River Secrets, by Shannon Hale

I ordered this several weeks ago from Amazon.de, but it didn't arrive until yesterday. Strangely, Enna Burning is the only one of Shannon's books to be translated into German. (Strange because it's not the first book set in this world, and it's not the Newbery Honor, either. Still, I'm glad the Germans are able to read at least one of her books! Especially since the name of the "imaginary" kingdom that is home to most of the characters is Bayern, which is the German name for Bavaria.)

Anyway. Of course I stayed up late to read it. What a lovely book! I liked Princess Academy very much, but I like this one even more. Razo is an extremely likeable main character--the runt, the one his brothers always tease/pick on, the one nobody really takes seriously. He's also very funny. Because he is friend to the queen and to Bayern's fire-witch (he's one of the few who know who really burnt up the enemy in the recently-ended war with Tira), he is chosen as part of Bayern's Own to go with the ambassador to Tira. And he becomes a spy, to figure out who's trying to rekindle antagonism towards Bayern and re-start the war.

Considering the current political/wartime climate today, this is a very pro-peace book. Within that are interesting conflicts--Razo always lets someone else fight his battles because well, it's easier. But he can't do that forever. Sometime he's got to confront things. And yet, he and everyone else have to prevent war and promote peace just as hard as they can if they value their own skin at all. The two seemingly opposite goals mesh together nicely and create a tight storyline. And Razo is such a sympathetic character, have I mentioned that? He has strengths, but doesn't realize it, and he's just funny. All of the characters were well-drawn.

Negatives? Hmm, that's a hard one. Not a negative, but a suggestion--if you haven't read at least Enna Burning, you might get a little lost at first. This book follows closely on the heels of Enna, and you need to understand the fire thing and why the Tirans are so bitter. That's about all, really. I'm sad it was only 300-odd pages and I'm already done. But, at least I can read it again.

1400 hard words

I'm up to 1400 words today, which rounds out to about 10,500 total. I feel like it's total dreck. I like my plot, but the characters are hard to write, which is not normal for me. I'm cautiously optimistic on the writing-by-plot-thread idea, though. It's spurring ideas for me on other threads as well. And I AM making progress, which is good.

In the meantime, a set of lovely characters have moved into my brain, complete with a setting and a set of reactions/internal interpersonal conflicts. I hate when this happens. They are much funner to be around, probably because they are much closer to people I have been, to what-ifs and maybes I've been close to. Nothing autobiographical, not in the big sense. But they have feelings I can dig deep into. Unfortunately, now I need to concoct a situation for them and a set of external struggles for them. The internal ones, great. The things they're outwardly fighting for...well. It's not the first time this has happened, and that book still isn't done, either. And I've got this other WIP, the one I'm really supposed to be working on. The one with ten thousand words done on it. I keep telling myself I can write the lovely characters once I've finished the funny plot one. I just don't have enough time in the day. It's really not, not, NOT fair.

And lastly, I'm *sigh* trying to be patient regarding the three agents with queries and the one who has a partial. I want to send my next batch out, but the agents I'm waiting on are ones I really respect and would love to work with. And if they don't feel the same about me, I'd be content with even a single line of feedback. I'd definitely want to incorporate that before sending out any more queries. I've never been one to let the cake cool before eating it, though, so the wait is HARD.