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A review by alexiophiles
Hush by Dylan Farrow
4.0
This book was a surprise. The synopsis clearly sounded good to me, as I requested (and was approved!) an ARC from NetGalley months ago. For some reason, even though I’ve had this on my Kindle TBR for a while now, I couldn’t find the motivation to read. Even though the concept interested me, I didn’t really have high hopes for it. No real reason for that, that’s just how I felt in the back of my mind. I’m glad this book surpassed my expectations!
Hush is a world where a disease caused by the written world has plagued the cities and towns. Because of this, writing with ink (and therefore, reading) have been banned, along with a list of other activities. The world is governed by the Bards of High House, who are basically magicians using the spoken word as their magic.
Queue our main character, Shae. Her family has been affected by the plague, the Blot, and now she and her mother live on the outskirts of their village, basically the town pariahs. After her mother is murdered and the killing is covered up, Shae decides to join the order of the Bards as a way to search for her mother’s killer. This leads to her uncovering more than just the cover-up of her mother’s murder, and she finds herself in a battle for the wellbeing of reality as she knows it.
Because Shae and her mother were basically shunned by the majority of her village, she didn’t grow up with a lot friends and connections. Because of this, she is very quick to trust any new person who shows affection towards here. She is also a very emotional person, and both of these facts hinder her training once she joins the Bards. Shae is quick to learn though, and she quickly turns her situation around to her advantage. Reading from her point of view was interesting. I don’t want to say fun, because madness grips Shae at some points in the story, and she lets her stress and anxiety overtake her, and I felt this anxiety myself in my core.
One thing I really loved about Hush was it’s unique notion of magic. The entire concept of the book was an eccentric one, and it’s not like anything else I’ve read before. The idea that written word is harmful is so ironic because that concept comes to live from being written down in a fictional story. I love it, and the way we got to learn how that magic was wielded along with Shae was extraordinary.
Again, this book really took me surprise by how much I enjoyed it, and I will definitely be picking up the next installment in this series!
Hush is a world where a disease caused by the written world has plagued the cities and towns. Because of this, writing with ink (and therefore, reading) have been banned, along with a list of other activities. The world is governed by the Bards of High House, who are basically magicians using the spoken word as their magic.
Queue our main character, Shae. Her family has been affected by the plague, the Blot, and now she and her mother live on the outskirts of their village, basically the town pariahs. After her mother is murdered and the killing is covered up, Shae decides to join the order of the Bards as a way to search for her mother’s killer. This leads to her uncovering more than just the cover-up of her mother’s murder, and she finds herself in a battle for the wellbeing of reality as she knows it.
Because Shae and her mother were basically shunned by the majority of her village, she didn’t grow up with a lot friends and connections. Because of this, she is very quick to trust any new person who shows affection towards here. She is also a very emotional person, and both of these facts hinder her training once she joins the Bards. Shae is quick to learn though, and she quickly turns her situation around to her advantage. Reading from her point of view was interesting. I don’t want to say fun, because madness grips Shae at some points in the story, and she lets her stress and anxiety overtake her, and I felt this anxiety myself in my core.
One thing I really loved about Hush was it’s unique notion of magic. The entire concept of the book was an eccentric one, and it’s not like anything else I’ve read before. The idea that written word is harmful is so ironic because that concept comes to live from being written down in a fictional story. I love it, and the way we got to learn how that magic was wielded along with Shae was extraordinary.
Again, this book really took me surprise by how much I enjoyed it, and I will definitely be picking up the next installment in this series!