Tag: book review

“If This Gets Out” Is A No-Skip Album of A Book

A rich, exultant love story with music at its core, If This Gets Out is one of the best contemporaries I’ve ever read. Following two members of a wildly popular boy band, Saturday, as their headliner tour sees them falling in love, the book offers both a fervently sincere pair of leads it’s easy to root––and cry!––for, and a harrowing exploration of how record labels exploit young artists if left unchecked.

Ruben Montez, whose entertainment-industry parents offer him both a leg up and and an ever-renewing fountain of criticism, has been out as gay since the age of sixteen––in private, that is. By the time the book opens on Saturday’s American tour, he’s grown wary of Chorus Records’ assurance that he’ll get to be out in public “when it’s time.” Written with a deft hand and a sensitive eye towards his insecurities, his is a character arc that illuminates how doubt can seethe into a musician at every moment: in negotiations, in performance, and, of course, in love. Sophie Gonzales, the co-writer who tackles his POV, has nothing short of nailed it.

Cale Dietrich, meanwhile, takes real vulnerability to the book’s other lead, Zach Knight, who struggles to assert himself without feeling like he’s making an imposition on other people. With most of my reading experience in fantasy (I’m not sure if this holds if you’re well-read in contemporary), I find it’s rare that a character’s needs are rendered so manifestly in a text. Not only in the way that Zach and Ruben are open about their emotional scars with each other, though that’s its own immensely satisfying catharsis, but in the way it so clearly drives conflict and character dynamics, from the mounting crises, to the steps they have to take to solve them.

It’s because If This Gets Out is so clear about where and why its characters hurt that everything about it works so well. Romantic scars that must be overcome are key to an authentic, moving pairing, but Dietrich and Gonzales’ approach does just as much for the criticism they levy at the music industry. Ruben and the constant stream of criticism that is the inside of his head are ripe for needling from managers and executives; constantly questioning his right to be here is the lion’s share of what keeps him quiet when the label steps over the line. Zach, too, suffers because it’s all too easy for bad actors to capitalize on his need to fulfill personal obligations: you’re swallowing these conditions for the band and everyone who helps support you, they depend on you, and this is what you want anyway, right?

Suffice it to say, this book hits exactly where it needs to. Zach and Ruben’s bandmates, Angel and Jon, are also beautifully rendered, with equally manifest emotional schemes. The plotting overall has a wickedly keen sense of pacing, letting tensions linger long enough to yield the perfect release when things finally get talked through. It’s a beautiful book, but an enthralling one, too: I was always loathe to stop reading and do something else, and always giddy to return. Sometimes If This Gets Out makes you want to scream about how much these kids deserve better. Luckily, it takes the time to give it to them, too.

Thank you so much for reading! Have you given this title a go? I’d love to hear anything and everything in the comments below 💕

Every Witch Book Wishes It Was Claire Legrand’s “Extasia”

If you’re a fan of 2018’s Sawkill Girls, rejoice! Claire Legrand returns (at last!) to magic-tinged horror in this bloody, angry wonder of a book.

Generations have passed since the end of the world and (to our knowledge) only one fragile village remains. In Haven, women are blamed for humanity’s downfall, and a fiery gospel ritualizes their suffering in the form of four young anointed Saints. When Amity, Extasia‘s careful, prudent lead, gets her lifelong wish to join them, she hopes to bring an end to the mysterious killings befalling Haven’s men. All hell breaks loose instead.

To call Extasia a vision is only to scrape the surface of what Legrand accomplishes here. From atmosphere to suspense; eerie echo of the past to terrifying prospect for our future, this book and its world are utterly gripping. Legrand gets what makes misogynistic ideology so terrifying: not merely its capacity to breed and vindicate violence, but also the fact that the social order is built on it, and clings to it as refuge in times of terror. This is something that comes across vividly when Extasia reads like a fantasy historical, but it’s tenfold more potent in those instances where the book wields a dystopian edge––in a ritual involving the Saints that reads like an echo of 1984‘s Two Minutes Hate, in brief (but not overwhelming) touches of sci-fi, and in all the moments where witchcraft shows clairvoyance for a calamity already passed.

But this book isn’t just a satisfying experiment for lovers of all the genres it pulls from; it’s also a ruthless page turner that had me loathe to shut the cover and do anything else. Legrand makes keeping narrative pace look effortless: Amity’s shifting goals, worsening circumstances, and two beautifully-crafted forces of opposition are all excellently timed with respect to one another, and these just-under-500 pages go scarily fucking fast.

One more thing…I would go to war for this love story. Romantic subplots are a much-looked-for icing atop my very favorite cakes, and this icing is sweetened with the finest sugar around: contrast. The scenes between Amity and the spoiler-y girl in question are achingly tender, and almost heartbreakingly soft when held against the devastation around them. If a book can make me cry with a kiss, it wins ❤️

This is not the book for those who lack a taste for gore or dislike the use of religion in horror, but if you want to read about girls kissing as their world comes crashing down, wanted more to chew on from the likes of The Crucible, or find yourself in need of a healthy dose of the eldritch, you need to get Extasia read, like, yesterday.

