Novella Review: The Lost Sisters (The Folk of the Air #1.5)

Release Date: October 2, 2018
Author: Holly Black
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Length: 50 pages
Source: Purchased eBook/Audiobook

Sometimes the difference between a love story and a horror story is where the ending comes...

While Jude fought for power in the Court of Elfhame against the cruel Prince Cardan, her sister Taryn began to fall in love with the trickster, Locke.

Half-apology and half-explanation, it turns out that Taryn has some secrets of her own to reveal.

The Lost Sisters is a companion e-novella to the New York Times bestselling novel The Cruel Prince, by master writer Holly Black.

    

Review:

Protagonist: So, I'm not the biggest fan of Taryn, but I was interested to hear her side of the story, at least as much as she gives, and after reading this novella I do feel I have a greater understanding of her character and why she made the choices that she did. This story is greatly focused on the origin of Taryn's relationship with Locke and how thing went so terribly wrong for Jude. One of the things I took away from this story is how much Taryn and Jude are alike, they both want to find their place in Elfhame and even though they make different choices, they both make difficult and sometimes regrettable choices to solidify their place in Court.

Romance: Taryn's romance with Locke wasn't nearly as romantic as Jude's sham romance with him in The Cruel Prince. Locke's courtship of Taryn felt a lot more forward than how he woos Jude, and while I understand why Taryn falls for him or even believes she falls for him, this story makes Locke look even worse than he was in TCP. Locke and Taryn both like stories, and Taryn very much wants to believe herself in a story or to be a part of someone else's story. Even though I don't "ship" these two together, as I feel even Taryn deserves someone better than Locke, I appreciated the chance to have a deeper understanding of their relationship.

World Building: This novella tells key events from The Cruel Prince from Taryn's perspective, as well as new scenes showing what Taryn was up to while Jude was swept away in her portion of the story. First off, I really love how this novella is told, from Taryn's perspective as an apology and explanation to Jude, who is referred to as "you" throughout the story. I actually enjoyed getting new scenes in this world and learning a tad more about it. Now, there's not too much world-building, but I will say that if you're thinking that this is going to be some story that redeems Taryn and/or Locke or make you sympathize with one or both of them, that isn't necessarily true. I understand why Taryn does what she but that doesn't mean that I like her as a character now, and honestly, I still don't fully understand why it is that Locke does what he does, and I actually came out of this hating Locke more than I did in TCP.

Predictability: There's not too much I can say here as this is a short novella and there are a great many things about this story you would already know from reading TCP. However, I will say there are a few small twists in this story and things didn't go the way I had expected them to even if the destination is more or less the same.

Ending: If I had one negative when it came to this story it's that it didn't go on long enough. This story ends before Dain's botched coronation and while I completely understand why it ends where it does, as Taryn does fully explain why she did what she did, I still found myself wanting more. There's a scene at the end of The Cruel Prince, where Taryn finds herself holding the crown of Elfhame and I really wanted to know her thoughts there, or her thoughts when Jude walked in with Cardan, and even her point of view during and after her duel with Jude. Still, I did appreciate that the author stuck to telling this story as an explanation and not just "Taryn's view of events" as it gives the story more meaning and tells the story it was meant to.

Rating:

While yes, I would have liked to see certain scenes from Taryn's perspective that we didn't get to see, I enjoyed this story immensely. I don't sympathize with Taryn, but I understand why she made the choices she made and I loved learning what she was willing to do to secure her place in Faerie.

Book Review: Tithe (Modern Faerie Tales #1)

Release Date: October 1, 2002
Author: Holly Black
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Length: 310 pages
Source: Purchased Book

Welcome to the realm of very scary faeries!

Sixteen-year-old Kaye is a modern nomad. Fierce and independent, she travels from city to city with her mother's rock band until an ominous attack forces the sixteen-year-old back to her childhood home. There, amid the industrial, blue-collar New Jersey backdrop, Kaye soon finds herself an unwilling pawn in an ancient power struggle between two rival faerie kingdoms -- a struggle that could very well mean her death.

