie in the very helpful mode of suddenly taking his homework and responsibilities much more seriously. Actually, it's so helpful that I have to keep reminding myself that it is a stress response, and I need to give him attention and support too. Aaron seems to be reacting through his digestion, as always. He's been having a lot of morning nausea and vomiting, and then this morning, when it seemed like we had that under some control, he started having esophageal spasms - basically nasty cramping chest pains that would double him over. Fortunately they're basically benign - really uncomfortable but nothing that's doing harm. Suggested treatment from the pediatrician was ibuprofen and either cold or warm drinks - whichever better soothed the spasms down (cold seems to be doing the trick, so Brazilian frozen limeade has been most of his calorie consumption today, as solid food doesn't go down well unless really thoroughly chewed to a pulp).
For the curious: 5 T lime juice, 5 T sugar, 1 c. light coconut milk, 2 c. crushed ice: stick in a blender until smooth - serves 2.
Also this week, I need to set up stuff for Art on the Parish Green, which will happen while I'm gone. Rob will be manning the booth, so I need to set up everything I can ahead of time. Plus packing, getting some Yen, and all the other stuff that goes along with an overseas trip. Busy, busy week.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Next steps
We saw Dr. Rez - our local oncologist today, and it looks like we have another modification of plans - at least a potential one. He is in contact with the doctor running trials of PLN1 - a chemotherapy treatment which is in trial at Vanderbilt. Dr. Rez thinks Rob may be a good candidate for the trials, and would like us to trek down to Vanderbilt so they can have a look. Currently we're waiting on the call from his office to tell us when they can fit us in. I'm really hoping it's within the next two weeks, because otherwise we have some tough decisions to make about whether he should go on his own, or wait another nearly three weeks to see them.
Not a lot of data available on PLN1 for renal cell carcinoma right now, but there's supposed to be a presentation at the American Society of Clinical Oncologists annual meeting next week, and the buzz is that it's very promising.
Essentially, getting IL2 treatment would remove Rob as a candidate for the clinical trial, but doing PLN1 should leave IL2 open as a possible future treatment later - so in the general principle of not cutting off options before we have to, it makes sense to look at this first.
The plan of new CT scans and not doing anything until we look again in 12 weeks to get a baseline of tumor behavior remains intact, so even if Rob ends up in the PLN1 trial, it isn't likely to be for a few months. We should have a good deal more information about this particular treatment avenue after next week once the data are actually public.
Oh - and for anyone interested in the sort of oddball progression Rob is having, the keyword for searching turns out to be 'synchronous' - as in "Renal Cancer Synchronous Adrenal Metastases". There are apparently a whole 17 other previously recorded cases. (Thanks to my friend L for figuring that one out.)
Not a lot of data available on PLN1 for renal cell carcinoma right now, but there's supposed to be a presentation at the American Society of Clinical Oncologists annual meeting next week, and the buzz is that it's very promising.
Essentially, getting IL2 treatment would remove Rob as a candidate for the clinical trial, but doing PLN1 should leave IL2 open as a possible future treatment later - so in the general principle of not cutting off options before we have to, it makes sense to look at this first.
The plan of new CT scans and not doing anything until we look again in 12 weeks to get a baseline of tumor behavior remains intact, so even if Rob ends up in the PLN1 trial, it isn't likely to be for a few months. We should have a good deal more information about this particular treatment avenue after next week once the data are actually public.
Oh - and for anyone interested in the sort of oddball progression Rob is having, the keyword for searching turns out to be 'synchronous' - as in "Renal Cancer Synchronous Adrenal Metastases". There are apparently a whole 17 other previously recorded cases. (Thanks to my friend L for figuring that one out.)
Saturday, May 24, 2014
While we were making other plans...
Things have changed a lot since the last time I posted here. I will still be going to Okinawa in about 3 weeks, but that's about all that's still the same.
Over the time I've had Perpetual Beginner it's been a personal blog, a karate blog and a writing blog, often all three at once. And for a while, about four years back, it was a cancer blog. Or at least a caretaker's blog, while my father-in-law was fighting (and losing) his battle with common bile duct cancer.
