Forge: a brief review

When I went on a trip with my mom to visit my grandmother in upstate New York for a few days, I packed four of my own books to make sure I had plenty to read. I had just finished Prom the day before we left, so it was kind of perfect timing. I read the first few pages of Kristin Chenoweth's autobiography the first night we were there, but when I saw Forge, the sequel to Chains, on my grandmother's bookshelf and she asked me if I wanted to read it while I was there...how could I turn that down? Turns out it's harder to get a lot of reading in during even the laziest of vacations/trips, and so the pressure was kind of on at that point to get the book read in the next couple of days. I read the last pages the night before we left to come back home, but I did finish it.

I read Laurie Halse Anderson's first book in this series, Chains, several years ago. I liked it a lot and loved the sweet characters, but did find a lot of the narrative to be pretty slow. The historical details are on point and the emotional ties between reader and character is strong from the beginning, but somehow most of the descriptions and "play-by-play" of the story itself just seems to drag at a slower pace than necessary. I can say the exact same thing about Forge, which is a bummer, but certainly didn't stop me from finishing it and won't stop me from reading the third book when it comes out. I've said before how much I love Laurie Halse Anderson's books, and I really respect the legwork she did (see book jacket's "About the Author" section) to live and feel what the characters would experience as well as her attention to historical detail, but this series is just a little bit different style for her.

Chains is the story of Isabel, a pre-teen girl who is a slave in New York City at the beginning of the American Revolution. When her young sister is sold to a slave owner in South Carolina, Isabel becomes determined to escape and find her. Her chance finally comes at the conclusion of the book, when both she and her friend Curzon - who has a different master - are able to escape. Forge begins where Chains leaves off (which was a little confusing for me at first since it's been years since I've read the first book) but very quickly you realize the narrator has switched from Isabel in Chains to Curzon in Forge, and that the two characters have split up. Isabel's singlemindedness for finding her sister didn't seem like the best use of time to Curzon, so they go their separate ways. Forge follows Curzon as he tries to run; he spends some time serving as a soldier in the American military and stumbles across all kinds of surprises over the next year, some much worse than others.

Something that initially drew me to Chains was the unique approach Anderson took in tackling these books: slavery during the American Revolution is rarely discussed. When we write books and make movies about racism and slavery, we focus so much on either the Civil War or the Civil Rights Movement and forget the hundred years before 1861 in which slavery was just as horrible and just as widespread. I love that a light gets shined on that in this series (and there's even mention of George Washington's slaves). This book was slow at times, but it also surprised me, angered me, and excited me. I really did (do) love the characters and I was genuinely interested in what happened to them. I'm definitely looking forward to Ashes, the third book in the series.