Thank you so much for reading! Talk to me in the comments: I’m trying a shorter format for reviews every now and then, so what do you think? Also, if you’ve read this book or have recs for anything like it, be sure to let me know 💕

“The Raven Boys” Is Pretty Much As Good As Everyone Says It Is

True to its eclectic central ensemble, The Raven Boys, the first entry in the much-beloved Raven Cycle quartet by Maggie Stiefvater, is a study in odd yet illuminating pairings. Eerie paranormal atmosphere with a small-town, (mostly) working class point of departure. A messy present against a legendary past. Witches, ghosts, tombs and rituals…all explored in a car so shitty, Stiefvater makes it a running joke worthy of a teen comedy.

Even if none of these things entice you on their own, it’s worth picking up The Raven Boys just for a glimpse at how elegantly and effortlessly Stiefvater puts them to work together, uniting the book’s many contrasting influences under a thoughtful, self-aware take on a familiar theme: a cast of ordinary characters on a quest for glory and meaning.

Blue Sargent, the only non-psychic in a family full of them, is after an explanation when a spirit––of someone still living, but fated to die––appears to her for the first time. Gansey, unknowingly the spirit in question, is after the tomb of a legendary Welsh king. Accompanied by three of his prep school friends, Adam, Ronan, and Noah, the two end up embroiled in magic much older, and bigger, than them both, as buried secrets and strained home lives come to light.

Bear in mind, however, that the development of things in The Raven Boys is something of a slow burn. Important details aren’t always clear at first. Meetings that another writer would be eager to get out of the way wait until Stiefvater has us steeped in background and baggage, ready to appreciate their full significance.

This runs the risk of alienating some readers––and even did so for me, for about the first hundred pages––but with a contemporary fantasy that leans so heavily on the contemporary, an approach that takes such a risk is necessary. It gives us what we need to understand why someone like Gansey is after this legendary boon in the first place. I’ll use Emily Henry’s marvelous When The Sky Fell On Splendor as a point of comparison, because the answer in both works is essentially, and beautifully, the same: our characters are caught in the spell of thinking the extraordinary will bring order and significance to their cluttered, complicated, and often nonsensical ordinary lives. The books’ shared catharsis is the equal parts devastating and comforting assurance that it won’t.

Also held in common is an understanding that elevates the found family dynamics in The Raven Boys and When The Sky Fell On Splendor from “people who regularly ride in a car together” to relationships of real narrative importance. Both books get that the quest for glory can seem like it’s good for friendship, but is really just destructive. The Raven Boys, in particular, does a good job using its quest to poke at one dynamic in particular, with the added layer of class: that of Gansey and Adam.

Of the four titular Raven Boys, Adam is the only one to come from modest circumstances, and Stiefvater, in the steeping-time one might mistake for filler, is careful to note this. As a result, the conflict between them is rich, realistic, and ripe for the paranormal externalizing––fittingly, the culmination of all Gansey & co.’s questing is also a deeply satisfying answer to the inequality and dependence Gansey has cultivated among his friends over the years. And, overall, extending this consideration to Gansey’s disparity in means with Blue as well, the broader attention paid to class in this book is refreshing and much-appreciated.

Now, to discuss too much of the villain would be to drown in spoilers, so I say only this. In John Truby’s 2006 screenwriting masterpiece The Anatomy of Story, he writes that “the contrast between hero and opponent is powerful only when both characters have strong similarities,” and that “the best opponent is the necessary one: the character best able to attack the great weakness of your hero.” That last kernel of advice is often taken directly, but Stiefvater makes it work even better by comparison, crafting a dark mirror that takes Gansey’s flaws to chilling extremes. Her choice of opposition is perfect, and I will use it as an example whenever I make this point until the end of time. That is all.

But, however much praise I have for the choice itself, the execution of the twist associated with it is a little more mixed. I’m not entirely sure if the villain (and their buried connection to the main ensemble) was meant to surprise, but the pacing certainly gathers around the plot beat like they were, and whatever energy or forward thrust it might’ve added is noticeably missing in the lead-up to the climax. With a lack of investment in the character of [spoiler], what should really be a revelation lands as more of a dull thud, and even though the theme-related value of the development in question is abundant, the actual reading experience doesn’t make it feel that way.

Blue, also, can come across at times like an observer. Her drive as a character is plausible, and discernible even from the prologue’s four-page glance at her life as the one non-clairvoyant in a family of psychics. But though the book goes as far as to express that need directly in narration, and often, it’s never fully-realized, yielding a character with reasons to want a glimpse at the supernatural she’s been excluded from, but not, like with Gansey, a set of motivations you can feel.

That said, The Raven Boys is still a solid, satisfying first volume, and for the most part, it carries its task very well. I’m definitely continuing with the series! There’s a baby raven, a tragically-foreshadowed romantic subplot, and mysterious new magical powers yet to come in Stiefvater’s follow-up, The Dream Thieves. What’s not to love?

Thank you so much for reading? Have you read The Raven Boys? What did you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below 💕

An Excellent Romance and a Middling Mystery in “The Inheritance Games”

It’s a pitch straight out of Knives Out. Or, barring that, a common American fantasy. Avery Grambs, a working-class teenager with a penchant for actuarial science, struggles to make ends meet, until, one day, an eccentric billionaire bites it, and leaves her his entire fortune.

Except, in The Inheritance Games, it comes with a caveat: in order to receive this windfall, Avery must survive a year in the aforementioned billionaire’s extravagant mansion…with his disinherited and displeased family. Along the way, she’ll uncover damning secrets, solve puzzles, and find herself entangled with two of the family’s grandsons in a love triangle that recalls the young adult days of yore: I’ve yet to encounter a reader who hasn’t chosen a side, and vehemently so. (For the record: Grayson. Obviously.)