Now it gets to be a cancer/caretaker's blog again. My husband, Rob, had a CT in February as a routine follow up to suspected kidney stone. Instead they found a large mass on his left kidney, and smaller bilaterally symmetrical masses on his adrenal glands. The remainder of February and all of March was running around getting every scan known to man, trying to sort out if the adrenal masses were related to the kidney mass, or something separate, like congenital adenomas - which would be benign. Those tests, up to and including the biopsy on the right adrenal came back inconclusive - nobody could tell us if either adrenal was cancerous or not.
So on April 17, Rob had a radical nephrectomy, removing the left kidney and adrenal gland and sending both out to be sectioned. The verdict came back clear cell renal carcinoma (RCC) in both the kidney and the adrenal gland. Which means it is very likely that the right adrenal is also RCC, but again, we just don't know. Upshot - stage four metastatic kidney cancer.
So now we are trying to decide what to do. We have been to both our primary oncologist, and to two outside specialists to review our options and see if anyone had a clearer idea of what a good course of action would be. The only thing all three oncologists agree on is that RCC is a bugger - unpredictable and illogical, and that no one can give us any certain or even likely prognosis. (Our first RCC specialist consultant described it as "An angry teenager on a Friday night with car keys.") We could choose to do nothing, and have him live a decade or more anyway. We could treat with everything in the arsenal and still have only a few years (or less). The odds shift, but the odds don't tell you the outcome of any given case.
On Tuesday we go back to Dr. R - our primary oncologist, and decide on our actual course of action - well, most likely we get a whole new set of scans, and then a choice of actions. The major possibilities at the moment are: 1) Wait, with regular rescanning and see if the daughter tumor grows, shrinks, or stays the same. 2) Treat with a TKI (pazopanib or Sutent), with regular rescans. 3) Treat with IL2 (Interleukin 2) or 4) surgically remove the right adrenal, follow with 1, 2, or 3.
Dr. R seems to lean toward 2, and we were agreeing with him until the second consult (Dr. Logan at Indiana University). His thought were that as the mother tumor was so much of the tumor load, it was worth going with 1, until we had a clear idea of how the daughter tumor was going to behave. If it does grow, or worse metastasize, then he recommended going to IL2 as a first line treatment. Apparently there's a recent study that suggests that it is safer to go from IL2 treatments to TKI's than to reverse that and go from TKI's to IL2. Also, there are some cases, not a lot, but some, where removing the mother tumor causes the daughters to cease growing or even shrink, and it's worth watching a while to see if Rob might be fortunate enough to fall into that category.
There are a lot of other considerations flying about as well, which I may talk about in other posts, but suffice to say it's a hard decision that by it's nature is being made on way too little knowledge. There's a lot of uncertainty and fear flying about, and no particular end in sight. This is going to be a long haul (unless we're very unlucky indeed). I'll be posting the extended updates here (short bits of info go on Facebook), for those of you who want the big, messy version of things.
Welcome to the new, more terrified blog of Cindy's life. I hope and trust it won't be all bad/sad news all the time, but it's probably going to be a bumpy ride.
Over the time I've had Perpetual Beginner it's been a personal blog, a karate blog and a writing blog, often all three at once. And for a while, about four years back, it was a cancer blog. Or at least a caretaker's blog, while my father-in-law was fighting (and losing) his battle with common bile duct cancer.
Now it gets to be a cancer/caretaker's blog again. My husband, Rob, had a CT in February as a routine follow up to suspected kidney stone. Instead they found a large mass on his left kidney, and smaller bilaterally symmetrical masses on his adrenal glands. The remainder of February and all of March was running around getting every scan known to man, trying to sort out if the adrenal masses were related to the kidney mass, or something separate, like congenital adenomas - which would be benign. Those tests, up to and including the biopsy on the right adrenal came back inconclusive - nobody could tell us if either adrenal was cancerous or not.
So on April 17, Rob had a radical nephrectomy, removing the left kidney and adrenal gland and sending both out to be sectioned. The verdict came back clear cell renal carcinoma (RCC) in both the kidney and the adrenal gland. Which means it is very likely that the right adrenal is also RCC, but again, we just don't know. Upshot - stage four metastatic kidney cancer.
