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rainbowalcremie1995's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
I really wanted to like this book. For the first third or so, I would have given it three or four stars, but by the end, it became a book I couldn’t bring myself to recommend. Still, as much as it disappointed me, it had the potential to be a great book, and I would like to share what I enjoyed about it before I get into the flaws.
The pacing throughout the book was slow, but at the beginning, I didn’t mind so much because I liked the characters and ideas that were introduced. In the first paragraphs of the book, Cathy describes her childhood dreams of adventure, acknowledges the shortcomings of her imagination, and juxtaposes these childhood dreams to what she ends up finding in the faerie realm. I don’t want to get too much into the sibling relationship yet, but in the first part of the novel, I sympathized with Cathy for growing apart from her brother, and how their society’s gender roles played a part in allowing him to travel, while she had trouble finding her own role in society.
Sometimes the language of the book can be a little awkward, and there were a few descriptions I had to read more than once. However, I think that for the most part, the descriptive language worked well with the setting. Most of the novel is spent in Gethsemane, a castle with a complicated, dream-like layout and many secrets. While I would have loved to see more of Arcadia, I understand that for the purpose of the novel, the author was going for a claustrophobic atmosphere. That being said, my favorite parts of the novel were those glimpses of Arcadia outside of Gethsemane: the visitors to the masquerade, the marketplace, and the sea whale.
My favorite characters were also the fae side characters. While I thought Cathy’s development was alright in the beginning of the book, neither of the two main human characters were anywhere near as interesting as all of the minor fae characters. Much of the novel concerns theological discussions, and while I thought those could get a little long and repetitive at times, I always loved reading Benjamin’s questions and how he tried hard to be faithful even if the missionaries couldn’t quite explain the Bible’s contradictions. I also thought that Davenport’s conversations with Cathy were interesting, and I think that having one of Gethsemane’s main residents be a changeling did add to the unsettling atmosphere. Oddly enough, I also really liked the Queen. Sometimes, I thought that she was sort of funny, in a way. Her dress made out of bees was very cute. Also, the scene at the masquerade, in which she shows the “true forms” of the guests, was one of my favorite descriptions in the whole book (although what happens to Cathy in that scene also leads to the worst plot twist in the entire book, so I can’t call the entire scene good).
So far, I’ve mostly described what I enjoyed about the book. A woman goes to find her estranged brother, finds faerie land stranger than she would have thought, a beautiful queen wants to throw a party in their house, they have to entertain her even though she’s dangerous… All of that could have been a fine novel.
If only.
The rest of the review concerns heavy spoilers, but even if you don’t want to read this part, I would highly suggest looking at any content warnings before deciding to read this book yourself, and like I said, I overall can’t recommend this book despite the praise I’ve given it so far.
The second half of the book is where everything truly fell apart for me. Part of this is my fault for going into the novel with my own expectations. However, I also feel that the twist was unnecessary and ultimately detrimental to the characters, and there could have been far more interesting things to do with their relationship.
I knew this was going to be a book about a sister finding her brother. While I’m not the sort of person who thinks it’s bad to include a romance subplot in a book, I was interested in reading a book that was primarily concerned with a family relationship. Even before the reveal, I was already getting a little tired of Cathy constantly talking about how great her brother is, and was starting to get a little weirded out by how jealous she was every time a woman so much as looked at him. Of course, I thought that maybe the novel was going to paint Cathy as an overbearing sister who’s worried about growing apart from a family member, and I ignored many of the warning signs and excused them as the writer maybe not being the best at writing sibling relationships. So, getting hit with explicit incest about halfway through the book felt like a slap in the face to me.
There were so many things I hated about this subplot. First, Cathy and her obsession with her brother takes over the plot of the second half of the novel, and I had already thought the plot was getting a little too slow. Also, the reveal that Cathy is a changeling (or at least that she thinks she’s a changeling) is treated as some kind of get-out-of-incest-free card, and her constantly referring to Laon as “Catherine Helstone’s brother” in an attempt to distance herself didn’t help at all. She literally has memories of them growing up together, and her trying to justify the incest to him just made me start to hate her. The double reveal at the end that she wasn’t a changeling didn’t make me feel anything, partly because I’d spoiled myself on that already, and partly because for me, it didn’t change anything. This book is written in first person, and Cathy using what feels like the same three phrases to describe how handsome and… great?... her brother is was extremely uncomfortable. Laon was always a much better character when he was offscreen.