Delivered in sparse, first-person prose and short chapters that seem to devour every spare moment you have, The Inheritance Games is one thing above all else: decadent. Literally decadent, with cartoonish wealth adorning every page, but decadent as a reading experience, too. Jennifer Lynn Barnes crafts a frothy thriller with an edge as a future comfort read, using the trappings of Avery’s flashy new circumstances in a way perfectly calibrated to induce giddy delight on her behalf. Like Monte Carlo (2011) with life-and-death stakes, or, again, Knives Out with, admittedly, far fewer knives.

And, yes––if you’ve seen the book around, had your doubts, maybe found yourself guessing at the root of its popularity, your suspicions are absolutely correct: it’s about the love triangle. As mentioned, it’s nigh-impossible not to pick a side, and, what’s more, it’s impossible to be assured of your odds once you do. Whatever the state of the main mystery’s reveals, the long game Barnes is playing in the romantic subplot department remains refreshingly oblique from start to finish. In fact, one could even make the case that this mystery is the most compelling among all The Inheritance Games has to offer.

Ultimately, this means that if the romance doesn’t hook you, it’s unlikely the rest of the book will, but there are definitely worse gambits to make, and the oft-dreaded love triangle, in my opinion, shows decided prowess. There are two very important things Barnes gets right in her crafting of the love stories between Avery and the two walking disasters known as Jameson and Grayson Hawthorne: value opposition, and baggage.

Avery, as a heroine, is an intriguing blend of pragmatism and recklessness. In innocuous, non-inheritance-related moments, we see her struggle between her daydreams of travel and her hard-edged game plan of majoring for salary. This distinction, as you might have guessed, is owed in large part to class, and once her class changes, the balance predictably shifts. But the question, in some form, remains. Will her new wealth allow her to let go and pursue her dream, or will she put her shrewdness to use as the governess of a fortune with broader implications?

Enter her possible romantic trysts and perfectly crafted character foils: Jameson, the reckless, obsessed middle child, and Grayson, the somber, dutiful older brother. They are her conflicting sides personified, rendering any argument about who she should end up with (Grayson) an argument about what course her characterization sets for her future (Grayson). This is what I mean when I say “value opposition:” a set of ideas ensconced in characters so purposefully that Spark Notes should make an infographic about it.

It’s difficult to do a deep dive into the second part of the equation––baggage––without venturing into spoiler territory, but I can say that The Inheritance Games also makes good use of the past. Tightly-controlled reveals are the key here: awful things are hinted at by supporting characters with motives to do so, and when the truth unravels, it feels tautly like it absolutely had to. When it implicates the Hawthorne brothers (there are four in total, but I mean the love triangle two in particular), blame is difficult to strictly assign, allowing Barnes to draw out the gray area between total trust and total caution. This all keeps an extra component of ambiguity fresh in the romantic subplot where, otherwise, by the natural course of the main plot, Avery’s suspicion of them both––at least in the killing-for-the-inheritance sense––has waned.

But, as all good things come with a caveat, so too does the brilliance of this subplot give way to a steady but lacking central suspense. Once assassination attempts enter the picture, the bait-and-switch is thoughtful (and, taken as a commentary, perhaps even incisive), but the actual culprit feels a little haphazard. The character in question has fairly limited page time, doesn’t challenge any of the reader’s assumptions when named as the guilty party, and their ending dampens the tension, rather than seeing it to a dynamic conclusion.

The same goes for the one major definitive answer we get about the real intentions of Avery’s mysterious benefactor. Emotionally, what we learn should probably be more devastating than it is, especially with Avery having come all this way for an explanation that can give her a sense of certainty, but Barnes undermines the moment with brevity, and that aspect of Avery’s wants as a character is left hanging in an otherwise well-rounded portrayal.

I must admit, though: despite all of this, I’m still hooked. If the chemistry happens to click for you, The Inheritance Games is just riotously fun even with its weak points, and sometimes, that’s the strongest hand you can play.

Thank you so much for reading! Have you read The Inheritance Games? Which side of the love triangle are you on? As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below 💕

“The Gilded Ones” Is A Viciously Good Fantasy Debut

In a quiet village on the edge of an empire, a girl carries demon blood.

She doesn’t know it, of course––Deka, like every other girl in Otera, hopes she’ll be found to bleed red and “pure.” The Gilded Ones opens on the day all of this is to be revealed, and as such things tend to go in the first chapter of a fantasy novel, there is no red blood to be found in Deka. Instead, she bleeds gold: the mark of an alaki, a female demon with supernatural abilities, and, at least as far as the Oteran Empire is concerned, no prospects beyond death…or war.

From this, Namina Forna crafts an engrossing girl-meets-magical-combat story with a keen eye on the political and no shortage of gory details, courtesy of the book’s monsters, the sonically fatal deathshrieks. The joy of this book is in its many subtle triumphs: a charming supporting cast, excellent reveals, rich West-African-inspired worldbuilding––and, with precious few exceptions, every element is at the top of its game and basically never leaves it. Some of it, you’ve admittedly seen before, but I’d wager that it’s been quite some time since you’ve seen it done so well.

When Deka is brought to the capitol to train in an elite battalion of alaki, for example, her quest hits a familiar beat in YA fantasy, but what makes Forna’s approach to it stand out lies in what is both obvious and deceptively easy to omit: the actual training.