So now we are trying to decide what to do. We have been to both our primary oncologist, and to two outside specialists to review our options and see if anyone had a clearer idea of what a good course of action would be. The only thing all three oncologists agree on is that RCC is a bugger - unpredictable and illogical, and that no one can give us any certain or even likely prognosis. (Our first RCC specialist consultant described it as "An angry teenager on a Friday night with car keys.") We could choose to do nothing, and have him live a decade or more anyway. We could treat with everything in the arsenal and still have only a few years (or less). The odds shift, but the odds don't tell you the outcome of any given case.
On Tuesday we go back to Dr. R - our primary oncologist, and decide on our actual course of action - well, most likely we get a whole new set of scans, and then a choice of actions. The major possibilities at the moment are: 1) Wait, with regular rescanning and see if the daughter tumor grows, shrinks, or stays the same. 2) Treat with a TKI (pazopanib or Sutent), with regular rescans. 3) Treat with IL2 (Interleukin 2) or 4) surgically remove the right adrenal, follow with 1, 2, or 3.
Dr. R seems to lean toward 2, and we were agreeing with him until the second consult (Dr. Logan at Indiana University). His thought were that as the mother tumor was so much of the tumor load, it was worth going with 1, until we had a clear idea of how the daughter tumor was going to behave. If it does grow, or worse metastasize, then he recommended going to IL2 as a first line treatment. Apparently there's a recent study that suggests that it is safer to go from IL2 treatments to TKI's than to reverse that and go from TKI's to IL2. Also, there are some cases, not a lot, but some, where removing the mother tumor causes the daughters to cease growing or even shrink, and it's worth watching a while to see if Rob might be fortunate enough to fall into that category.
There are a lot of other considerations flying about as well, which I may talk about in other posts, but suffice to say it's a hard decision that by it's nature is being made on way too little knowledge. There's a lot of uncertainty and fear flying about, and no particular end in sight. This is going to be a long haul (unless we're very unlucky indeed). I'll be posting the extended updates here (short bits of info go on Facebook), for those of you who want the big, messy version of things.
Welcome to the new, more terrified blog of Cindy's life. I hope and trust it won't be all bad/sad news all the time, but it's probably going to be a bumpy ride.
Wednesday, January 08, 2014
Okinawa Ho!
We have dates! It looks like Sensei and I, and a few others, will be heading to Okinawa for the middle part of June. We have tickets and everything! Time to break out the Japanese big time! (I haven't let it completely lapse, but I haven't been hitting it as hard as I could by any means.)
I'm so excited about this I can hardly contain myself - everything comes out in exclamation points!
I'm so excited about this I can hardly contain myself - everything comes out in exclamation points!
Monday, April 08, 2013
Book Review: Shadow of the Dragon Duology
The Shadow of the Dragon by Kate O'Hearn is a YA duology recently sent to my sons by a friend. In not atypical fashion, I ended up reading them before anyone else in the family, and since I've been thinking about them a great deal since I read them, I thought I'd write a review and put some of those thoughts down.
I have two initial reactions to this pair of books. Firstly, they're a fast and reasonably fun read, and I'm quite sure my sons will like them. Secondly, only rarely have I read a pair of books that have so made my editor's reflexes itch. I badly want to enter the books on my computer and try to fix them. Which given that I'm acutely aware of my lack of experience and expertise as an editor (and particularly as an editor of books), says something. For a story to make me itch so badly to get my hands on it means that the problems are egregious enough to override my self-doubt.
(I'm not going to particularly try to avoid spoilers, so be wary if you hate such things.) The books are a fairly standard YA adventure plot. A pair of sisters, 12-year-old Kira and 8-year-old Elspeth are raised in a kingdom that takes sexism to new and inspired heights. Girls may not be taught to read or write. They must be engaged before age 12 and married before age 13. They may not behave or dress in any way like boys. They may not approach the royal castle or the king. And they absolutely must never have anything to do with dragons. A violation of any of these rules is punishable by death. Dealing with dragons is punished with slow torture before the execution.
If you guessed that Kira and Elspeth will end up dressing like boys, flying on dragons, and toppling the oppressive king, congratulations! You have grasped the essence of most YA adventure stories.
