I’ve posted about Jessica Therrien’s Children of the Gods series before (in Bookmarks’ first week, no less), and I’m excited to say the second book in the series, Uprising comes out today. Obviously I can’t review it yet because even I can’t read that fast (and I do have a great WRPM record, thank you very much), and I know the previous one, Oppression wasn’t something I wanted to rush through.

Anyhows, the brilliant author Jessica Therrien is hosting a Virtual Launch Party, with blogs all over the place joining in on the fun, including Bookmarks! I’m incredibly excited about the release of Uprising, and thought we should join in on the fun. Also, we’ll be participating in the author’s Blog Tour next week, which I’m jazzed about.

The blurb for the newly released Uprising:

Elyse has been in hiding for most of her life. Only now she’s hiding with William, and she knows who she’s hiding from. The Council wants a child Elyse and William have yet to conceive, a child who will be the next oracle, and who will provide the final piece to a plan Christoph has been organizing for years. Charged with leading the rebellion against Christoph and his Council, Elyse feels well out of her depth. But she has good friends and strong allies who are willing to fight with her to the end, regardless of how far they have to go, and how many lives will be lost in the process. They have one goal: to live freely and openly with the rest of humanity, out from under The Council’s oppressive rule. The stakes could not be higher for Elyse and the Descendants longing for freedom. They’ll have to learn to fight if they want to stand up against The Council, and to find allies in a world ruled by their enemies. The hardest part of waging a war is knowing who to trust. Elyse knows their uprising will change the world. She doesn’t realize it will change her, too.

The Virtual Launch Party topic is supernatural themed (of course), and I’ve chosen to go with supernatural powers, because those sound like the most fun. I’ve thought carefully and weighed the pros and cons of some popular (and some not as popular) powers, which are laid out here for your consideration.

Flying- Flying is pretty much the first power that comes to mind when I think of anything supernatural (thanks, dragon/fairy/Catwings themed books – by the way, the Catwings series was one of my favorite lower-middle grade reads when I was about eight). It would be cool to a) get everywhere without waiting in traffic and b) get to have a bird’s eye view of everything, but I don’t think flying would be the supernatural power I would pick. Mostly because I live NW Oregon, which should probably be named the rain capitol of the US even over Forks, WA, because I don’t trust Stephanie Meyer on this one. She lives in Arizona. ‘Nuff said. Anyway, I wouldn’t choose to fly because I would get wet all the time, and no one likes to be covered in rain for 3/4 of the year. If I was going to be flying I would have to invest in some rain pants, which is not a path I am comfortable going down. So that’s out.

Superspeed- Being really fast would be another approach to the transportation aspect of supernatural niches, but as schoolchildren in Oregon like to remind each other, you get more wet if you run in the rain. I’m not sure about how that works when running at the speed of light, but I will need to conduct further research on that if I’m going to choose this power.

Mind Reading- My curious side likes this idea, but then I realize that I don’t really want to know what everyone is thinking all the time. I would probably go insane, and that’s not really what you want your supernatural power to do to you. Also, I think it’s a bit overused, and I’d like to have an original power if I get one.

Hypnotism/Mind Control- Yes. The only bad consequence I could think of would be possibly being corrupted by my newfound power, which would probably end badly, but it worked for Molly Moon (also a solid middle grade series).

Anthropomorphism- Aka talking to/understanding animals. This would be interesting (I am seriously dying to know what my betta fish is thinking about when he glares at me like that), but I don’t think it would be very practical, plus listening to my dog talking about licking the floor would get annoying very quickly. Not what I want my one supernatural power to be.

Strength- Being incredibly strong might be helpful when trying to rearrange my bookshelf or carrying my haul out of the library, but I’m not the violent kind of person an offensive power would be particularly useful to. I can hold the Oxford English Dictionary up long enough to look up anthropomorphism, what more muscle mass do I need?

Healing/Harming- In Oppression (and Uprising as well, I very much hope) the main character, Ellie, has the power to heal with one side of her body and harm/kill with the other. This power would be very useful to me if I were the main character in a YA series, but being a pretty usual person living a pretty usual life, I haven’t really run into a situation where modern medicine isn’t enough for me.

Telepathy- He’s not a very important part of Oppression, but something/one that’s always stuck with me is the janitor from Oppression, Mr. Gransky. He’s telepathic and can take care of the whole Descendant’s school without making much of a physical effort. As our love interest, William, said, “Makes it easier to keep an entire building cleaned and organized when you can move things with your mind.” I would actually love this power, but I think it might be bad for me. Having to get up and search for things I may have left anywhere in my house is one of my main ways of getting reliable daily exercise.

Light Manipulation-One of the supporting characters in Oppression, Nics, had the power to manipulate the light around her, to make it incredibly bright or completely black. This doesn’t sound particularly fun or useful, but I think I’ll let William take this explanation again: “You can see what Nics wants you to see through [her light shield]. She tells the light what to reflect through the shield, and what she doesn’t want others to see… she tells the light not to reflect.”

After considering all of these supernatural powers and more, I’ve decided I would like supernatural stamina. No need to sleep or rest, and I wouldn’t get tired from searching my house for that one vitally important thing (just kidding, it’s not actually that exhausting), and I think it would be the supernatural power that would have an actual impact on my life and productivity. Imagine how many books I could read in the six to nine hours of sleep I try to get every night! I would have no trouble during finals time, or when I’ve forgotten a ten-page research paper is due until a week before the deadline. I think it would give me a balance of making life more fun but also making me a better person/worker. Also, I would like to see my junior high school gym teacher’s face when I ran the mile without the slightest hint of tiredness.

Which supernatural power would you pick? Do you have any creative ones I didn’t list? Are you going to read Uprising? (The correct answer to that last one would be yes.)
Rosey


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