Forna doesn’t just use Deka’s training as an excuse to bring her closer to the action; it is a stage of the journey all its own. The Warthu Bera, the elite training complex where Deka learns to harness her talents, is incontestably the most crucial and vividly-rendered set piece between The Gilded Ones‘ covers, both in the literal, actual details, and in the elusive emotional ones. With a paradigm shift as drastic as the one Forna puts into play later on (no spoilers, but it’s impressively foreshadowed and deeply satisfying), it’s easy to let the implications taint the training of the first and second acts, but she strikes an excellent balance that allows the reader to look back and see the foreboding signs while also regarding that time with fondness. [And fondness, mind you, is a very powerful tool. Half the reason Leigh Bardugo has me by the throat like she does is because of how fervently I love the Little Palace, and, uh…the Warthu Bera might just be my new Little Palace.]

Beyond the Warthu Bera, however, things are just as exciting. Otera is a rare treat of a fantasy world whose secrets are delicately kept until necessary. Forna, also a screenwriter, controls and reveals information with the timing and precision her second craft requires, much of it entangled with memorable, cinema-ready imagery. The Gilded Ones, frankly, has too many iconic/notorious scenes to name: hidden temples, deathshriek raids, monstrous encounters, and vivid deaths, all of them positively begging for an adaptation. (Pretty please?)

Also––another thing I’m sensing as a screenwriter strength––Forna never wastes a side character. Deka’s journey from complacency to action is plausible, well-paced, and inextricable from our understanding of her world as readers, but it rests on a cast of distinctive, diverse, and well-thought-out supporting players, and that under-sung strength is as important as a great lead.

For Deka’s peers, Forna is careful to inject some complexity into their girl-to-warrior journeys. Even though Deka finds liberation in gathering warlike strength, not all the alaki feel the same way, and those who don’t are present, too, which keeps The Gilded Ones from falling prey to conflating weaponry with women’s rights in an all-too-common 1-to-1 conversion.

In some way, all the alaki are carefully thought-out responses to the world of Forna’s creation. They’re compelling in a literary sense, as much or even more than they are lovable human beings to root for, and strength in those areas combined is what truly rounds out a solid cast of peers.

Things really get interesting a little higher up in the ranks, however. With the Karmokos, elite teachers at the Warthu Bera who all share a background as assassins, Forna toes the line between dangerous and trustworthy, letting us waffle in uncertainty as Deka senses sedition in her immediate superiors, and is torn on what to do about it.

This applies most heavily to one character whose identity it is a spoiler to reveal, but there are glimpses of it in the other Karmokos; enough to make what would otherwise be an innocuous training scene in another fantasy novel feel deliciously heightened. (My favorite minor character, Karmoko Huon, only gets the spotlight for one scene, but boy, is it memorable.)

While the novel’s conclusion, sadly, is so heavy with exposition that it’s a slog to the rest of the book’s impeccably smooth sailing, The Gilded Ones is, by and large, exactly the thrill its premise promises. With a sequel on the horizon and a gorgeously expanded scope to accompany it, this budding trilogy is definitely one to watch. The Merciless Ones comes out in May of 2022, and there’s already an empty space on my shelf waiting for a copy.

Have you read The Gilded Ones? What did you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below 💕

“Changeless” a Deliciously Fun, If Moderately Pointless, Sequel

Quite possibly the only work of steampunk I’ve ever read, Gail Carriger’s 2009 paranormal-of-manners, Soulless, is very near to my heart. Coupling its charming nineteenth century sensibilities with an engrossing secret society plot, it reaps the benefits of many categories––romance, alternate history, paranormal, mystery––and skirts their distinctions with aplomb.

To the best of my admittedly faulty recollection, Soulless is a nearly perfect book.

Though equally funny (Gail Carriger is now my personal Queen of Sensible Chuckles), there’s something missing from Changeless that makes it read, at times, like a side quest. The peril involved feels fleeting; the introductions of the new supporting characters can’t seem to hold onto more depth than would befit a cameo.

The accoutrements are all in top form: the romance remains delightfully snarky, Carriger’s inventions and anachronisms are wickedly playful, and her integration of the paranormal into the political is as thoughtful-yet-snide as ever. But the engine, the A-plot, the beating heart, is untethered.

The central mystery is neither personally relevant enough for emotional stakes nor urgent enough for immediate ones, leaving it in the middle distance with Alexia, our lead, and company as casual observers. And, though Changeless does end with a traditional climax, it’s never more powerful than a fizzle.

At curtain, Alexia Maccon, whose courtship in Soulless ended amiably, with a loving, socially advantageous, and rather sarcastic marriage, is navigating one of her werewolf husband’s many eccentricities. This time, though, Lord Maccon’s nonsense cannot be abided by: there’s an entire encampment of werewolves on the front lawn.

As funny as this opening sequence is, however, it has only passing relevance to the real gamechanger in Changeless: in a sizable portion of London, the powers of vampires, werewolves, and ghosts suddenly vanish, as if a preternatural (such as Alexia herself) were touching them all at once. The plague of humanization then ceases, for a time, but reports soon emerge of the same happening in Scotland, where, incidentally, Lord Maccon has unfinished business with his old werewolf pack.