Oddly enough, I don't particularly object to the fact that I could guess the ending of the series with a high degree of accuracy before we got past chapter one. With a lot of adventure books, and especially YA ones, the novelty of the story is almost entirely in the details of the journey, not with where you're going. And it's exactly in those details that SotD makes me itch.
A big component of that itching is timing. By the time Kira and Elspeth are born, the girl-specific laws (called the First Laws) have been in place for generations. It beggars belief that Kira, whose mother and grandmother and great-grandmother were all married off in arranged marriages by age 12, who has been raised by loyal and dutiful parents, who would never dream of violating the laws and endangering their daughters, Kira, who has known since the time she could talk that this is coming, would stomp around arguing with her parents because they've found a nice boy for her to marry, saying that she doesn't wish to marry at all, and expounding on her desire to be a dragon knight. She might have those thoughts, or even be somewhat rebellious, but she's being outright stupid in a really unbelievable way. The timing is off - nothing has yet happened in Kira's life that would push her into such a huge rebellion against the parents she clearly loves. Once her family is dragged off, parents and brother conscripted for the King's war, and her middle sister sent to prison for being an unmarried girl, and Kira and Elspeth are hunted fugitives? Yeah, once that's happened, I can believe almost anything Kira might do, but before that? There's just no reason for Kira's outright rebellion. It seems to exist purely as a chance to drop in the explanation of First Law and perhaps to let the book start in an exciting moment that gives Kira an excuse to stomp out of the house and thereby miss the knights coming to burn down her house and drag off her and her family.
(Internal musing - I would probably have had Kira off by herself daydreaming about the Rogue (the feral dragon near her home), lamenting internally the unjust laws that meant she could never work with dragons herself, or even plotting how perhaps she could approach the Rogue 'by accident', and then coming home to the arrival of the king's knights, though I'm sure there are other ways this could be dealt with as well.)
I also object to idiot plots - no not plots that are stupid, but rather plots that require the characters to be idiots for them to work. The whole situation of SotD is kicked off with a king who is highly fortunate to have survived his own idiocy at all. A wizard comes forth with a prophecy of a young girl with a dragon who will topple the monarchy, and the king responds immediately with laws guaranteed to piss off not only every young girl in the country, but every relative near or distant that cares about them at all. By rights, the king who instituted First Law should have been facing a rebellion or repeated assassination attempts pretty much immediately, not had the whole country go meekly along for several hundred years. He doesn't make any attempt to justify them (only the king and the wizard know about the prophecy), or to put them in place gradually. He just decrees, and WHAM! suddenly women are effectively chattel without so much as a whimper.
My last large objection is to the major Deus ex Machina character, in the form of a dyslexic wizard, Paradon. I liked the concept - he can't read, and much like the words on the paper, his spells end up jumbled, with rather random results. This could be comic, tragic, both, a major complicating factor, or nearly anything within the book. Instead, all the things that go wrong, pretty much end up driving the plot exactly where it needs to go in a fashion that gets really annoying. Everything was just a little to convenient - not necessarily for the characters, but rather for the author - and the feel of the book suffered for it. Even the attempt at a major plot twist at the end couldn't shake that feeling that with Paradon on hand, it was all going to go just so, somehow. It felt like an adventure novel written by a devout Calvinist - it's all predestined, and we're just hanging around waiting for the inevitable to unfold.
As you might guess by this point, I really can't recommend the books. I don't hate them, and as previously noted, I suspect the kids will enjoy them, but there are just too many issues for a more experienced reader to overlook.
I have two initial reactions to this pair of books. Firstly, they're a fast and reasonably fun read, and I'm quite sure my sons will like them. Secondly, only rarely have I read a pair of books that have so made my editor's reflexes itch. I badly want to enter the books on my computer and try to fix them. Which given that I'm acutely aware of my lack of experience and expertise as an editor (and particularly as an editor of books), says something. For a story to make me itch so badly to get my hands on it means that the problems are egregious enough to override my self-doubt.
