A review by justabean_reads
Stand on the Sky by Erin Bow

adventurous emotional hopeful fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Bow says that when she was writing Plain Kate her first daughter was a newborn, and now her fifth book is the first that's reading age for her girls. Maybe that's why this isn't the crushing emotional roller coaster the first four were.

This follows a Kazakh girl in Mongolia through family drama and the training of a hunting eagle, in a middle grade story that is certainly not short of drama, but is not absolutely devastating either. There are no monsters lurking or horrors in the water here, no one is tortured, but the book deals seriously with the idea of facing loss and growing up.

I think what struck me most with this book was how the heroine could totally have gone with the worn-out Not Like Other Girls trope (and indeed she's not her mother's ideal of Kazakh femininity) but mostly avoided it by surrounding her by supportive older women. She's not exactly like the other girls, but neither are the other girls. Nor is it a plot of men insisting that she stay to her women's role and leave male things to the men. There are some chauvinist characters, but they're more obstacles than major sources of conflict.

Really, the whole story is about family at its best even in a time of trial, and how a it takes a village to raise a girl and her eagle. I enjoyed it, I hope her kids did too.