Where it concerns intrigue, the story from there is woefully lacking. There are worries abounding that the plague of humanization could by harnessed by or against groups of supernaturals––powerful hives of vampires being a particular concern––but they’re irreparably distant from the action at hand, possibly because Carriger chooses to isolate it at a manor in the Scottish countryside, while she’s set all the related scheming in London. It should be noted, though, that while she has an answer for that in interludes following other characters as they try to wrangle the situation in London, she doesn’t lean on it nearly enough to make full use of it.

But, all told, the kicker for this ultimately underwhelming mystery is probably its resolution, which hits somewhat like a nevermind upon its reveal. By now, Carriger has added a couple assassination attempts on Alexia to spice things up, and even suggested that the culprit is with us as we speak! Were it not for her lack of commitment to this addition, it might have meant some extra gumption approaching the climax, but because Changeless isn’t willing to go all in and put forth the extra time to genuinely cast the other characters in suspicion, it’s just a fleeting thought.

I’m sure that, by now, I’ve made Changeless sound like a disaster, but incidentally, despite what I’d be quick to call its structural unsoundness, it isn’t, mostly owing to its style and Carriger’s talent for pacing.

Changeless is, at its foundation, a story in which the characters spend a sizable chunk of the page time traveling to the primary setting, threats are posited but precious few actual consequences faced, and the answer to the mystery is more-or-less a coincidence.

It is all of these things, yes, and, also, rather fun, besides.

I’m still kind of at a loss as to how the book pulled it off. My prevailing theory is that Carriger leans into the fact that most readers aren’t necessarily picking up Changeless to find out why supernaturals are suddenly and temporarily going human, but for either the delight of her cheeky take on the 1870s, or the romance, or the charming supporting cast.

However much this begets a neglect of the central mystery, it nudges the book to deliver on these elements, such that most of its fun is, strictly speaking, irrelevant? Like, the side dishes are far and away more tasty than the main course.

Far from taking away from the page-to-page reading experience, as it might in hands less tactful than Carriger’s, it makes all the pastries and candies slipped in-between bites, of, well, the meal, seem complete in themselves. The author is almost indulging you: feeding you a shiny steampunk toy here, a Lord-and-Lady-Maccon moment there, a farcical subplot in tastes throughout. You’ve been good, dear reader. Have a tart.

Does Lord Akeldama need to be in this book for reasons that can’t be hand-waved away? No. But I would be loathe to banish his presence from this book’s dinner table. (And why would you––he’s delightful.)

As much as Changeless is, really, a let-down from Soulless, it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like a great deal of what there is to love about the first book is also present in the second. Without the substance of a solid A-plot and an apt sense of suspense, yes, but this is hardly the first time I’ve skipped dinner in favor of desert, and I don’t doubt I’ll do so again.

“The Betrayed” A Messy Yet Lovable Conclusion

This review contains a major spoiler for the ending of the first book in this duology, The Betrothed. Like, in the first paragraph.

Following 2020’s The Betrothed (reviewed here), Kiera Cass’ latest could’ve gone almost anywhere. In a move generally unbefitting her fluffy love story brand (though not entirely––need I remind you all of The One?), Cass married her protagonist, Hollis, off to her lowly but charming underdog suitor, and then proceeded to off him.

Damn, Silas. Rest in peace.

When we catch up with Hollis in the pages of The Betrayed, she’s on the way to her husband’s home country of Isolte with what’s left of her adopted family in tow: a mother-in-law, a sister-in-law, and a surly cousin-in-law who seems to want nothing more than to wipe her off the face of the Earth. King Quinten of Isolte, the monarch at whose hands Hollis suspects her wedding was turned into a slaughter, remains in power, as-yet unchallenged. At the end of The Betrothed, Hollis vowed she would bring him to justice, but how Cass was going to manage it in the follow up was anyone’s guess.

To her credit, or possibly against it, The Betrayed answers this question with a fairy-tale ease reminiscent of the endings in Shannon Hale’s novels: arguably too convenient, but satisfying nonetheless. There must be some note made, however, for how this move jilts the expectations laid out in book one. With a final note like that, one would think we’re in for much more trouble in the sequel than we actually meet.

It certainly doesn’t help that all of these resolution-enabling revelations arrive in a rushed cascade during the last hundred pages. The first two hundred, ironically, do precisely what The Betrothed did best: a slow and grounded approach to court intrigue, fronted by mostly personal stakes, all conducted on an intimate scale. When Cass works this way, the book works, running on a 1-to-1 conversion of character choices to plot progression, where it doesn’t seem entirely out of place for Hollis to be just as concerned about a certain love interest’s feelings as she is about who will eventually end up with Isolte’s crown.

But when Cass doesn’t work this way, opting instead for the drama of actual power actually changing hands, her knack for orchestrating conflict all but collapses. Complications are shoved out of the way, obstacles disappear, and the characters’ plans, generally, pan out exactly as predicted.

Admittedly, all of this sounds extremely grim, but it might not have been that much of a problem were it not for the predicament of The Betrayed being second in a duology. The problems in the final third of the book’s construction are, yes, substantial, but the simple tincture of time could’ve gone a long way, seeing as it’s beginning to seem across the board like a crashed second and final volume is becoming the new “middle book syndrome.”

Anyhow, taking more than one chapter to depose a head of state would’ve made a world of difference for the pacing. And some breathing room would’ve gone a long way towards keeping the ending from feeling like a dizzying array of crises introduced and swiftly rectified.