Newcomer Holly Black's enormously powerful voice weaves teen angst, riveting romance, and capriciously diabolical faerie folk into an enthralling, engaging, altogether original reading experience.

    

Review:

Protagonist: Kaye has lived most of her life moving from place to place with her less than stable mother. When she and her mother have to move back in with Kaye's grandmother, Kaye finds herself sucked (not literally) into the land of Faeries, when she saves a Faerie Knight one night. Soon she's in too deep, discovering secrets about herself that not even the rest of her family knows and putting her life on the line in a struggle between the Seelie and Unseelie fae. One of the things I love most about Kaye is that she's not your typical YA heroine. She smokes, she shoplifts, and she'll do something wrong even if she knows it's wrong. Granted, I don't want to "become" Kaye, but the flaws and complexities to her character really make her stand out, while not making her so unlikable that I don't want to root for her. In fact despite her flaws I wanted her to succeed every step of the way in this book, and regardless of where she ends up, she does not succeed at every step along the way.

Romance: Another thing that was pleasantly surprising to me is the romance in this story. It's not all consuming like the YA books published around this time always seemed to be. Instead it burns at a constant, but slow, rate that I ended up really enjoying. While Roiben isn't the perfect love interest, he comes pretty darn close and the chemistry that he and Kaye have is undeniable. These two characters start off fairly counterpointed as Roiben is much more formal and polite while Kaye... isn't. She's got a sharp tongue and she doesn't care who she stabs with it, while Roiben uses words like a fencer uses a saber, graceful and elegant. It wasn't hard to start rooting for them even before they actually started to truly tolerate each other.

World Building: FAERIES!!!! So, while I haven't been reading a lot of Faerie stories lately, I loved falling back into a world governed by dark tricksters and mischievous gremlins. While this story does begin in the modern world, and by all appearances, "our" world, it doesn't take too long for the magical mayhem to begin. This version of Faerie, as there are so many different kinds, i divided into the Seelie, Unseelie, and Solitary Fae. Considering this series is canonically part of the "Folk of the Air" trilogy, the first book of which is The Cruel Prince, I'll have to reread that book to remember how all the different parts of faerie connect. Anyway, the world Holly Black creates in this book is breathtaking, I mean, I couldn't stop wanting to see more and more of what this world held. This world is as wondrous as faerie fruit, sweet and addictive, but have too much and you may go mad!

Predictability: I was completely blown away at how unpredictable this story is. I mean, considering this book isn't exactly a spring chicken in the YA world, the fact that its story doesn't feel full of stale and thrown out tropes years later, and can still knock me off my feet at some of the twists and turns this story holds, is magnificent. Looking back I'm trying to see if there was any time when I knew for sure what would happen, and maybe it's because I haven't read very much in a while, but nothing felt obvious about this book, even when I tried to predict something, nothing felt certain.

Ending: This story has a more wrapped up ending that I expected for a trilogy. Though, that's because the next book in this series is a companion, while the "technical" sequel to this book is actually book 3. On the whole though, you could read this story as a standalone, there's enough closure to the story that I don't need to come back, though I will because I love this book and why not, but everything wraps up well for now, and I could see how waiting a while between installments could have really hurt if there wasn't as much closure as there is in this story. As for the final climax, well I'll just say that things didn't unfold how I expected them to. This isn't your typical YA final climax and the diversity in storytelling with it was a treat to behold.

Rating:

Yeah, it's hard to deny that I love this book! It holds up incredibly well after sixteen years and I practically devoured every word of this brilliantly crafted tale. Honestly, I thought Holly Black grew into her writing over time, but no, she's always been this good!