(I'm not going to particularly try to avoid spoilers, so be wary if you hate such things.) The books are a fairly standard YA adventure plot. A pair of sisters, 12-year-old Kira and 8-year-old Elspeth are raised in a kingdom that takes sexism to new and inspired heights. Girls may not be taught to read or write. They must be engaged before age 12 and married before age 13. They may not behave or dress in any way like boys. They may not approach the royal castle or the king. And they absolutely must never have anything to do with dragons. A violation of any of these rules is punishable by death. Dealing with dragons is punished with slow torture before the execution.
If you guessed that Kira and Elspeth will end up dressing like boys, flying on dragons, and toppling the oppressive king, congratulations! You have grasped the essence of most YA adventure stories.
Oddly enough, I don't particularly object to the fact that I could guess the ending of the series with a high degree of accuracy before we got past chapter one. With a lot of adventure books, and especially YA ones, the novelty of the story is almost entirely in the details of the journey, not with where you're going. And it's exactly in those details that SotD makes me itch.
A big component of that itching is timing. By the time Kira and Elspeth are born, the girl-specific laws (called the First Laws) have been in place for generations. It beggars belief that Kira, whose mother and grandmother and great-grandmother were all married off in arranged marriages by age 12, who has been raised by loyal and dutiful parents, who would never dream of violating the laws and endangering their daughters, Kira, who has known since the time she could talk that this is coming, would stomp around arguing with her parents because they've found a nice boy for her to marry, saying that she doesn't wish to marry at all, and expounding on her desire to be a dragon knight. She might have those thoughts, or even be somewhat rebellious, but she's being outright stupid in a really unbelievable way. The timing is off - nothing has yet happened in Kira's life that would push her into such a huge rebellion against the parents she clearly loves. Once her family is dragged off, parents and brother conscripted for the King's war, and her middle sister sent to prison for being an unmarried girl, and Kira and Elspeth are hunted fugitives? Yeah, once that's happened, I can believe almost anything Kira might do, but before that? There's just no reason for Kira's outright rebellion. It seems to exist purely as a chance to drop in the explanation of First Law and perhaps to let the book start in an exciting moment that gives Kira an excuse to stomp out of the house and thereby miss the knights coming to burn down her house and drag off her and her family.
(Internal musing - I would probably have had Kira off by herself daydreaming about the Rogue (the feral dragon near her home), lamenting internally the unjust laws that meant she could never work with dragons herself, or even plotting how perhaps she could approach the Rogue 'by accident', and then coming home to the arrival of the king's knights, though I'm sure there are other ways this could be dealt with as well.)
I also object to idiot plots - no not plots that are stupid, but rather plots that require the characters to be idiots for them to work. The whole situation of SotD is kicked off with a king who is highly fortunate to have survived his own idiocy at all. A wizard comes forth with a prophecy of a young girl with a dragon who will topple the monarchy, and the king responds immediately with laws guaranteed to piss off not only every young girl in the country, but every relative near or distant that cares about them at all. By rights, the king who instituted First Law should have been facing a rebellion or repeated assassination attempts pretty much immediately, not had the whole country go meekly along for several hundred years. He doesn't make any attempt to justify them (only the king and the wizard know about the prophecy), or to put them in place gradually. He just decrees, and WHAM! suddenly women are effectively chattel without so much as a whimper.
My last large objection is to the major Deus ex Machina character, in the form of a dyslexic wizard, Paradon. I liked the concept - he can't read, and much like the words on the paper, his spells end up jumbled, with rather random results. This could be comic, tragic, both, a major complicating factor, or nearly anything within the book. Instead, all the things that go wrong, pretty much end up driving the plot exactly where it needs to go in a fashion that gets really annoying. Everything was just a little to convenient - not necessarily for the characters, but rather for the author - and the feel of the book suffered for it. Even the attempt at a major plot twist at the end couldn't shake that feeling that with Paradon on hand, it was all going to go just so, somehow. It felt like an adventure novel written by a devout Calvinist - it's all predestined, and we're just hanging around waiting for the inevitable to unfold.
As you might guess by this point, I really can't recommend the books. I don't hate them, and as previously noted, I suspect the kids will enjoy them, but there are just too many issues for a more experienced reader to overlook.
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