One thing will always rescue Kiera Cass books in the end, though, and that is her conviction in writing a truly sincere set of character dynamics. There’s no sense here of the shifting alliances among the major characters that worked so well in The Betrothed, but there is a warm and earnest family component that stays interesting throughout, despite the characters involved never being at one another’s throats.

Well, with one exception. Etan, the aforementioned surly cousin-in-law, has a bone to pick with Hollis for the better part of the book, but even in that case, Cass makes it personal without ever making it ruthless. It may speak ill of the book at large that she gives Etan more time to overcome his grudge than she does the toppling of more than one (!!!) reign, but regardless, that choice was a good one, at least for the development of his character.

And (possible spoiler, though you probably figured this out from a cursory glance at the blurb), it certainly doesn’t hurt the romance between him and Hollis, one that offers a solid, slower-burning counterpart to the one that was cultivated and then, swiftly, crushed in The Betrothed.

When it comes to getting me to squee over her couples, Cass has hacked some critical reward pathway in my brain: the way she uses a shared sense of obligation to push these two together meshes extremely well with the elevated stakes, and The Betrayed is keenly aware of the importance of small tokens in building its case for the pair, from the starring role of a handkerchief to the heavy symbolism of the characters’ clothes.

This particular style of romance puts The Betrayed in a league with something like The Guinevere Deception, another story that knows the importance of idle talk between the ladies of the nobility, and lingers, too, on gestures like jewelry and jousting favors. In The Guinivere Deception‘s sequel, no shortage of ink is spilled in describing the planning of a festival, and the same is true for The Betrayed‘s particular style of politicking, which I find as compelling as it is under-discussed in the general cloak-and-dagger affect of fantasy at large.

The great thing about Cass’ characterization of Hollis in all this is that it marches to this very standard. When Hollis triumphs, it’s because she got someone on her side through friendly means; stayed her hand, listened, and moved forward with honest, well-meaning intentions.

Is it tame for todays’ YA landscape? Yes. Does it mean the more bombastic plot points make a jarring counterpart that’s difficult to reconcile with the rest of the book? Also yes. But Hollis is refreshing as a heroine who’s true-hearted and means it, and that makes me regard The Betrayed with fondness, even if mostly for her sake.

How “The Wicked King” Attacked Me, Personally

Despite my love of thorny, enemies-to-lovers couples and court intrigue, I was not one of The Cruel Prince‘s immediate devotees. I found Holly Black’s worldbuilding, with its notes taken from classical sources and thoughtful approach to the mortals-in-Faerie problem, rich and intriguing, but ultimately not to the scale that would let me believe in the danger at hand. Faerie felt altogether too intimate, what, with its tiny graduating class and power plays conducted in between lectures.

Blasphemously, I was also “meh” on Jurdan, the pairing of Jude, a prickly mortal who cannot breathe without having a bone to pick, and Cardan, her opposite and equal in a fae fuckboy. (Argue semantics, if you wish, in the comments.)

Every now and then, the time comes for me to eat my words. The Wicked King, an absolute knockout of a sequel, is one such occasion.

First and most urgently addressed is an expansion of the world of the series. In The Cruel Prince, even with the help of distant fae courts and a cleverly-drawn magical history, the population and influence of Elfhame never escaped, to me at least, the sense that it was too small to be worth fighting over.

Putting high school and its archetypal cliques into the mix, however, was the one choice that proved fatal. This forever cemented in my mind the lingering suspicion that, even having exchanged the lecture hall for the throne room over the course of the book, we never left the petty high school squabbles behind. Even the most iconic Jurdan scenes from the first book felt ever so much like one shoving the other into a locker, despite the very real stakes involved.

But in The Wicked King, two things change that allow Holly Black’s plot construction to escape the specter of triviality. One, she puts a truly powerful contender in the way of Elfhame’s rule by way of the Undersea, a vast conglomerate of what were once independent merfolk courts, thus amplifying the outside pressure and expanding the book’s scope.

Two is deceptively simple: her characters are now in positions of power.

This rather straightforward move ups the ante a priori, but Black does undertake some heavy lifting to make sure there are fitting challenges facing our newly empowered leads now that they’ve moved up in the world. This is where I take back everything I said about The Cruel Prince not being dangerous enough: frustrating though it may have been to read at the time, the book’s dialed back scale turns out to be a massive advantage going forward, almost as if to spite me.

Here’s the thing: it allows the oppositions that will develop in The Wicked King time to form solid foundations. Both Locke and Nicasia, for example, who joined Cardan as Jude’s bullies in book one, become players in the game for power in book two. Just on principle, I would’ve wanted the books to skip straight to where the stakes were actively mounting, but it is in fact the history between the two of them, Cardan, and Jude––the history that was being written while I was rolling my eyes at the triviality of it all––that yields precisely what I want out of conflict, both where it pertains to their roles, and elsewhere: complexity.

The high school drama I pinned as unnecessary before is, to my deepest dismay, very necessary, indeed. The petty jealousy feeds later interactions. The silly feuds make the serious ones more personal. The answer most series fans have for people who didn’t love book one is “just wait.” Unfortunately, in this case, I have to verify. Holly Black was playing the long game all this time. I just wasn’t quick enough to see it.

All of this is to say, I ship Jurdan now, the lot of you were ever-so-right, and I hope you’re very pleased with yourselves.