Book Review: The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air #1)

Release Date: January 2, 2018
Author: Holly Black
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Length: 384 pages
Source: ARC from Goodreads Giveaway

Of course I want to be like them. They’re beautiful as blades forged in some divine fire. They will live forever.

And Cardan is even more beautiful than the rest. I hate him more than all the others. I hate him so much that sometimes when I look at him, I can hardly breathe.

Jude was seven years old when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King.

To win a place at the Court, she must defy him–and face the consequences.

In doing so, she becomes embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, discovering her own capacity for bloodshed. But as civil war threatens to drown the Courts of Faerie in violence, Jude will need to risk her life in a dangerous alliance to save her sisters, and Faerie itself.

    

Review:

Protagonist: When we're introduced to Jude in the prologue, she's still a normal little girl in the mortal world. She has a twin sister, two loving human parents, and a half-sister who has some odd characteristics. Once the story gets started, however, Jude's been in the Faerie world for ten years, over half her life and strives to fit in, even though she knows as a mortal she will never truly find her place in this magical world. I liked the character of Jude a lot, Faerie is her home and it really shows in in motivations throughout the book and over the course of this book she truly comes a long way. While Jude does grow over the course of the book, one thing I really appreciated was that she never felt out of character as she developed. Every choice she makes and move she takes feels very in line with who she is. She's a spitfire that you don't want to get on the wrong side of and has her own talents that shine through in this story.

Romance: So, the romance in this book is a bit too complex to talk about without giving certain elements away, and since Jude's romance isn't even discussed in the synopsis I don't want to talk about it too much either. There is an element of romance to this story, and I really enjoyed how it factored into the overall plot of the book. Sometimes I feel as though the romance in a YA book is either too twisted and tied into the main plot that it distracts from the big picture or is practically a filler subplot that could be cut out of the story and almost nothing would change, however in this story the romance, while a smaller part of the tale, is woven together with the main story in way that just fits well with everything going on in this tale.

World Building: So, I've read a fair amount of Faerie stories and series, but never one quite as magical and intensive as this one. Since Jude belongs to the house of the High King's general she's already in a position where she can be close to the politics of the realm. It isn't until later in the book however that she becomes very entwined with the unrest in Faerie and the story and by extension, the world, really begin to come into their own. I don't think I've ever read a Faerie story with this much political intrigue and definitely not one where our main character is completely human. It's Jude's humanity that really brings this story to life as we can truly see just how dangerous a game she is playing and just how high the stakes are for her as a character living in this world. The world itself is beautifully complex and call outs to Black's other Faerie books make for some fun points of interest throughout the story. This book can be rather dense at times, but never in a way that feels sluggish or unnecessary, it's dense in a way that makes you feel that you're getting more out of this book than there is, a ten-page chapter can feel just as rich and sprawling as three chapters from another story.

Predictability: Going into this tale I had a lot of preconceived notions about how the story was going to unfold, and honestly, I was dead wrong, but the fun part about that was that I never quite knew what would happen next. Even when I thought I found my footing in this world, soon enough that would be upended, I had quite a few out of the box and crazy theories about what would happen and was even more surprised when some of those theories or elements of some of those theories would actually come to pass. The author never over-explains or over foreshadows the story which leads to some amazing, and still completely fitting, twists to the story.

Ending: So, I'm trying to figure out how best to explain this ending without inadvertently giving everything away. I mean, the ending to this story is fantastic and I kind of just want to leave it at that. I will say this though, going into the final stretches of this story I wondered if this series might be a companion novel series. While I knew there wasn't enough time to completely tie up Jude's loose ends with the number of pages left, even with how densely rich this story could be, but even if the story were to shift focus to a different character it wouldn't be that hard to wrap Jude's story up through their eyes. That being said, by the end of the story it was clear which direction the author would be taking and even though there is a bit of a plateau at the end, the wait until the next book will be a very difficult one.

