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3.99 AVERAGE
3.99 AVERAGE
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
slow-paced
adventurous
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I feel like talking about this experience has to be prefaced by the note that this is the first time I’ve listened to the audiobook version of a story, so I’ll head off that first. I had expected that I would struggle to maintain attention and would miss elements, however I found that with a talented voice actor going at a measured pace the story was easy to follow, and I’m absolutely wanting to try it again.
This is especially so as my new work involves a lot of factory floor time doing repetitive tasks for hours at a time. Audiobooks are a good fix, and I’m ecstatic that they’re working. However, Spotify Audiobooks are a scam; limited monthly hours weren’t even enough for the whole book, and I had to bootleg the last few chapters. Anyway, onto the book now.
This book is very frustrating because, for all the things it does and all the swings it takes, it is occasionally almost good. It has enough ideas and gestures towards ideas to get one excited, only to reverse on itself and reveal itself to be not nearly as inventive or interesting as it feels like it ought to be.
The positives first. The first few chapters were alright, I liked the setup. There were a few fun characters I enjoyed, Lucien, Nesta, Rhys, really just the ones with any dimension to them. Though the story mostly takes place in and around a manor with no real “court business”, the second half of the third act introduces a more layered court intrigue setup that has the bones of a much more interesting story than the one we’ve been given (this is a common theme).
Feyra, the main character, is very frustrating to follow. There are the bones of a good idea in her setup; a self-reliant huntress taking care of her family, who has skills in survival and nature that would be relevant when flung into the chaos of a fey court where she could only rely on herself. I’m not saying her skills are irrelevant, there are many occasions where they feature and are relied upon, however these instances are largely within a narrative framework where she is under the protection of local nobility and is rescued whenever in actual danger. As opposed to having to get to grips with court dynamics, she is in a Beauty and the Beast plot, which is recreated annoyingly straightforwardly.
On Feyra’s character, there’s two main issues. First, though her suspicion towards fey is appreciable, she has a frustrating inability to absorb things she’s been told. One could say that she suspects lies, but she believes for a time they can’t lie, and yet she spends several chapters just asking different people the same question about how to go home as if she expects a different answer, and then acts surprised when it appears she can’t. It could be put down to denial, but it’s not framed that way, to my ear. She's just obsessed with going home to a degree that doesn't feel credible after it's been established her family is fine and there's no way back. There's also the degree to which what internality she has dissipates around Tamlin after she becomes infatuated; there is a thread about not abandoning the ones you love but it’s tenuous.
The fey are also a missed opportunity. Put simply, they feel like spicy humans, or at best wizards. As written, their feydom feels incidental to the way they act, as though they are reskinned people rather than creatures made substantively of different matter to humans. To my mind, fey shoukd evoke fascination at their seemingly incomprehensible logics and orthogonal priors. Throughout, fey like Tamlin or Lucien are concerned with mundane things without much peculiarity or alienness, and observe largely conventional moralities. They’re monsters, but monsters largely within frameworks we recognise; beasts, warriors, hunks, standard enough fare. Throughout, I couldn’t escape the sense that this story could have been a werewolf romance, or some other equivalent, without changing much.
Emily Wilde is an excellent comparison. I want to write an article about it. In that story, Wendell is a freak. He is genuinely liable to change direction without regard for norms or propriety at a moments notice. It feels like he is on a different planet to Emily. He called himself Wendell when picking a human name. He is substantively, as a character, fey. Here, the fey don’t fascinate, or evoke curiosity, because they’re essentially conventional people blessed with magic.
The most frustrating thing about how conventional this story feels is found in the plot twist at the end of the second act about the nature of the jeopardy that makes the story orders of magnitude less interesting, makes the world feel smaller in the worst kind of way, and makes the story shift from people happening to fall in love to people obliged to (to the point that characters depend on it and the dynamic frames Feyra as at fault for having doubts and not acting on her first whim).
There’s other stuff. There’s some weird stuff about blame in this story, with people often attributing harm to people who had no reason to act otherwise, didn’t like that. People often “blurt out” fully formed and articulated statements of how they feel as if they had it on deck, rather than the sort of brief, clipped messes people usually tend to give up like that. This was just a frustrating book because it could have been good! Read Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries! Read about a protagonist who actually is capable of engaging with the world they’re in!
In the moment, the story seemed to glide through my ears inoffensively in a way that I was somewhat onboard with, but as I reflect more on what was offered, I really can’t come to any conclusion other than this. It helped pass time as I worked, and thinking back I cannot give it any more credit than that.
