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A review by abrittlebee
Veil by Dylan Farrow
3.0
While I had mixed feelings about Hush, Veil was a vast improvement. It was fast-paced, adventurous, fantastical, and managed to further build out a unique world with a well laid out magic system. If only Farrow had avoided the urge to try and bookend it so tidily.
In all honesty my only real gripes with Veil were the odd intro sequence and the epilogue. The intro sequence consists of a series of journal entries from Shae’s mother, detailing her reasons for being in Aster and then skipping to several years later, right before her death. These letters are basically an ill-conceived vehicle for unnecessary exposition that no one asked for. They have almost nothing to do with the story, and instead seem only to relate to peripheral plot points that were already addressed in the first novel.
Similarly, the epilogue, which takes place 20 years after the conclusion of the novel, is a scene in which an instructor is quizzing his class on the aftermath of the final battle. Like the letters, it is entirely unnecessary and is only there to prove all the characters went out and did what they said they would, and also who ended up marrying who. It was pointless. I would have much rather just imagined what happened to them all instead of receiving a rapid fire, point form summary.
In my opinion, these narrative bookends kind of ruined this novel for me. They were so distracting and left a bad taste in my mouth because of my absolute detestment of exposition dumps. My advice, if you enjoyed the first novel then I would definitely read this one—but maybe just skip these parts. You’ll be better for it.
In all honesty my only real gripes with Veil were the odd intro sequence and the epilogue. The intro sequence consists of a series of journal entries from Shae’s mother, detailing her reasons for being in Aster and then skipping to several years later, right before her death. These letters are basically an ill-conceived vehicle for unnecessary exposition that no one asked for. They have almost nothing to do with the story, and instead seem only to relate to peripheral plot points that were already addressed in the first novel.
Similarly, the epilogue, which takes place 20 years after the conclusion of the novel, is a scene in which an instructor is quizzing his class on the aftermath of the final battle. Like the letters, it is entirely unnecessary and is only there to prove all the characters went out and did what they said they would, and also who ended up marrying who. It was pointless. I would have much rather just imagined what happened to them all instead of receiving a rapid fire, point form summary.
In my opinion, these narrative bookends kind of ruined this novel for me. They were so distracting and left a bad taste in my mouth because of my absolute detestment of exposition dumps. My advice, if you enjoyed the first novel then I would definitely read this one—but maybe just skip these parts. You’ll be better for it.