Rating:

This is a masterpiece of a book. While it might not be the fastest paced book, it's one that will hook you in and yank you along on a ride of political intrigue, espionage, and the will of the human spirit as Jude finds herself embroiled deeper in the world of Faerie than she ever thought she'd be.

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Book Review: The Silver Mask (Magisterium #4)

Release Date: October 10, 2017
Authors: Holly Black & Cassandra Clare
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Length: 240 pages
Source: Review Copy from Publisher

A generation ago, Constantine Madden came close to achieving what no magician had ever achieved: the ability to bring back the dead. He didn't succeed . . . but he did find a way to keep himself alive, inside a young child named Callum Hunt.

Now Call is one of the most feared and reviled students in the history of the Magisterium, thought to be responsible for a devastating death and an ever-present threat of war. As a result, Call has been imprisoned and interrogated. Everyone wants to know what Constantine was up to-and how he lives on.

But Call has no idea.

It is only when he's broken out of prison that the full potential of Constantine's plan is suddenly in his hands . . . and he must decide what to do with his power.

In this spellbinding fourth book of Magisterium, bestselling authors Holly Black and Cassandra Clare take us beyond the realm of the living and into the dangers of the dead.

    

Review:

Protagonist: Callum Hunt has been revealed to the entire mage world as the reincarnation of Constantine Madden, The Enemy of Death, and now he's in the Panopticon with seemingly no way out. That is until he's broken out and given the chance to achieve what many believe to be his destiny. I really enjoyed Call's character development in this book. A majority of this development is truly facing the fact that he has the soul of the Enemy of Death inside him and what that means for who he is as a person. It's a really fascinating journey and I loved seeing Call learn more about who he was and figuring out just who he is and can be.

Romance: This is by far the weakest point of this book, and while it's not a big element to this story it was very disappointing. In this book, Call gets a new love interest, and it comes completely out of the blue and honestly feels very forced. I mean I think there might have been a touch of foreshadowing in previous books, but nowhere near enough for it to not feel forced and on top of that there is next to no chemistry with these characters, thus there was no reason for me to root for them. I mean, even Call and Celia had more chemistry.

World Building: The majority of this book's world building revolves around Constantine Madden and his goals. I don't want to give that much away, but I will say that we see more about the world outside of the Magisterium, and get a deeper look inside the minds of the villains of this story. Honestly, that's pretty much it. I mean, the story was immensely enjoyable at times, but most of the time it was just sort of a middle area in terms of enjoyment. This is a very short book and because of that not too much happens. There are a few big developments over the course of the book and again we do get a deeper look at this world, these characters, and where the story is headed, but I just couldn't help but feel that either the authors are saving the bulk of things for the last book, or they've sort of lost steam for this series.

Predictability: This book definitely had its moments. I mean, on the whole, I knew more or less what was going to happen, either the story didn't do such a great job at foreshadowing or the book just followed a fairly simple premise, but that being said there were some fantastic moments in this book. There are things that happen in this book that either shocked and thrilled me or chilled me to my core.

Ending: So much like the previous installment, this ending was the most twisted and topsy-turvey part of the whole book. The final climax was fantastic, while not quite the action sequence I was hoping for it was fraught with tension and was very moving. Everything after well let's just say that I'm left with a lot of questions and a cliffhanger that will make the next year not so happy.

Rating:

I heavily debated this rating, I mean, I gave the last book four stars only because of the messy romance that this series has, and honestly continues to have, but in the end I felt I had to knock off another star because I didn't feel that the authors put their all into this book and while I'm optimistic for the finale, it's a very cautious optimism.

Book Review: The Bronze Key (Magisterium #3)

Release Date: August 30, 2016
Authors: Holly Black & Cassandra Clare
Publisher: Scholastic
Length: 256 pages
Source: Purchased Book

Magic can save you.
Magic can kill you.

Students at the Magisterium are supposed to be safe. Under the watchful eyes of the mages, they are taught to use magic to bring order to a chaotic world.

