Balefire by Cate Tiernan

[meganbmoore]

Balefire (a 4 book series now available in an omnibus) is almost the perfect emo Gothic YA for me. We have witches, sisters (separated at birth, even), ancient family secrets, and curses. It could do with a couple ghosts and love interests that don’t make me go “urg” a lot. I think there was also something that annoyed me re: race as I was reading it, but that was about 2 months ago and I can’t recall exactly what it was now. Probably something like “Gosh, we’re in New Orleans and almost everyone is white and you just did something weird with voodoo didn’t you?”

After her father dies, Thais is taken in by Axelle, a woman who claims to be an old, close friend of her father’s, but who Thais has never met, and Thais finds herself quickly transported to New Orleans, where she meets Clio, a girl who is her exact mirror image. They soon learn that Clio’s grandmother is actually the midwife who delivered them, and separated them and never told their father they were twins (mom died in childbirth) due to an epic family Curse of Doom regarding twins. Oh, and they’re all witches.

Or at least, that’s what the twins are told. Naturally, it’s 80% lies. There are twists inside twists and secrets within secrets and it all revolves around their ancestor and a coven of immortal witches who want to use the twins for their own ends.

Thais and Clio are a bit too strictly Light/Dark associated for me at times, though not enough to interfere with my enjoyment overall, and Tiernan does at least consider playing around with that alignment at times. And, for once, Clio isn’t punished for being the Bad twin, and Thais isn’t put on a pedestal for being the Good twin. I really liked how their relationship developed, and their reactions to various plot developments.

I do recommend kind of ignoring the obligatory love interests, though. One is an immortal playboy who dates both sisters at the same time (naturally, he’s in love with Thais, the Good girl, and just have fun with Clio, the Bad girl) and when they find out, his excuse is that he knew they were twins, but didn’t think they knew each other yet. The other is another immortal who was in love with the ancestor they look like, and may or may not be their ancestor. I was actually rather “OMG are you actually going to Go There?” about that. My actual problem with him was that he often seemed to be using Clio as an accessible standin for the ancestor the twins resemble, and that is not a fun kind of substitution. (Also, The Vampire Diaries has killed what little tolerance I may have ever had for that kind of thing.) Tiernan actually acknowledges their douchery and how messed up they are a lot more than most authors do, but, well, they’re still the love interests.