Tag Archives: fey

Violet: When in Doubt, Stab Him

Posted by Seriah Black Sheep on

Violet Made of Thorns (Violet Made of Thorns, #1)Violet Made of Thorns by Gina Chen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My Summary:
Violet is a rags-to-famous fortune-telling prophetess who purposely thwarted the crown prince’s death destiny during childhood on the streets to make her own life better. Where that’s gotten her is under the king’s thumb, where she can’t say no and has to lie to the populace for a living for the king’s political gain. She lives under the shadow of a prophecy that the previous occupant of her position gave without explanation. When Violet discovers the answer to the prophecy is ransoming the prince’s stolen life back to the Fates, she can’t decide whether it’s in her best interest. Meanwhile, Prince Cyrus, who is ambiguously uninterested romantically in both women and men, can’t decide whether to throw Violet out on the street, trade her away for another seer, or get under her skirts…or a combination thereof. As the charismatic Cyrus is forced into a Cinderella ball where a blind date set up by his father threatens to overwrite his real destined bride, a witch plots to steer Violet’s visions to create a future where corruption magic reigns supreme. Under threat of a conquest-hungry dying king, fairy forest beasts, and more than one imposter, Violet struggles to understand who she is, what occupational knowledge for her profession has been lost, and whether love can exist without trust.

This is a Romantic High Fantasy Beauty and the Beast retelling that takes place entirely within one city. It has just as much a New Adult feel to it as Young Adult, though technically it is upper YA. You don’t have to know anything about the Fates, but I kind of wish I did. I drew heavily on my Fates knowledge from Stephanie Garber’s Caraval series. I would not be surprised, based on the ending, if this book gets a sequel.

My Thoughts:
This is the first book I’ve been able to speed-read and binge-read in a long time, and that’s a compliment. The heroine is snarky, and the prince snarks right back, making for a hate-lust combo that is hard to beat. Definitely squarely in the enemies-to-lovers trope. The roses-forest-wolfbeast combo is inventive, and the main character was classified as a seer and not a witch, except when it was construed that others might have a negative image of her. Considering the recent fads of overloading readers with witchcraft, I was relieved to see magic and threads of fate used in a way that I could enjoy them without being forced into a religious vise.

If you think the snarky characters will suddenly have a change of heart on the meaning of snark, you’re mistaken. I was impressed with the consistency of the characters’ personalities throughout the book without ever making it boring. Even the comic relief characters, like Camilla, never felt like they were there just for the sake of diversity or random humor.

One thing this book did do very well was diversity, without beating me over the head with it. Various elements of world cultures were integrated with the Fantasy in a realistic, believable manner that added to the world rather than distracting from the plot.

Another thing done very well was the narrative language of the book. Concise word-pictures were consistent and everywhere. I was able to read them quickly while still getting the full effects. I marveled at how many ways Chen avoided falling into the kinds of overuse of synonym or sentence structure patterns that plague my writing drafts.

What got confusing was Cyrus’ romantic preferences. I spent the first half of the book thinking he was asexual and only trying to find a bride because the king was pushing him. I had guessed that the heroine had to be an exception somehow, because of the prophecy and because it’s a fairy tale retelling. I was very confused about how he felt about Dante due to a later remark by Cyrus. I suspected he had always liked Violet, but none of that made sense until Cyrus said it himself, which took a really long time and I almost didn’t believe him by then, and then I only sort of bought in because he A) must have been covering up that he liked Violet the entire time he was around her from childhood, and B) still wanted to marry her after she tried to kill him…which was a little weird.

What I have mixed feelings about were the sex scenes. I understand that the age category is YA, which often involves censoring. The feel of the characters and the tone of the book were not lost in these scenes; rather, they hit all the right buttons, and I was super engrossed in reading them. But sometimes, because the language was only allowed to insinuate, I got confused. I thought Cyrus was touching her leg, or her stomach through the clothing, but that was not what was happening at all, and I only realized that because Violet’s reaction was disproportionate to what I had assumed was transpiring. If a younger reader picks up the book, they may not catch that they went all the way (or at least, I think they did; again, purposefully ambiguous due to language structure). But any adult who has read a blatant sex scene will figure it out. Either way, waaaaay better than some of the blackout scenes I’ve seen.

Consensus:
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who loves fairy tale retellings, Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella in particular, and enemies-to-lovers. If you’re hoping the heroine will turn out to be “a nice girl” and Prince Charming will be non-playboy charming, this isn’t the book for you. But if you enjoy quick wit and quick narrative pacing, and a heroine who has seen the ugly side of the world and is smart and scrappy enough to take nothing at face value, and if you understand that redemption is a long road, this book makes for quite a thrilling read.

If you’re squeamish about blood magic via self-injury, though, maybe think twice.

View all my reviews

Heartless: The Unhinged Fey King and the Gamer

Posted by Seriah Black Sheep on

Heartless (Immortal Enemies, #1)Heartless by Gena Showalter

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My Summary:
Cookie may be dying, but she’s not going to let that stop her from kicking butt at video games. A heart transplant offers Cookie an extension on life, a chance to enjoy living in her dream house. But this fey heart comes with complications. Sucked into the world of the fey to become Kaysar’s revenge pawn against those who imprisoned, tortured, and kept Kaysar from his little sister, Cookie’s new life becomes one dangerous mishap after the other. Kaysar is not a very patient man, but he can’t imagine life without revenge. Soon he can’t imagine life without Cookie either. That’s just fine; he can adjust his plans. Or so he thinks. Kaysar is good at acting to get what he wants, but Cookie doesn’t like being lied to, and she can dish back just as much as she’s served. With abandonment of him on the table like it’s never been with any other woman, Kaysar begins to realize his stake in Cookie’s life might need to be permanent. As Cookie and Kaysar try to feel out what a hot, steamy future together might look like, their aspirations to help each other backfire. Cookie fights for first place in Kaysar’s priority list, but even if she can free him from his revenge cycle, she would be signing up to be Revenge Target #1 instead.

