An Intro

I'm Sam, a senior in High School. Next year, I will be going to college to study Natural Resources Management (and perhaps eventually ecological restoration and creative writing as well). I love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, reading, writing, music, friends, facebook, and other such trappings of teenager-dom.

Because we're supposed to discuss this and I would anyway: I have so many favorite books that I've lost track of them all. However, for the purposes of this exercise, I'll choose the Claidi Journals by Tanith Lee.

Claidi is a young woman who lives in the controlling House, which believes that it is the last little bit of civilization surrounded by the poisoned Waste. Claidi is a servant, one step above slave. Then when a traveler from the Waste crashlands in a balloon in the Garden and is imprisoned, Claidi takes a desperate chance and frees him. The two escape into the Waste, which turns out to be not a waste at all. Of course, that traveler seems to have his own agenda...

I like these books mainly because of Claidi's character. She has a dry wit that can be aimed at everyone from the Royalty she serves to herself. She is totally relatable. She isn't perfect--she has never been educated and is a little slow on the uptake sometimes, but she's just trying to make a place for herself in the world and separate the truth from the layers of conspiracy that surround her. I think we all can relate on some level to Claidi's struggle.