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kristinrdub's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Addiction, Injury/Injury detail, Drug abuse, Drug use, Vomit, and Violence
Moderate: Gore
Minor: Animal cruelty and Animal death
sleeping_jem's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Generally darker and grittier in tone than Tithe, potential readers should be aware that this story features sensitive topics such as homelessness and drug abuse. The romance element is once again quite light but does end up being a driving factor in the story.
Val is a complex character who often confounds or frustrates the reader but is nonetheless an interesting protagonist. Her actions feel in line with the behaviour of a struggling teenager who feels abandoned by her friends and family, even if they are often misguided and lead to trouble.
The setting of New York city is an unlikely place for a faerie story - a bold choice which expands on the worldbuilding begun in Tithe but might have been a bit more clear or detailed at times.
The cast of supporting characters (including the love interest) felt slightly under-developed; while morally ambiguous characters are realistic, the four friends Val spends time with all have similar temperaments and flaws, making them slightly indistinguishable. Several of them have no backstory whatsoever, and the characters who do recieve very little time to explore their respective pasts.
Overall, a well-written and unique book which doesn't hesitate to explore the darkest parts of both the human and faerie worlds. My main criticism lies in the fact that I couldn't help but feel while I was reading this book that it mainly served to set up the final book in the series.
Graphic: Addiction, Drug abuse, and Drug use
Moderate: Animal death
Minor: Injury/Injury detail and Violence
myranda_the_bookwyrm's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
Graphic: Drug abuse and Drug use
Moderate: Violence and Animal death
Minor: Sexual content
fiercereadsfiction's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Graphic: Drug use and Drug abuse
Moderate: Addiction and Violence
Minor: Adult/minor relationship
chasesys's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Graphic: Drug abuse, Drug use, Addiction, and Violence
Moderate: Murder, Injury/Injury detail, and Death
Minor: Sexual content, Infidelity, and Kidnapping
bookcaptivated's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Graphic: Addiction, Animal death, Blood, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Homophobia, Infidelity, Murder, Gun violence, Sexual content, and Violence
mollyanne624's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Violence, and Infidelity
Moderate: Animal death
Minor: Grief, Homophobia, Sexism, Toxic relationship, and Vomit
laequiem's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Graphic: Drug abuse, Drug use, and Violence
Moderate: Animal death, Vomit, Violence, Self harm, Infidelity, and Death
booksthatburn's review
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
In my review for TITHE I commented on how Asian (specifically Japanese) rep and gay rep were handled in the book and why that kept TITHE from being a book I can highly recommend. Unfortunately that's come back here. That's because TITHE established that fae have eyes which are "upturned" or "look Asian", it then makes me think that the frequent but random references in VALIANT to unnamed background characters appearing Asian to the human MC (in a book where no other racial categories are mentioned) makes it feel like I'm supposed to assume all those random "Asian" people were actually fae. It's either that, or the author was concerned that the reader know that unnamed characters we don't speak to and will never see again appear Asian (and in one case, specifically Indonesian) without ever commenting on other ethnicities, which doesn't sit right with me. As for the gay rep, there's some homophobic bullying of the MC at the very start of the book, with the insinuation that a secondary character who's present is lesbian. I'm taking that as canon for this to have a lesbian character, but her sexuality doesn't come up again anywhere else in it, and it also leaves ambiguous whether the MC is straight or if the bully was right that she's queer and she's maybe bi or pan (since she's in a canon het romance later on). It's completely superfluous to the story and the only thing I can think it's trying to accomplish in the narrative is maybe establish that she's unhappy at school as well as at home, since her bully is on the same school sports team as her. Either way, it feels like, once again in this series, the treatment of Asian characters is narratively strange and very othering, and queerness is used to explain ostracization. Which, you know, is a thing, being a queer kid can be lonely in an unsupportive environment, but this book just lets it hang there, with neither explanation nor relief. I want to be clear, I'm all for queer background characters, main characters, everything. I just want their queerness to exist as more than just an explanation for homophobic slurs against allocishet character main characters.
Since this is book two of a trilogy, it's time for the sequel check! Normally I'd check whether it wraps up something left hanging from the previous book, whether it has a storyline which starts in this book and wasn't present in the previous one, and whether it has a major thing that's introduced and resolved within the book, but functionally this is indistinguishable from just being a stand-alone book. It's technically in the same world, and we briefly run into some of the book one characters, but you wouldn't have to change anything to make it stand by itself. There is a status quo shift after book one which has effects in this book, but, again, it could just have easily just been the starting point without any reference to the first book. It's such a self-contained story that it didn't leave anything open to resolve in the next one. I guess I want to know what happens to these characters next, but it didn't even leave their options very open since they have an entire conversation about what they'll do after and it seems pretty settled. I am happy to report that the MC feels very different from either of the MC's from TITHE. and finally, this would completely make sense if someone picked it up without having read the first one, the only thing you'd be missing is that you wouldn't understand a couple of references to prior events and you wouldn't recognize some of the characters from TITHE who briefly appear here. One positive from its position in the series is that I feel like I got to see what the previous MC's are up to, so that was nice.
I hate think this book in the trilogy is completely skippable, but that's how I feel about it. The thing that turns this from a book I can't highly recommend into one I would actively advise you to avoid is that it kept the problems from TITHE without most of the stuff that made TITHE shine, and also without the in-universe justifications for those problems. The Asian rep in TITHE is cringey but it has an explanation. In VALIANT there is no explanation, just an obsessive need to make sure we know every time there's an Asian face in the scenery (I hesitate to even call it rep). The gay rep in TITHE is tangled with abuse and BDSM in a way that could be problematic but also creates a really engaging MC whose queer identity matters to the story. In VALIANT there's just a homophobic slur and a probably queer best friend to come back in to the rescue when the (implicitly allocishet) MC needs some help.
Graphic: Drug use, Drug abuse, Violence, and Death
Moderate: Self harm
Minor: Homophobia and Sexism
CW for homophobia, sexism, self harm, drug abuse, drug use, violence, parental death (backstory), death.multiplyoctopi's review
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Moderate: Murder, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Addiction, Blood, Death, Gore, and Drug use
Minor: Gun violence and Sexual content