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FindingJane
Oct 09, 2016FindingJane rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
America and Maxon have had children. But the firstborn is a girl and that comes with its own unique set of challenges. Eadlyn was not much like her mother. Being reared in privilege and wealth, she was inordinately concerned with clothing and her tiaras and vastly irritated by her female companion Josie, who was always borrowing her jewelry. Eadlyn lacked warmth, compassion, tact or even interest in the opposite sex. Written about in plain terms like this, you probably wonder why I could possibly like or even stand this girl. Well, for one thing, she wasn’t the vicious viper that Celeste was. Eadlyn wasn’t catty or mean spirited. She was just a tad spoiled and had no understanding of the sufferings of the lower class…and they were suffering. Getting rid of the caste system didn’t make things automatically easier. Old prejudices die hard and not necessarily when old systems do. Anyone who’s read history of racial bigotry and race riots after slavery was overturned could tell you that. So Eadlyn’s parents come up with the brilliant idea of engaging their only daughter in a Selection. Eadlyn was angered by this solution and rightly so. She was an intelligent and self-contained girl, one who felt that she didn’t need a man to rule a throne. I liked that about her, likening her to the imperious Elizabeth I. That queen had successfully run her kingdom and remained single, in spite of her advisors that tried to get her married to any one of a number of royal suitors for the better part of 25 years. But Eadlyn was pressured by her parents to try. The Selection was only meant to be a ruse, after all, a kind of bread-and-circus tactic to appease an unruly public and give them something to root for instead of complaining about how the new casteless system was failing to improve their lives. It seemed as if rulership was providing all sorts of difficulty and stress for America and Maxon, causing them both unhappiness. For their sakes, Eadlyn agreed to the Selection. While this seemed like a plausible explanation, I confess to some skepticism about it. It looked as if the author was being lazy, falling back on a storyline that had already run its course instead of pursuing a new path. Like Eadlyn, I was reluctant to commit myself to an idea that seemed shopworn and already antiquated. But, like the unenthusiastic Eadlyn, I found myself being drawn into the process of selection and elimination. The contest meant that she learned how others lived. She realized what it meant for others who didn’t have it as comfortably as she did. She gradually found herself caring for the boys who’d been picked for her, even though she’d promised herself to eliminate all of them. Perhaps compassion is a quality that can be learned. If so, Eadlyn is well on her way to getting it. I want to see what the future holds for her, whether she gets her princely consort or not.