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purplepenning's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
lighthearted
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
5.0
A fantastic read in a fantastical world where Victorian London is entwined with Faerie treaties as part of the historic split from Rome and alliance with druidry. But it's still Victorian England — with its powerful few exploiting the downtrodden many, now with magically binding contracts. Enter Deri, a roguishly clever human assistant in the goblin market that lies beneath the city. It is an absolute joy to watch him barter and negotiate through a series of ever more treacherous high-stakes deals in an effort to secure his destiny, save his life, and free the sweet indentured workshop boy he loves. Everything has a price in this world. Will Deri give up his very heart's desire to achieve the destiny he's been chasing?
Come buy! Come buy! And see what lies in this pealing tale where all's for sale and love comes dear
twixt hope and fear within the goblin market!
(Get the audiobook for the 5-star experience. Narrator Will Watt is exceptional.)
Come buy! Come buy! And see what lies in this pealing tale where all's for sale and love comes dear
twixt hope and fear within the goblin market!
(Get the audiobook for the 5-star experience. Narrator Will Watt is exceptional.)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail and Physical abuse
Moderate: Blood, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Body horror, Classism, Torture, and Violence
Minor: Excrement, Sexual content, and Alcohol
Indentured servitude with magically binding contracts and automatically enacted punitive clausesflinx8's review against another edition
This was an excellent narrator and started very promisingly but then reached scenes of child injury, slavery and torture which made me nope out.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child abuse, Slavery, and Torture
schnaucl's review
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
I wanted to like it more than I did. I think the problem for me was that Deri spends the first quarter or so of the book focused on being one of the few human merchants in the goblin market. While I never had the sense that he had any interest at all in having his own indentured servant(s), he clearly was okay with otherwise exploiting desperate and/or naive visitors to the market and the limiting factor in his willingness to exploit others was less a sense of morality (at least at the beginning) than a lack of skill. The closer the deal is to being fair the easier it is for the market to work its magic. It's hard to root for Gordon Gecko, is what I'm saying.
And then he brings up the concept or work to rule. And I love unions, I think they're great. But I have a really hard time understanding how someone in the society as presented would ever have heard of the concept of working to rule. And in a society where parents can sell their children into indentured servitude, and where it's clearly permissible to force those indentured servants to work in dangerous conditions that can leave them maimed or dead it's really hard to see why work to rule would even work. Later on there's some discussion of the contract that offers at least some protections to the indentured servant (and presumably is enforced by magic) but it's not explained until later and we've already seen it's fine to beat indentured servants for "insolence" or as motivation. But it's really hard to reconcile the threat of violence as a motivating factor (which it sounds like had been employed before) with respecting work to rule. I guess maybe the magic is supposed to have stopped any retaliation?
Deri does eventually work to free other indentured servants, but for a long time it's viewed more as a happy byproduct of his plans to free himself and then Owain, not a goal in itself. I'm not sure that Deri would have tried to free everyone if the owner of his contract hadn't decided to rewrite contracts to further restrict and exploit the indentured class.
But in the end, the system has only minor changes. It's certainly not abolished. The idea is that Owain who himself was changed by ingesting a new destiny without informed consent, will be a new prince and I guess have more sympathy for the lower classes which is nice as far as it goes but it wasn't like there was a suggestion that the crown would try and actually alleviate the suffering that caused people to sell their children or themselves into indentured servitude. The thing that is supposed to stop people from doing that is, I guess, hearing Owain's story. But I didn't get the impression that people who were desperate enough to sell their freedom didn't understand how bad it might be for them. They were doing it because they didn't see any other options. The contract were apparently rewritten in some nebulous way to make things more equal but I don't think it was ever specified what that actually meant.
We also didn't see much of Deri and Owain falling in love. In lust, sure, and I guess technically since Deri was able to sell true love it must be so but there's even a reference to a sort of puppy love and the expectations of others that must be what it is between Deri and Owain. They meet a handful of time for a few hours at a time and it doesn't seem like enough to be true love.
As a somewhat minor thing, early on it's said that the usual rules about thanking people in Faerie are in place. There's a slight twist on it here in that in the market it suggests a bad deal was made in your favor so it's an insulting thing to say. But later on people are constantly thanking each other. I get it if those outside the market do it, but those raised in it should be much more conscious of it.
And then he brings up the concept or work to rule. And I love unions, I think they're great. But I have a really hard time understanding how someone in the society as presented would ever have heard of the concept of working to rule. And in a society where parents can sell their children into indentured servitude, and where it's clearly permissible to force those indentured servants to work in dangerous conditions that can leave them maimed or dead it's really hard to see why work to rule would even work. Later on there's some discussion of the contract that offers at least some protections to the indentured servant (and presumably is enforced by magic) but it's not explained until later and we've already seen it's fine to beat indentured servants for "insolence" or as motivation. But it's really hard to reconcile the threat of violence as a motivating factor (which it sounds like had been employed before) with respecting work to rule. I guess maybe the magic is supposed to have stopped any retaliation?
But in the end, the system has only minor changes. It's certainly not abolished. The idea is that Owain who himself was changed by ingesting a new destiny without informed consent, will be a new prince and I guess have more sympathy for the lower classes which is nice as far as it goes but it wasn't like there was a suggestion that the crown would try and actually alleviate the suffering that caused people to sell their children or themselves into indentured servitude. The thing that is supposed to stop people from doing that is, I guess, hearing Owain's story. But I didn't get the impression that people who were desperate enough to sell their freedom didn't understand how bad it might be for them. They were doing it because they didn't see any other options. The contract were apparently rewritten in some nebulous way to make things more equal but I don't think it was ever specified what that actually meant.
We also didn't see much of Deri and Owain falling in love. In lust, sure, and I guess technically since Deri was able to sell true love it must be so but there's even a reference to a sort of puppy love and the expectations of others that must be what it is between Deri and Owain. They meet a handful of time for a few hours at a time and it doesn't seem like enough to be true love.
As a somewhat minor thing, early on it's said that the usual rules about thanking people in Faerie are in place. There's a slight twist on it here in that in the market it suggests a bad deal was made in your favor so it's an insulting thing to say. But later on people are constantly thanking each other. I get it if those outside the market do it, but those raised in it should be much more conscious of it.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Child abuse, Classism, Physical abuse, Torture, and Slavery
Minor: Abandonment, Gore, and Colonisation
purrson's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse
Moderate: Injury/Injury detail and Classism
Minor: Confinement, Torture, Grief, Abandonment, and Physical abuse
Major topics/background: worker’s rights, queer romance, queer-normative world
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