| The Named — (1983-2008) Young adult. Publisher: Ratha and her clan are the Named, a band of intelligent wild cats whose society is based on herding deer. the Named have laws, language, traditions, and leaders. they also have enemies. the predatory raiders of the unNamed are driving them close to the edge of survival. then ratha, a mere yearling, discovers what she calls the “red tongue”—Fire. Her new weapon gives the Named a new defense, but it also rouses the ire of Meoran, the tyrannical clan leader. soon ratha finds herself in exile among the un- Named, but determined to survive.
    
 Ratha's Creature
Anyone who has a cat can tell you that they are amazingly intelligent. Imagine if they could talk. Talking cats are the central conceit of Ratha's Creature, the tale of the female cat Ratha and her fight for respect in the clan of cats that make up her family. Ratha is a challenge to the leadership of her clan, especially the misogynistic Meoran. But when she learns to tame fire, she is a threat that can no longer be tolerated.
I’ve heard books called workmanlike, and I was never really sure what that meant. Now I do. There isn’t anything wrong with Ratha's Creature. The story is fine, the characters are well-written, but I never really connected with the story. It took me several weeks to finish the book because I just wasn’t intrigued enough to pick it up whenever I had time to read. Once I finally soldiered through the middle, the action did pick up again, and it was easy to get through the last third of the book.
Ratha's Creature left me conflicted. I wanted to like it more than I actually did, but just couldn’t get past the feeling that I had read this story before. Imagine combining Clan of the Cave Bear with Romeo and Juliet, but with cats. I wanted the idea of the characters being sentient cats to have more of an impact on the story telling than it does. Characters fight like animals, and Ratha goes into heat, but I didn’t feel like it changed their perspectives in any meaningful way, which left me wondering why the characters were cats at all.
This is intended to be a YA novel, and while many YA novels translate well for an adult audience, I don’t think that Ratha's Creature is one of them. I think younger readers would enjoy this book more than I did, and would be interested enough in Ratha’s struggles and triumphs to go on to the other books in the series. —Ruth Arnell
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Stand-alone novels:
 Tomorrow's Sphinx — (1986) Young adult. Publisher: Two unusual black cheetahs share a mental link, one cat coming from the past to reveal scenes from his life with the young pharaoh Tutankhamen, and one struggling to survive in a future world ravaged by ecological disaster.
 The Jaguar Princess — (1993) Young adult. Kirkus: Young slave girl Mixcatl, abducted from her eastern jungle home when a toddler, evinces a rare talent for painting, so the scribes of the ruling Aztec city Tenochtitlan set her to copying ancient texts and glyphs, while also attempting to instill in her the elements of their religion — which involves vast, bloody sacrifices to the warrior-god Hummmingbird on the Left. But Mixcatl suspects herself to be different from other folk: she has preternaturally sharp senses, an ability to animate dead jaguar skins and claws, and a disturbing tendency to change her shape, as if something within her body was attempting to emerge. In the rival but independent city of Tezcotzinco, meanwhile, the gentle Speaker- King, Wise Coyote, desperately searches for a means to retain his independence in the face of the implacably expansionist Tenochtitlan. From the old scribe Nine-Lizard, Wise Coyote learns of the ancient Olmec magicians and their half-jaguar, half-human rulers, and wonder whether Mixcatl is not one such, and whether he can use her to destroy the revolting Hummingbird cult. If, for instance, he could persuade Mixcatl to transform herself into a jaguar in full view of the people, Hummingbird would be discredited...
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Clare Bell is an electrical engineer. She builds electric racing cars and also constructed solar, wind, and hydroelectric energy systems for her family's home in California.
Read excerpts of her books at Clare Bell's website.
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