Sarah's Reviews > Sapphire Blue

Sapphire Blue picks up right after Ruby Red. it’s been a few days since Gwen Shephard discovered that she, not her cousin Charlotte, inherited the “time-travel gene” that manifests in one girl of each generation in their family. The Montrose-Shephard family have assumed till now that Charlotte was the one with the power, and trained her since infancy accordingly. But it’s really been Gwen all along, and she is utterly unprepared.

There’s a sinister conspiracy that spans the centuries, about to close in on its goal in the present day. The survival of the two time-travelling families, and possibly the world because of course, is in the hands of Gwen and Gideon, her male equivalent from the de Villiers line.

Unfortunately for the rest of the poor souls embroiled in this, Gideon is a loose cannon who might be aligned with his Circle’s enemies, and Gwen is both infatuated with Gideon and rather slow on the uptake in general. He might undermine them, and if he does, she will be of no use in stopping him...

Content Advisory
Violence: Gideon gets knocked on the head by an unseen, unknown assailant in the present day. He claims he was following Gwen around a streetcorner when this occurred, and he blames her for luring him into an ambush. She has no idea what he’s talking about and is highly distraught by the accusation.

Gideon also gets in a sword-fight (not shown) in the eighteenth century and shows up splattered with someone else’s blood.

Sex: A lot more innuendo than was in book one. Gideon and Gwen spend several minutes smooching on a couch when they’re supposed to be doing their homework, and Xemerius thinks they went a lot further than they actually did.

A creepy old man momentarily molests Gwen and a few other young women at a party in the eighteenth century. Also in attendance at this party is a worldly young widow dying to sink her claws into Gideon. Gwen assumes that he and Lady Lavinia have been intimate in the past, although Gideon says some things that make that seem unlikely.

Gwen mentions that she is one of only four girls in her grade not on birth control. I can relate, Gwen! This is a kind of stupid joke, because many girls are prescribed birth control for purely medical reasons—but it is a reflection of how many sixteen-year-old girls think. She feels that she’s in no danger of becoming sexually active, and is both relieved and embarrassed by this (again, very relatable).

Language: One or two uses of “sh**” and “hell.”

Substance Abuse: Gwen tells us about a sleepover party where she and her school friends broke into the host’s parents’ vodka. This exciting incident culminated with our heroine warbling High School Musical (not dated at all, cough) songs into a hairbrush and commanding that her host’s father join her when he came to investigate the noise: “C’mon, baldy, get those hips swinging!”

This mortifying experience has made her wary of the happy juice. But she unwittingly drinks punch laced with alcohol at an eighteenth-century soiree and is a giggling mess for the rest of the evening, eventually gracing the company with a stirring rendition of “Memories” from Cats, two hundred years before that song was written. Why not just play air-guitar?



Nightmare Fuel: In St. Germane’s library, Gwen finds a creepy old tome about famous demons summoned by bad magicians throughout history. She pauses at a particularly gruesome illustration and the demon portrayed therein materializes in front of her. It boasts and tries to frighten her, but she refuses to be cowed. She just snarks at it and calmly reads on, trapping it once again between the pages.

In present-day London, Gwen is also followed about by a little gargoyle-demon calling himself Xemerius. He looks and acts like a talking cat with horns, and is not meant to be a frightening creature, but I’m not sure if he can be trusted.

Conclusions
Kerstin Gier’s Precious Stone trilogy has so far been a sugar rush. The characters don’t have a whole lot of depth, the plot is impossible to follow, and the world-building is not necessarily consistent. Evil sorcerers and demons are present in this book, despite never having been mentioned in the first. The scene with the fiend in St. Germane’s library, in particular, is more in line with Jonathan Stroud’s (wonderful) Bartimaeus trilogy than anything in Ruby Red. It’s unclear how the ghosts Gwen sees tie in with anything in past or present.

That said, I like how Gwen claims that she’s awkward and dorky and is, in fact, awkward and dorky. She falls down. She gets sick. She laughs at the wrong things. She struggles to focus in class. She gives herself pep talks in the bathroom mirror. When she’s scared, she calms herself down by singing and dancing to ABBA songs—and sometimes, other people see her do this. Plenty of YA heroines call themselves dorks, but very few of them actually are. Gwen is the real deal, and despite her over-the-top feelings about everything (especially Gideon), her genuine dweeb-ness makes her likeable.

Gideon is not on a level with Eugenides or Maxon Schreave or Morpheus the Netherling, but he develops a bit in this book, apart from only Gwen’s lovelorn perception of him. Apparently he’s unsure where he stands in this conflict of time-travellers, and his handlers are genuinely worried that he might turn traitor…

This series is The Princess Diaries meets Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure in England. It’s great entertainment that actually deserves its lovely shiny covers. I can’t wait to see how it all ends.