Stravaganza: City of Ships - 2012 Book #1

The first book of the year was City of Ships by Mary Hoffman. This is the fifth book in the Stravaganza series. This is a series of books about two parallel worlds that are hundreds of years apart. Children from Earth in England are "chosen" to be stravaganti who can then stravagate between their world and the parallel world called Talia, which is very similar to Italy in the late 1500s.

In this book, the girl who was chosen as the new Stravagante is Isabel. She has a twin brother named Charlie, who, Isabel believes, is amazing at everything. He's really popular in school, he gets really good grades, and he's the captain of the swim team. Isabel only has a few friends, tries to make herself kind of invisible at school, gets pretty good grades - but not as good as Charlie's - and is afraid of the water. She is always comparing herself to her twin, and thinks of herself badly because of it. Then, one day, she finds a red bag with tesserae in it - the tiny pieces that are used to make mosaics. Isabel loves art and is fascinated by the bag. She falls asleep holding the bag, and finds herself in Talia where she is immediately welcomed by Flavia, her Stravagante in the city of Classe.

The next day in school, one of her classmates asks to talk to her, and asks about her last night. He had known about her finding the bag and wondered if anything had happened. She learns that a handful of other students at her school are Stravaganti who have visited Talia as well, and soon becomes great friends with them.

Things are going well for Isabel when she finds out about an impending war on the city of Classe. The di Chimici have allied with the Gate people and are planning an oversea attack on Classe. Isabel doesn't know what she can do to help with this situation, but she tries to be involved as much as she can. It doesn't make it any easier for her when her brother stars to wonder why her sister is acting so differently than she used to.

The only problem I had with reading this book was the fact that it has been awhile since I have read the first four books of the series. In the book, it kept referring to things that had happened in the previous books, and I wasn't always entirely sure what it was reffering to all the time. Overall, I thought this was a great book to read to start off the year.