I didn’t care for this story.
This is especially so as my new work involves a lot of factory floor time doing repetitive tasks for hours at a time. Audiobooks are a good fix, and I’m ecstatic that they’re working. However, Spotify Audiobooks are a scam; limited monthly hours weren’t even enough for the whole book, and I had to bootleg the last few chapters. Anyway, onto the book now.
This book is very frustrating because, for all the things it does and all the swings it takes, it is occasionally almost good. It has enough ideas and gestures towards ideas to get one excited, only to reverse on itself and reveal itself to be not nearly as inventive or interesting as it feels like it ought to be.
The positives first. The first few chapters were alright, I liked the setup. There were a few fun characters I enjoyed, Lucien, Nesta, Rhys, really just the ones with any dimension to them. Though the story mostly takes place in and around a manor with no real “court business”, the second half of the third act introduces a more layered court intrigue setup that has the bones of a much more interesting story than the one we’ve been given (this is a common theme).
Feyra, the main character, is very frustrating to follow. There are the bones of a good idea in her setup; a self-reliant huntress taking care of her family, who has skills in survival and nature that would be relevant when flung into the chaos of a fey court where she could only rely on herself. I’m not saying her skills are irrelevant, there are many occasions where they feature and are relied upon, however these instances are largely within a narrative framework where she is under the protection of local nobility and is rescued whenever in actual danger. As opposed to having to get to grips with court dynamics, she is in a Beauty and the Beast plot, which is recreated annoyingly straightforwardly.
On Feyra’s character, there’s two main issues. First, though her suspicion towards fey is appreciable, she has a frustrating inability to absorb things she’s been told. One could say that she suspects lies, but she believes for a time they can’t lie, and yet she spends several chapters just asking different people the same question about how to go home as if she expects a different answer, and then acts surprised when it appears she can’t. It could be put down to denial, but it’s not framed that way, to my ear. She's just obsessed with going home to a degree that doesn't feel credible after it's been established her family is fine and there's no way back. There's also the degree to which what internality she has dissipates around Tamlin after she becomes infatuated; there is a thread about not abandoning the ones you love but it’s tenuous.
The fey are also a missed opportunity. Put simply, they feel like spicy humans, or at best wizards. As written, their feydom feels incidental to the way they act, as though they are reskinned people rather than creatures made substantively of different matter to humans. To my mind, fey shoukd evoke fascination at their seemingly incomprehensible logics and orthogonal priors. Throughout, fey like Tamlin or Lucien are concerned with mundane things without much peculiarity or alienness, and observe largely conventional moralities. They’re monsters, but monsters largely within frameworks we recognise; beasts, warriors, hunks, standard enough fare. Throughout, I couldn’t escape the sense that this story could have been a werewolf romance, or some other equivalent, without changing much.
Emily Wilde is an excellent comparison. I want to write an article about it. In that story, Wendell is a freak. He is genuinely liable to change direction without regard for norms or propriety at a moments notice. It feels like he is on a different planet to Emily. He called himself Wendell when picking a human name. He is substantively, as a character, fey. Here, the fey don’t fascinate, or evoke curiosity, because they’re essentially conventional people blessed with magic.
The most frustrating thing about how conventional this story feels is found in the plot twist at the end of the second act about the nature of the jeopardy that makes the story orders of magnitude less interesting, makes the world feel smaller in the worst kind of way, and makes the story shift from people happening to fall in love to people obliged to (to the point that characters depend on it and the dynamic frames Feyra as at fault for having doubts and not acting on her first whim).
There’s other stuff. There’s some weird stuff about blame in this story, with people often attributing harm to people who had no reason to act otherwise, didn’t like that. People often “blurt out” fully formed and articulated statements of how they feel as if they had it on deck, rather than the sort of brief, clipped messes people usually tend to give up like that. This was just a frustrating book because it could have been good! Read Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries! Read about a protagonist who actually is capable of engaging with the world they’re in!
In the moment, the story seemed to glide through my ears inoffensively in a way that I was somewhat onboard with, but as I reflect more on what was offered, I really can’t come to any conclusion other than this. It helped pass time as I worked, and thinking back I cannot give it any more credit than that.
I didn’t care for this story.
fast-paced
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
dark
emotional
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I can’t convince myself I enjoy reading anything fantasy after struggling to get through this book. Got about 70% of the way through, just was not interesting at all.