To wit: where I clocked Cardan as sort of vague upon reading The Cruel Prince, he’s instead enigmatic in The Wicked King. Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t feel as though Black brought us into his head, but in this volume, that move comes into relief as a deliberate one. He’s just as unpredictable, if not more so, than before, but here, it’s a device for the controlled reveal of information that keeps ticking with expert precision until the very end. (And what an end! The internet spoiled me for it years ago and I still ooh’d like my classmate was being called to the principal’s office.)

At least––at least––I had the foresight to be fond of Jude from the very beginning. And how could I not? She’s like Skyward‘s Spensa with the piloting skills swapped in favor of an eye for politics: angry with her world and righteously so, a guttural character study in what it is to bear the sins of one’s father, and all the shame, resentment, and reactive violence that entails. But urged on as both leads are by softer desires (acceptance, actualization, and, in Jude’s case, love without any terms attached), the contrast of that against the spiny shell illuminates a fully realized, self-contradicting human being whom I would, without hesitation, die for. (Or kill for. Either way, what bliss…)

Considering the whole of this infuriating second book that manages to justify the choices of its predecessor in reverse, only one complaint truly carries over. The Court of Shadows remains underdeveloped, and, when a plot twist regarding the Ghost hit, for a moment, I was like “who?”

But, honestly. In the face of my girlish squee-ing all through Act III, I’m happy to savor what I’m given. I’ll save my “um-actually”s for another time.

“Spinning Silver” is a Fairy Tale of the Highest Caliber

Naomi Novik’s Uprooted is a wonder of a fairy tale: it has a stirring Beauty-and-the-Beast love story, a rich and varied use of the dark forest motif, and an almost domestic focus on the ordinary in the lives of her characters, showing us their families and their chores and their fireplaces. This framework must have been certified somewhere, to be unimpeachably good at mining stories of epic scale for maximum humanity, because it works like a charm in Spinning Silver, and three times over, at that.

Here, though, instead of the forest, Novik turns to snow and ice for a tale that is as much about frost and its effects on rye yields as it is about marriages, magical bargains, and portals between worlds. With this approach, Spinning Silver is more than utterly magical; it is utterly matronly, deeply concerned with the women that much of fantasy forgets––mothers, grandmothers, maidservants, and peasant girls who don’t get to marry princes.

In fact, the book is so magical precisely because it is so mundane, returning to us as readers the domestic labor that so often gets stripped away when fairy tales are adapted to high fantasy: Rumpelstiltskin is about spinning thread, after all.

Nowhere in the book is this better embodied that in the care Novik takes with her beautifully-rendered protagonist. Before we meet Miryem, a young Jewish woman whose talent for finance gets her swept into a magical crisis via a hilarious misunderstanding, we must first meet her circumstances: the first thing we hear is that her father, a moneylender, has been brought to the edge of bankruptcy by townspeople who openly refuse to pay him back.

As a child, Miryem watches her warmhearted father back down from disputes and more-or-less forfeit his money out of politeness for years. Spurred on by her mother’s worsening illness, Miryem sets out to improve her family’s lot by taking up moneylending in her father’s stead, and it is at a stranger’s doorstep, with a ledger book waiting for a fresh entry open on her desk at home, that her fairy tale begins.

(Incidentally, I will forever be indebted to every instance of another character referring to the math Miryem uses to keep her family’s accounts as “magic.” Wonder and practicality are not mutually exclusive in folklore, and little kernels like this show us just how well Novik knows it.)

I could write buckets from here about the heady delight of how Novik binds Miryem’s choice to step in for her father to the motifs at the heart of the story, from the “coldness” she has to take on in order to settle the accounts of people who don’t want to, or can’t, directly pay, to the novel’s slow and gratifying reclamation of the language used to describe pragmatic, determined women like Miryem––”icy,” “harsh,” and, again, “cold.” (This is also pivotal in the introduction of the Staryk, Spinning Silver‘s wintry fey, and how they’re re-imagined over the course of the novel.)

Suffice it to say, Novik’s reinvention of her symbols is one of the most elegant I’ve read in recent years. Sophisticated and thoughtful, yes, but also extremely generous with the characters: it affirms rather than sands away their frankly understandable “coldness,” affirming it as a choice of love for the sake of the people and communities they care about, as opposed to the solitary, selfish way we’re used to icy women being characterized.

Alone, Miryem’s plot would still be enchanting, but Spinning Silver also features two deuteragonists and their perspectives: Wanda, who comes to work for Miryem’s family to pay off her father’s debt (and also just to escape him, period), and Irina, a duke’s daughter, who’s staring down the barrel of an unwanted marriage.

There’s a certain beauty in Spinning Silver as a patchwork story. Novik is in no rush to bring the plot up to a fast clip, so scenes linger and ostensibly simple revelations will simmer for the reader before the characters, amidst the workings of their daily lives, come to them. There’s as much excitement in watching the storylines creep together at a slow trawl as there is in watching them actually meet. And with multiple tabs open, so to speak, Spinning Silver makes itself rich in what it seems like so much of storytelling is strapped for: time.

You feel the months pass in one of the threads while in the other, some vital secret is being revealed. The pace isn’t slow so much as it is deliberate, a welcome temper for fantasy’s customary high stakes and great deeds. (Also optimal for the cultivation of a pair of absolutely spellbinding romances, but I find those best discovered in surprise, so I’ll leave it at that.)

Alas, Spinning Silver, like all books, must end, but Novik, of course, nails that too, with an answer to the story’s crisis that respects the humanity of all the members of its ensemble, and puts the power of naming (as per the original Rumpelstiltskin tale––loosely retold here, though marvelously so) to use right where it’s needed, but not necessarily where it’s expected.

