So how would World War Two be different if women could have been drafted or enlist in the military? From what I can tell, not that much? Obviously I don’t know what it was like from personal experience but basing on other books and movies I have read, the experiences of Rio, Frangie, Jenou and Rainey didn’t seem all that different. To say, war is awful. Though maybe it was a little harder for the ladies, as they had to endure sexiest comments about how woman do not belong in the military. Even worse for Frangie, who had deal with the racist along with the sexist. I would think what our heroines deal with was pretty much the same things as women in the military still face. I’m thinking about the all the comments and criticism I read about the first women to train to be Army Rangers, recently. “Women can’t handle the pressure.” ” They are not physically strong enough”.”How will they handle combat?” “The Military is just not the place for women.” Front Lines may be a work of fiction that takes place 70 years ago but it could easily be written about today. I studied history in school and it’s what my B.A. is in. The one thing that I always found fascinating about history is that you can study something in the past and can make direct correlation with what is going on in today’s world. Basically, Human Being’s don’t learn from the mistakes. We do the same things over and over again. Just look at our election and how we are fighting over issues of Civil Rights.
But back to the book. It’s 1942, the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor and America is going to war. A few years earlier, the Supreme Court had ruled it was unconstitutional for only men be eligible for the draft, women had to as well. (This has also come up in the campaign about whether or not women should be eligible for the draft) Rio has just finished having breakfast with her family when news comes that her sister, who enlisted in the Navy has died when her boat was attacked by the Japanese. A few weeks later, her best friend Jenou says she is going to enlist so she ca get out of their small California town and meet some cut officers. Rio decides she wants to do something else with her life before she gets married and have kids. Elsewhere in Oklahoma, Frangie decides that the money from enlisting and being in the Army will be enough to keep her family from being destitute and in New York, Rainey has already gone through basic training and now going for special training for Army intelligence. We follow all their progress though boot camp to actual theater of war. Frangie is the only who really thinks she will be in the war since she plans on being a Medic but the rest see themselves as secretaries or drivers, away from the front lines. Women may enlist and can be drafted but they US Military isn’t really going to send them to war, right? Of course they all end up there eventually. They trained along with the men, though still separated by race. As one character puts it “only America would go to war against a white supremacist with a segregated army” (not exact quote, I paraphrased) Rio and Jenou have mixed results during basic training. Rio finds that she actually enjoyed it and is a good shooter. The girls all struggle with what it is to be a soldier and a woman. Now that they have been trained to be soldiers, how are they supposed to act as women. Will Men like that they have more muscle now? Should they act more demure? In battle, are they still supposed to act ladylike while the enemy is shooting at them? Once they get to the front lines, they still have to prove they belong even to the male soldiers that they trained with back in boot camp. For Frangie, who is now a medic has to deal with being called a Nigra as she’s patching up soldiers and attempting to save their lives. And Rainey is stuck being a secretary while male soldiers not as qualified as her get called into meetings and missions. It never ends. It was a fascinating read that got more interesting once our girls finally got to war. The second half of the book only covers one battle, their first battle. It proves that they had no idea what they were getting themselves into the . The romance of war quickly dissolved into the reality. They all have done something that they will remember for the rest of their life and you know it will haunt them. I’m curious how that will play out in the upcoming books. We saw glimpses of what is to come for them but it’s still only 1943 and their are two more years left and I think 2 more books to go.
This is it. I don’t want to say that this will be the last time I read Winter or The Lunar Chronicles but I am ready to move on. This was a very lovely series that was just fun to read. So here we go. My last few observations 
I know that Adelina is supposed to be the villain of this story. The entire marketing campaign has been how this is from the villainess point of view instead of the usual heroine. I agree that’s unique but I’m having hard time seeing Adelina as a villain or “the villain” of this novel. If anything she is just one of many bad guys in the story. Teren is out right terrifying. His obsession and religious furor makes him so certain that his work camps and plans of eradicating all malfettos from Kennetra is the true villain of the story. I think we are supposed to see the Daggers led by Enzo and Raffaelle as the heroes but they are committing treason by allying themselves to Queen Maeve of Beldain. Maeve is also an elite with the power to bring back the dead. For this reason she obviously takes much better care of malfettos or survivors of the blood fever but she is also planning on taking over another sovereign nation. Queen Guiletta is not exactly a saint either but now that she has ascended to the thrown she is making in effort. She sees how Teren is treating the malfettos and orders they be treated better. She wants obedience, not revolution. She knows that the children of many influential people are malfettos and they would not like to see their children poorly treated. Unfortunately, Teren sees things differently and by the time she realizes how much power she has given him it’s too late. Could she have been a more effective leader if it wasn’t for Teren? Most likely. But back to Adelina. She was caste out from the Daggers for betraying them, killing Dante and making the mistake that lead to Enzo’s death. She and her sister Violetta seek out new allies to help her in her revenge against Teren and his inquisitors. Throughout the book, Adelina experience illusions of people she has killed that and they get worse as the story goes on. She also hears voices and becomes more and more paranoid. *Spoiler* We learn in the end that the elites powers are turning against them. They were given powers of the Gods but their human bodies can’t handle it. Adelina has the power of illusions. Creating images to make people think, see and feel things that are not there. For her it makes her see her dead father and hear voices and be paranoid. I couldn’t help but think this sounds like schizophrenia or another mental illness. Having your villain show signs of mental illness is a little problematic to me. I’m pretty sure that is not the author’s intent. As I said, the elites powers are turning against them. If Adelina had different powers her side effects would be different but her powers and her dark feelings are what makes her a threat. Also a little problematic is that Adelina is a victim of domestic abuse. Since she was a child she was beaten and abused by her father. She lived her life trying to gain the love of a man who hurt her. When she kills him and finds the Daggers she does what she can to make them like her and to fit in and they turn on her too. This is an emotionally scarred woman. I’m not saying that what she has done in the last two books are excusable but I also don’t think that labeling her as a villain is accurate either. If anything, I find myself rooting for her to succeed then any other character in the book.
You would think that this novel about the Black Widow would be about you know, the Black Widow. But it’s really not. Natasha Romanoff has to share the lime light with two other characters. I mean, the girl can’t ever catch a break. First she gets shut out of all the promotional toys and now she can’t even be the main character in her own YA novel. What does a super agent girl got to do to get some respect? Ok, maybe I’m going a little overboard since she is still a major part of the story but she has to share the narrative with two new characters. Ava, another prodigy of the Red Room that Natasha saves in one of her missions and Alex, who at first doesn’t seem at all connected to either lady but of course he is deeply connected to both of them. We also get a little more insight into Natasha in between chapters, as we read transcripts from a hearing about how the mission we are reading about went bad. Right away you know that one of them is not going to make it. 
2 Women, So Many Books 