Poudelivre

It seems like this is the year when a lot of series ends and Josephine Angelini's Worldwalker series is not an exception. In anticipation of the last novel in the trilogy, Witch’s Pyre, I decided to reread the first two books. I have fond memories of them both and especially Trial by Fire and I happily discovered that it was just as good as I remembered it.

Lily Proctor is a seventeen year old girl who spends a lot of time at hospitals and is constantly sick due to her many allergies. She lives alone with her mom, who is the laughingstock of Salem since she’s crazy, after her father left and her sister Juliet moved away to study. Lily’s only real friend is Tristan, they’ve known each other since they were small but Lily has always felt something more for him and now it seems that Tristan finally feels the same way about her. But after a high school party gone way wrong, Lily is left friendless and heartbroken. When she hears her own voice in her head offering her an escape from her world, Lily thinks she’s going crazy just like her mother, only to end up in a different Salem, a parallel universe so very different from her home. In this alternate Salem, witches runs the world and Lily finds out that her alternate self, Lillian, is the most powerful witch of them all. In order to go back to her own world again, Lily has to embrace the power within her and she teams up with two of Lillian’s former mechanics to do so, one of which is Tristan’s alternate self. Together they plot how to get Lily back and how to stop Lillian from ruining their entire world, but Lily’s appearance in the alternate Salem causes a lot of attention and everyone wants a piece of her but all Lily wants is to go back home. But can she stand by and watch her alternate self kill thousands of people for no apparent reason or will she take a stand against Lillian?

I love this book for many reasons. The obvious ones are the plot and the writing, which are both excellent. Lily lives in a world pretty much identical to our world but the parallel Salem she ends up in is vastly different. Some parts are medieval and some are futuristic, giving the city an overall cool and fascinating look. A girl from our world thrust into something as different as that alternate world was very interesting to read about and I loved how Lily met alternate versions to people she knew from home and also met people who doesn’t exist in her world. Lillian is Lily’s double and at first look seems to be the villain of the story but the deeper you delve into the pages the more you learn about Lillian and that she, in fact, might do a lot of evil things for all the right reasons. As you can tell, this is definitely a story that questions what’s right and wrong and what you have to do to survive, what you need to sacrifice for the greater good. It's a lot about morals, it makes you think and see that there’s good and bad in everyone.

The writing, as I said, is good. Angelini makes certain parts fun and others very serious. She makes you laugh and cringe, she creates friendships and romances with ease and makes you care about the characters effortlessly. She cleverly weaves big questions into the plot, sometimes disguising problems from our own world in her story making the reader think about our planet and what we can do to make this a better place to live. I found that there was a very serious undertone that I think will help people open their eyes to what’s wrong here, on Earth.

When it comes to the characters, Angelini has an arsenal of strong ones to carry this story forward. Lily and Lillian is very similar but still not identical although both are stubborn, hard workers and not afraid of giving their heart and soul for something they care about. Tristan and his alternate self is different, with alternate Tristan being more mature and also the one of the two that you get to see most of. Tristan from Lily’s world is more childish and I thought it was fun to see how alternate Tristan could see things in clearer ways than Lily’s Tristan could. Together with alternate Tristan, Rowan is Lily’s mechanic and someone who doesn’t exist in Lily’s world. Rowan used to be Lillian’s head mechanic but after a falling out he left her, despite the fact that they loved each other. When Lily enters alternate Salem and meets Rowan he’s pissed at her, thinking at first that she’s Lillian and later that she’s just like Lillian but eventually a romance springs up between the two. Rowan is strong, capable and mature in a way that Lily has never seen in a nineteen year old in her own world. She’s intrigued by him and as a reader it’s impossible not to be as well.

It was fun, and nice, to see that this novel was everything I remembered it to be even though it is a year and a half since I read it the first, and so far only, time. I really like this series and I am curious to see what the last book has in store but I also can’t wait to delve into the second one and refresh my memory completely before I pick up Witch’s Pyre.