There should be a name for a plot twist whose thrill lies in the very process of discovery, to set it apart from a plot twist whose power lies in its ability to shock. Spinning Silver isn’t exactly a book that will have you gasping, but it did have me grinning ear-to-ear as all the answers, emotional and symbolic, came into words precisely as I’d hoped. Say it, say it! I found myself urging my heavy paperback copy.

And then it did.

A Universe of Adventure in “A Thousand Pieces of You”

Of four alternate universes––one with bananas new developments in tech, one where things are barely stepping out of the industrial revolution, one with a slight turn in physics research, and one where most of the Earth has been submerged by rising sea levels––what do they have in common?

Give or take a few family members, every one of these universes comes equipped with one Marguerite, or Margarita, Caine, one Paul or Pavel Markov, and one Theo Beck. This is no mistake: the rules of travel via Firebird, a discreet, consciousness-transporting device that masquerades as a necklace, lock the wearer out of universes in which they don’t exist. Ergo, the contents of the next dimension are anybody’s guess, but the cast is consistent, giving Evernight author Claudia Gray an alcove of tight-knit personal drama in the eye of an ever-changing storm of dimensions and research conspiracies. A conniving tech mogul or Firebird-toting spy is never more than a few steps away, but they’re never more pressing than the feelings at hand. Because the same things are at stake in so many realities, every secret is life-or-death. Claudia Gray has hardwired the implications of her book’s tense, sorehearted love triangle to be as wide-ranging and catastrophic as possible, a drastic but effective measure to marry plot and romance, and beautifully, a foolproof way to make 360 pages pass like a dream.

To helm this Firebird-powered chase through the dimensions, Gray chooses the impassioned, artistic Marguerite, daughter of physicists Henry Caine and Sophia Kovalenka, who understands just enough of the science to get around the multiverse, but frets over the ethical and historical possibilities with much deeper consideration. Her parents have been working on the Firebird for a number of years before A Thousand Pieces of You opens, but the story starts and ends with Marguerite, whose ties to her parents finally take the new technology out of careful, impartial hands. Through Marguerite’s deep, detailed relationship with visual art, Gray parses out the differences in parallel realities, giving each one a new flavor, and each Marguerite a different artistic backstory––in one dimension, she’s fascinated by color and paint, in another by lines and charcoal, but detail is the uniting thread.

Claudia Gray explains this coherence of chance through her characters, in the beginnings of a scientific treatise on destiny. The physics student Paul Markov, among many stray post-grads Marguerite’s parents have housed, poses a theory on recurring patterns and tendencies through dimensions––what happens in one often recurs in others, leaving some things down to an intangible force that sounds an awful lot like fate, and yet is so tentative, so cautiously approached and carefully considered, that it blends in with the scenery of grounded science fiction.

Gray makes swift use of parallel worlds’ literary tradition––her writing straddles new ideas for the genre and familiar tropes; it’s conscious that this idea has been done well before and fashions a broader, more varied jaunt out of existing language. The grief that tore Rose Tyler apart in Doctor Who’s 2005 episode “Father’s Day” reappears when the deceased in Marguerite’s world are still alive in others, and she has to keep the truth and despair to herself as she faces a figure who’s all but risen from the dead. Gray also takes a cue from Everett’s Many-Worlds theory, and fashions her multiverse on a system of possibilities, with every outcome of every action spawning a different universe, where Josephine Angelini’s Trial by Fire, of the same year, populates the multiverse with the outcomes of decisions instead.

A Thousand Pieces of You also does some nuanced work with morality, adding to the conversation, “Does every ‘version’ of you hold the same moral fiber?” The question never touches Marguerite, but it does brush Theo, another postgrad from her parents’ research cohort, and Paul , who both take turns as the suspected guilty party (in one universe or another) in a gripping revenge story that propels the book’s thrilling chase.

Claudia Gray’s work, in this case, isn’t the full-bodied deconstruction of vengeance that The Last Voyage of Poe Blythe is, relying, instead of on characters, on a withholding of information on the part of the circumstances that surround it. But Gray’s work makes due, keeping away from the whodunit just long enough to keep it interesting. Her eventual villain might creep into later books with just enough frequency that the works lose their adventurous tendencies and fix on a cat-and-mouse plot without much room left, but for now, the excitement of new worlds dominates the Firebird trilogy’s opener, filling it with opportunities to exhibit fascinating world-building and a brilliantly-displayed sense of scope––all of which are possible without the plot overwhelming the bounds of character, which Gray keeps at pace with her racing plot through her use of flashbacks.

Such flashbacks are often the book’s most powerful scenes, which Gray ensures by never just using them to emphasize how important these characters are to each other––that much is obvious by their choices in the present, no flashbacks required. Instead, Gray’s flashbacks weave the dimensions together, much like the ins and outs of Marguerite’s artworks, posing a newly remembered fresh wound as a challenge to the possibilities of an alternate universe. Through this, she and her ties to the central cast of characters remain at the heart of the storm.

The multiverse and all its wonders are well enough open to Claudia Gray in the next book––and Ten Thousand Skies Above You cooking up something interesting is the closest mathematical possibility.

Thank you for reading! This review was originally posted on Goodreads in 2019. I reviewed the sequel in a wrap-up earlier this month.