Sadly I have come to the end of my debut author take over journey. I have had a great time working with this ladies that are new to the YA world. They have brought a spark back to my blogging life and I’m so grateful to them and to the people at Class of 2k19 Books that contacted me and asked if I had any interest in working with this new gems.
For my last (planned) debut author take over I have Claire Barlett joining me. Claire’s debut, We Rule the Night is out on April 2, 2019. I haven’t yet read the book but I personally can’t wait. It sounds so amazing!
Thank you so much, Andi’s ABCs, for the chance to do a guest post! I’m super excited because today I’ll be talking about one of my favorite things: tropes.
Tropes are the building blocks of a story, whether they’re played straight, inverted, subverted or otherwise messed with. Some tropes target a community and pigeonhole marginalized groups in bad ways (for example, the bury your gays trope) and these tropes should die a horrible death. But otherwise, tropes can be effective tools, and fun to spot in the makeup of a story – at least for my nerdy self.
While writing We Rule the Night, I thought a lot about tropes – tropes I wanted to use and tropes I wanted to challenge. Of course, by the time I’d finished, I’d ended up with some unintentional tropes in the novel as well! Here are a few of the tropes present in We Rule the Night – if you’re a sucker for any of these, maybe you’d like to try out the book!
There Are No Adults: Missing, dead, off at war – doesn’t matter. The teens are in this by themselves.
I couldn’t resist this trope, even though it’s the most common one in YA! There is some slight historical relevance to it, but let’s face it – books are more fun when parents aren’t around to criticize your main character’s terrible decisions.(link: https://tvtropes.org/
Yellow Eyes of Sneakiness: The yellow eyes of sneakiness point to someone, well, sneaky. Wily. Cunning and clever, and often with an ulterior motive.
In We Rule the Night, the Yellow Eyes of Sneakiness denote a group of people known as the Information Unit. I’ll leave it to you to guess what they do!(link: https://tvtropes.org/
Women are Better than Men: It’s not that they’re better than men, per se. But the main characters are women and the few men present are evil, incompetent or both.
This trope is part of the Sliding Scale of Gender Inequality. And for the record, no. I don’t think women are better than men. But the central characters of We Rule the Night are women and girls, with few exceptions, and the men of the novel usually stand in the girls’ way. I purposefully wrote a story with a gender imbalance, not just because of my source material (a real life night bombing regiment known as the Night Witches), but also because in so much fantasy, even fantasy with a female main character, there’s a big gender imbalance the other way.(link to the sliding scale of gender inequality: https://tvtropes.
Not Like Other Girls (inverted): She’s special. She does things other girls couldn’t or wouldn’t do. And she doesn’t go in for that feminine stuff. Of course, the other girls hate her for no reason, and the boys respect her…because they’ve got to respect someone, and it won’t be the girly girl.
A much and rightly despised trope, that has irritated me for many years. I set out to challenge it with We Rule the Night, and include a host of girls with different hobbies and preferences. And without giving away too much of the story, Linne’s main challenge is to see that trying to be Not Like Other Girls isn’t a good thing! All girls are valid and unique, and being like other girls is something to be proud of!(link: https://tvtropes.org/
There are many more tropes in We Rule the Night, so if you are intrigued and want to find more, grab a copy of the book on April 2nd! Sound off with your favorite (or least favorite!) tropes in the comments, and I hope to have more nerdy talks with you all in the future. Thank you again, Andi the brilliant host!
(link to pre-orders: https://www.lbyr.
We Rule the Night by Claire Eliza Bartlett Published: April 2, 2019
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Two girls use forbidden magic to fly and fight–for their country and for themselves–in this riveting debut that’s part Shadow and Bone, part Code Name Verity.
Seventeen-year-old Revna is a factory worker, manufacturing war machines for the Union of the North. When she’s caught using illegal magic, she fears being branded a traitor and imprisoned. Meanwhile, on the front lines, Linné defied her father, a Union general, and disguised herself as a boy to join the army. They’re both offered a reprieve from punishment if they use their magic in a special women’s military flight unit and undertake terrifying, deadly missions under cover of darkness. Revna and Linné can hardly stand to be in the same cockpit, but if they can’t fly together, and if they can’t find a way to fly well, the enemy’s superior firepower will destroy them–if they don’t destroy each other first.
We Rule the Night is a powerful story about sacrifice, complicated friendships, and survival despite impossible odds.
Thank you so much, Claire, for stopping by and sharing some tropes with us! I’m a huge fan of a good trope and these are all fantastic!
Make sure you pick up a copy of Claire’s debut release on 4/2/19!
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