BTS Book Reviews October 2013

Comic Influence All my life, I’ve been in love with comic books. The art, the storylines, the characters, the bigger than life worlds of superheroes and heroines and how they interact with the ordinary, everyday people that inhabit those worlds alongside them. Two of my all-time favorite characters are Cloak and Dagger from the series by that same title, and they are the pair who perhaps were the most influential on my House of Comarré series.

Cloak and Dagger had their roles thrust upon them. They didn’t choose their paths, weren’t born into their powers. They were the results of some experimentation gone wrong, actually. But using the other to temper what they’d become, they rose above what had been thrust upon them and did some good while at the same time keeping each other from completely disappearing into the creations they’d become.

Cloak was the embodiment of darkness while Dagger was the embodiment of light. If you’ve read my House of Comarré series, and think you see shades of Mal and Chrysabelle in this, you’re dead on. I love the internal struggle of good vs evil, doing what’s right vs doing what’s easy, the play of light and dark and the way shadow sometimes takes over. That’s just so interesting to me in terms of how people deal with the hand life has dealt them, what they do with their talents and the reasons behind the choices they make.

In the same way that Cloak and Dagger balanced each other, so do Mal and Chrysabelle.