But now the chaos is fighting back. Call, Tamara, and Aaron should be worrying about things like pop quizzes and magic contests. Instead, after the shocking death of one of their classmates, they must track down a sinister killer… and risk their own lives in the process.

As Call, Tamara, and Aaron discover, magic can only be as good as the person who wields it. In evil hands, it has the capacity to do immeasurable harm, unless it is stopped in time.

In this striking third book of Magisterium, bestselling authors Holly Black and Cassandra Clare present us with a school where anything, good or evil, can happen, and the only way to unlock the truth is to risk everything to find it.

    

Review:

Protagonist: After spending the entire summer with his best friend, Aaron, and getting an award for the destruction of The Enemy of Death, Callum Hunt is really happy with his life. He's even hoping to have a normal year at the Magisterium, that is until an attempt is made on his life and a fellow student winds up dead. Now, Call, Aaron, and Tamara want nothing more than to discover the spy hidden in the Magisterium, and if all goes to plan, do so without breaking too many rules. Call's character development in this story, at least in regards to the main plot, is done very well. There's a huge theme of personal responsibility, and knowing that your actions have consequences, some good and some that could cause irreparable harm. Over the story, Call sort of lets this lesson sink in and there are some parallels with Constantine and Call and their own personal journeys, and the responsibility they each had in their lives.

Romance: Ugh. Seriously I kind of just want to leave it at that comment and move on, but I also feel the need to elaborate more. So, if this series never had romance in it I would have been fine. If the authors had taken the time to really grow and develop a romance between two characters, even if one of them wasn't Call, that would have been fine as well. However, the romance, if you even want to call it that, in this series is a mess. It's like there's this weird love triangle with Celia, Call, and Jasper, and then there may or may not be romantic things going on between Call's apprentice group, but it's all done in a very vague way which leaves me just wanting Call and Aaron together because they make more sense than any other romance in this series, and they honestly don't even make that much sense.

World-Building: There's something dark brewing within the Magisterium and it's after Callum. As our characters go through their Bronze Year at the Magisterium, Master Rufus informs them that they are not to put a toe out of line and they are to devote themselves to their studies. Over the course of the book, we learn more about magic, specifically chaos magic, as Call and Aaron are both Makaris. We see more Elementals and meet up with characters we haven't seen since the first book and catching up with characters we saw in the previous installment. Honestly, though, I'm not quite sure what to put here. I mean, there is a great deal of world building, specifically, characterwise, we learn about so many characters, their backstories and their motivations. However, there isn't all that much more to the world that we get to see, we find out where all the big Elementals are being held, and that scene specifically was very fun, and we finally see the Collegium, but overall, we more get a greater sense of the world as a whole and specifically certain characters' roles within it.

Predictability: I'm going to be honest with you, I read the last line of the book before I got there. This happens sometimes when I try to see how many pages a book has (I really should have just looked it up on GR) and my eyes curiously wander. That being said, while I had a vague idea of what was coming, I was in no way prepared for what happens in this book. I'm still trying to get over the events of this book. Granted, I did just finish it, but there's a lot that happens. Now, going into this book, and even up until nearly the final climax I wasn't quite sure what was going to happen. There were a few twists that this story had already that caught me off guard, but that was nothing compared to the twisted ending this book has.

Ending: Like I said above, this ending is seriously twisty. As we get to the final climax of the story, things start to come together and make sense, however, then the final climax hits and I wasn't quite sure where things were going to go. Things happened in that climax that I don't want to talk about, mainly because of spoilers, and this all leads to the most confusing, yet interesting, cliffhanger of all time. Honestly, I don't know where this story is going to go next, and I don't care, all I care about is getting that next book in my hands and finding out.

Rating:

Literally, the only reason this book is getting four stars and not five is because of the romance. I'm sure by the end of the series it will all come together, but until then it's currently a mess and it detracts from the amazingness that is this story.