I think the worst part of the incest subplot was that it didn’t need to be there. As I said at the beginning, I think that this being a story about Cathy worrying about being estranged from a family member is just fine. Laon could have wanted to become a missionary for any non-incest related reasons. The Queen could have so many other ways of manipulating them. The Queen already did manipulate Cathy in an interesting way by having her kill Davenport. The incest wasn’t even manipulation on the Queen’s part, really. They already had these feelings before coming to Arcadia, and as I said before, I think that Cathy being a changeling doesn’t make that relationship any less gross. The incest subplot not only ruined Cathy’s character for me, but it also made me go from indifferent about Laon to hating him, and also made the Queen less interesting. It didn’t help that the parts of the book that weren’t about the incest were instead about theology, and while I knew that was a main focus of the book going in, most of the theological revelations at the end involve Cathy just having an epiphany and figuring everything out all at once. Which is a shame, because I liked the imagery of the moths, but the moths also feel like they were used because the author realized the book was almost over and needed the characters to find all of the answers.
I don’t have much to say about the final revelation, that Arcadia is hell and the Queen is Lilith. At that point, I just wanted the book to be over. I guess one thing I will say is that something I liked at the beginning was how pointless missionary work was shown to be, since Christianity seems at odds with the nature of the fae, but since the book ends with Laon and Cathy deciding to still bring the word to them, it feels like their time in Arcadia taught them nothing.
Anyway, like I said, I can’t recommend this book, but at the same time, part of me is glad that I read it. There was a pretty good gothic horror story about faeries somewhere in here, but it suffered from taking place at a single location and also being buried under a terrible incest plot. For all its flaws, I can’t say this book didn’t get me to think. The most painful reading experience is picking up a book that could have been so good, if not for the problems.
The pacing throughout the book was slow, but at the beginning, I didn’t mind so much because I liked the characters and ideas that were introduced. In the first paragraphs of the book, Cathy describes her childhood dreams of adventure, acknowledges the shortcomings of her imagination, and juxtaposes these childhood dreams to what she ends up finding in the faerie realm. I don’t want to get too much into the sibling relationship yet, but in the first part of the novel, I sympathized with Cathy for growing apart from her brother, and how their society’s gender roles played a part in allowing him to travel, while she had trouble finding her own role in society.
Sometimes the language of the book can be a little awkward, and there were a few descriptions I had to read more than once. However, I think that for the most part, the descriptive language worked well with the setting. Most of the novel is spent in Gethsemane, a castle with a complicated, dream-like layout and many secrets. While I would have loved to see more of Arcadia, I understand that for the purpose of the novel, the author was going for a claustrophobic atmosphere. That being said, my favorite parts of the novel were those glimpses of Arcadia outside of Gethsemane: the visitors to the masquerade, the marketplace, and the sea whale.
My favorite characters were also the fae side characters. While I thought Cathy’s development was alright in the beginning of the book, neither of the two main human characters were anywhere near as interesting as all of the minor fae characters. Much of the novel concerns theological discussions, and while I thought those could get a little long and repetitive at times, I always loved reading Benjamin’s questions and how he tried hard to be faithful even if the missionaries couldn’t quite explain the Bible’s contradictions. I also thought that Davenport’s conversations with Cathy were interesting, and I think that having one of Gethsemane’s main residents be a changeling did add to the unsettling atmosphere. Oddly enough, I also really liked the Queen. Sometimes, I thought that she was sort of funny, in a way. Her dress made out of bees was very cute. Also, the scene at the masquerade, in which she shows the “true forms” of the guests, was one of my favorite descriptions in the whole book (although what happens to Cathy in that scene also leads to the worst plot twist in the entire book, so I can’t call the entire scene good).
