Deadly Pink is a book about sisters and virtual reality games and forgiveness and persistence in doing what’s right. I kept thinking of Winston Churchill’s famous dictum: “Never, never, never, never give up.”

Grace Pizzelli is the traditional average younger sister. Her sister, Emily, who works as an intern for Rasmussem Games is the brilliant, talented one. And mostly Grace is OK with that because in addition to being intelligent and gifted, Emily is also kind and helpful to her younger sister. In fact, Emily is almost perfect, as older sisters sometimes tend to be.

That’s why it’s such a surprise when the officials at Rasmussem come to Grace’s school to get her to help Emily. It seems that Emily has been beta-testing a virtual reality game for young girls called Land of the Golden Butterflies, and she refuses to come out of the game. Unfortunately, the games are only made for thirty minutes of game play at a time, not for living in the game world forever, and no one knows what will happen to Emily’s body and mind if she doesn’t come out of the game. Grace must persuade her older sister to leave the fantasy world before her time runs out.

I was anxious to turn the pages in this virtual reality story to see what would happen next, why Emily is determined to stay in game land, and how Grace will save the day and rescue both Emily and herself from death by virtual reality game. The suicide theme may be a little heavy for some middle school readers, but I didn’t find it overwrought or too distressing.

The relationship between the two sisters is what makes the story really shine. Grace is annoyed and irritated by the way Emily treats her when Grace comes into the virtual reality world to save Emily. Emily basically tells Grace to get lost. But Grace doesn’t give up on her sister. I’m not explaining too well, but these are real sisters who love each other in spite of imperfections and mistakes on the part of each of them. Here, let me give you a few quotes to illustrate:

“A cranky part of my brain kept repeating that we were in this bad situation because of Emily, and it was hard not to let my irritation spill over. The last thing I needed was Emily feeling sorry for herself. It infringed on my feeling sorry for myself.”

“That was it. My patience snapped. I wanted to shake some sense into her, some sibling loyalty. I settled for grabbing her arm to get her to stop dancing.”

“Mean? Mean was eating all the chocolate Easter eggs and leaving the stale Peeps. Mean was making fun of a bad hairstyle. Mean was letting someone else take the blame after you tracked mud onto the clean floor. Mean didn’t begin to cover what Emily had put me through.
But she was rocking me, making gentle comforting noises as though I were once again the six-year-old who’d fallen off our backyard swing trying to fly too high. ‘Everything will be okay.'”

I also liked this book because it was a contrast to all the kids-save-the-world books that I’ve been reading for the Cybils Middle Grade Fantasy judging. In Deadly Pink, one girl, Grace, tries to save her sister, Emily, and it’s hard and suspenseful and engaging. But we’re not asked to believe that a group of twelve year olds or one thirteen year old is the only possible resource to rescue the entire world from imminent destruction. What a relief!

Grace and Emily Pizzelli, the Pizzelli Sisters, are some wonderful sisters to get to know. And their story is suspenseful and funny, both. From the author blurb, I learned that Ms. Vande Velde has written two other books about virtual reality games created by the (fictional) Rasmussem Corporation, Heir Apparent and User Friendly. Has anyone read either of them? I’m not fan of video games, but I liked this book well enough that I’m willing to go find the two other books set in the same fictional world and try them out –especially if I can get a recommendation. Anyone?

In the meantime, Deadly Pink is worth your reading time, especially if any of the motifs in the opening sentence of this review pique your interest.

“But the goat chosen by lot as the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the LORD to be used for making atonement by sending it into the desert as a scapegoat.” Leviticus 16:10

Darkbeast takes this concept of an animal making atonement or taking away sin and transplants it into a fantasy world somewhat similar to ancient (pagan) Greece. In Keara’s world, however, every child has a darkbeast, a creature that takes the child’s dark deeds and emotions and offers absolution with the formulaic phrase, “I take your (rebellion, pride, anger, etc). Forget it. It is mine.” Even as the scapegoat symbolically took the sins of the nation of Israel into the wilderness, Keara’s darkbeast, the raven Caw takes her bitterness and jealously and gives her in return a magical feeling of “lightness as if I were floating like a tuft of thistledown on a spring breeze.”

Most “normal” children tolerate and even hate their darkbeasts, long to leave them behind and become adults, but Keara says she cannot imagine “never again hearing my darkbeast’s voice, never again listening to his well-worn formula. I could not imagine what my life would be like after I became a proper woman among my people on my twelfth nameday. After I had sacrificed Caw on the cool onyx altar in the center of Bestius’s godhouse.” I couldn’t decide if Keara’s affinity for her darkbeast symbolized hanging on to sin or to childhood or to a treasured source of friendship and forgiveness, but the idea was intriguing and gave me much food for thought.

There’s an explanation for the whole darkbeast cycle of forgiveness and atonement in the final chapter of the book, but that explanation was less satisfying to me, as a Christian, than my own thoughts about the possible meanings and ramifications of the concepts in the book. However, don’t think that Darkbeast is mostly a philosophical tale about sin and sacrifice; actually, it’s mostly just a cracking good story about a girl, Keara, who runs away from home to join a troupe of traveling players and to find herself and her place in the world, a coming of age story set in a fantasy world that bears enough resemblance to our own to be identifiable and yet has enough differences to keep it unpredictable.

In the last third of the book there’s also a drama competition where the actors present their best plays before the ruler of the country and before the gods, reinforcing the similarity to ancient Greece. The Greeks had their Great Dionysia in which playwrights such as Aechylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes competed for prizes and glory. The contest in this book, performed for the twelve gods of Duodecia, is quite similar to that of the ancient Greeks.

Darkbeast tells an excellent story, and one I would like to follow into the next volume of the series.

If you want to know more before or after you read the book:
Here Morgan Keyes writes about the inspiration for the twelve gods of Duodecia.
Here she discusses rites of passage such as Keara’s obligation to sacrifice her darkbeast, Caw.
More at Morgan Keyes’ official Darkbeast website.