Toads and Diamonds Book

AWESOME IDEA. Toads and Diamonds always seemed like a really unjust fairytale, with a lot of ecological and economic problems to boot. One sister is polite to the faerie/goddess and is in turn granted with a gift: jewels and flowers fall from her mouth every time she speaks. The other sister is rude--well, at least abrasive--and gets snakes and amphibians instead. So the author does some really great things: she tells story from the points of view of sisters who don't hate each other, though they have contrasting personalities, and she sets it in India, where snakes have a different (valued!) cultural significance. Tomlinson thinks through each girl's gifts in an exercise of subversion--gems aren't so good with greedy government officials, and snakes aren't so bad when you've got a pandemic spread from the overpopulation of rats.

So far so good. Where are the problems then? The novel is told in alternating chapters, and Diribani's half of the story gets horribly boring halfway through, when she gets to the palace and her activities/social life is strictly monitored. Tana's point of view was far more engaging--she seemed the more genuine voice, one of survival and street smarts. And each girl had their own fellow to pine for--Tana for Kalyan, and Diribani for Prince Zahid--and they pined and pined. And in the end, they don't even get the guys, so, yeah, grr.

Plus, it never came up that, the amount of gemstones Diribani spit out, it might be really bad for the gem industry! Inflation, yo! At least Tana's snakes were meant to repopulate the ones that the evil governor had mass murdered, for ecological balance.