So far, I’ve mostly described what I enjoyed about the book. A woman goes to find her estranged brother, finds faerie land stranger than she would have thought, a beautiful queen wants to throw a party in their house, they have to entertain her even though she’s dangerous… All of that could have been a fine novel.
If only.
The rest of the review concerns heavy spoilers, but even if you don’t want to read this part, I would highly suggest looking at any content warnings before deciding to read this book yourself, and like I said, I overall can’t recommend this book despite the praise I’ve given it so far.
The second half of the book is where everything truly fell apart for me. Part of this is my fault for going into the novel with my own expectations. However, I also feel that the twist was unnecessary and ultimately detrimental to the characters, and there could have been far more interesting things to do with their relationship.
I knew this was going to be a book about a sister finding her brother. While I’m not the sort of person who thinks it’s bad to include a romance subplot in a book, I was interested in reading a book that was primarily concerned with a family relationship. Even before the reveal, I was already getting a little tired of Cathy constantly talking about how great her brother is, and was starting to get a little weirded out by how jealous she was every time a woman so much as looked at him. Of course, I thought that maybe the novel was going to paint Cathy as an overbearing sister who’s worried about growing apart from a family member, and I ignored many of the warning signs and excused them as the writer maybe not being the best at writing sibling relationships. So, getting hit with explicit incest about halfway through the book felt like a slap in the face to me.
There were so many things I hated about this subplot. First, Cathy and her obsession with her brother takes over the plot of the second half of the novel, and I had already thought the plot was getting a little too slow. Also, the reveal that Cathy is a changeling (or at least that she thinks she’s a changeling) is treated as some kind of get-out-of-incest-free card, and her constantly referring to Laon as “Catherine Helstone’s brother” in an attempt to distance herself didn’t help at all. She literally has memories of them growing up together, and her trying to justify the incest to him just made me start to hate her. The double reveal at the end that she wasn’t a changeling didn’t make me feel anything, partly because I’d spoiled myself on that already, and partly because for me, it didn’t change anything. This book is written in first person, and Cathy using what feels like the same three phrases to describe how handsome and… great?... her brother is was extremely uncomfortable. Laon was always a much better character when he was offscreen.
I think the worst part of the incest subplot was that it didn’t need to be there. As I said at the beginning, I think that this being a story about Cathy worrying about being estranged from a family member is just fine. Laon could have wanted to become a missionary for any non-incest related reasons. The Queen could have so many other ways of manipulating them. The Queen already did manipulate Cathy in an interesting way by having her kill Davenport. The incest wasn’t even manipulation on the Queen’s part, really. They already had these feelings before coming to Arcadia, and as I said before, I think that Cathy being a changeling doesn’t make that relationship any less gross. The incest subplot not only ruined Cathy’s character for me, but it also made me go from indifferent about Laon to hating him, and also made the Queen less interesting. It didn’t help that the parts of the book that weren’t about the incest were instead about theology, and while I knew that was a main focus of the book going in, most of the theological revelations at the end involve Cathy just having an epiphany and figuring everything out all at once. Which is a shame, because I liked the imagery of the moths, but the moths also feel like they were used because the author realized the book was almost over and needed the characters to find all of the answers.
I don’t have much to say about the final revelation, that Arcadia is hell and the Queen is Lilith. At that point, I just wanted the book to be over. I guess one thing I will say is that something I liked at the beginning was how pointless missionary work was shown to be, since Christianity seems at odds with the nature of the fae, but since the book ends with Laon and Cathy deciding to still bring the word to them, it feels like their time in Arcadia taught them nothing.
Anyway, like I said, I can’t recommend this book, but at the same time, part of me is glad that I read it. There was a pretty good gothic horror story about faeries somewhere in here, but it suffered from taking place at a single location and also being buried under a terrible incest plot. For all its flaws, I can’t say this book didn’t get me to think. The most painful reading experience is picking up a book that could have been so good, if not for the problems.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Incest
Moderate: Violence
evenstr's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Incest and Blood
Moderate: Violence
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