This is an adult High Fantasy Romance fey story, heavy on the spice and, later, heavy on the sex. The plot is the Romance, not the Fantasy.

My Thoughts:
The book starts out in Kaysar’s POV, which is incredibly helpful. DO NOT SKIP THE PROLOGUE!!! Kaysar is more than a little off his rocker, and you need to know why. Yes, I know, it’s long enough to be a chapter. Take it as it is.

Kaysar himself is difficult. His motivations aren’t difficult to understand, but it’s hard to wrap your mind around him, and therefore hard to understand how he should be handled. Kaysar is, in fact, the villain of the book. He has kidnapped and mutilated and stolen and conquered, and he fully intends to continue to do so. Not all of the characters Kaysar is harming fully understand what happened to Kaysar, and while few who do would dispute that what happened to him wasn’t right, that wouldn’t slow his revenge.

The temptation, I think, is to see this as a breeder book. Don’t. It’s set up that way in the beginning, with Kaysar’s revenge goal for the remaining Frostline prince using said prince’s wife, but the real romance is about prioritizing each other and overcoming obstacles. It’s also, interestingly enough, about embracing the darkness inside one another rather than trying to change one another. The book raises an interesting question: Would one man’s wife be a different man’s wife if she had gone through a different set of life experiences, or been rejected more? Should one partner really expect the other to be happy like they “used to” be?

The story is also a really interesting play with organ donor ideas. It’s said that, when someone gets an organ transplant, they may take on the likes or propensities of the organ’s original owner. In this story, the heart transplant literally changes Cookie from the inside out, to the point where she has to rediscover who she is and what she is capable of in her new life.

Consensus:
In terms of narrative voice, Showalter by far outdid herself. I had previously read her Urban Fantasy-set (Paranormal) Romance, Playing with Fire, and while it helped get me into non-wolf shapeshifters, the engagement of the narrative doesn’t even compare. That’s aside from my preference for otherworld Fantasy anyway. This series came recommended to me, but I don’t remember if it was by an MFA teacher or another reader. Yes, it’s a series, but I think the next one might be a little too brutal for me. And that’s saying something.

Why three stars? It’s not the writing. Though pressing some of the romantic points home did get a little redundant, the way those things were said felt fresh and new every time. The mashup between a vengeful dark fey self-made lord antihero and a boyfriend-ditched gamer who loves junk food was perhaps the most original pairing I’ve seen, as well. The sex scenes never got old. I think my real problem, quite honestly, was Kaysar. I was intrigued, but I never fully connected to him. He was vivid, hot, larger than life. But he was so trapped in his childhood, and in childish malice, that I never felt like I’d actually want to bring him home or stay in his castle, even if I could understand why the heroine did. Cookie didn’t really have any adult moves to make up for that. In the end, they got their happy ending, but I wasn’t convinced it would stay that way for long.

In all, it’s a brilliant piece of fiction, and it’s permanently staying on my shelf. Even though they were not my favorite characters of all time, they are dynamic, and you need to find out what happens next. I do recommend it to graphic readers who, like me, are so sick of people setting all their Romance in the real world. The book’s a wild ride, and enough to digest that at times I had to take a break. It’s good to have a book like that sometimes. Do note that there is violence and explicit sex in it, and that it’s not about optimism, before you pick it up.

View all my reviews

Court of Thorny Roses: The Huntress and the Shiny Fey Shifter

Posted by Seriah Black Sheep on

A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1)A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

My Summary:
Feyre and her family are about to starve to death if she can’t find food. But killing that food means taking it from another predator, which has regrettable consequences. The next thing Feyre knows, she’s being dragged across the fey border for killing a faerie, leaving her family behind to starve. The power of the faerie whose subordinate she killed cannot quite make up for his social awkwardness. Tamlin has good reason to be awkward, however. Trapped in a mask from a masquerade ball gone wrong and stuck somewhere between defending his borders and sending his subordinates to their deaths, he seems to need help but refuses to be forthcoming with the information. Tamlin is fine, Tamlin is strong, Tamlin is going to save the day…until Tamlin needs saving, because Feyre failed to realize she’s the heroine and left him to deal with an old acquaintance he can’t win against. If the ever-stoic, survival-mode Feyre can’t put a name and actions to her feelings in time, it’s Game Over for everyone—humans included. Even if she does succeed, there’s no guarantee she’ll live.

This is a High Fantasy Romance that takes place on topography likened to the British Isle: heavy on the Fantasy and heavy on the Romance. It’s upper YA, but don’t think that’s going to get you out of gore and sex (though there are a lot of breaks in between). There’s also a near-rape scene, some brainwashing into doing adult things, drinking, and some gruesome stuff at the end. If you liked Hunger Games or Kate Daniels, you’ll be fine. It’s nowhere near Game of Thrones TV level.

My Thoughts:
If you are familiar with the original Beauty and the Beast fairy tale, you will recognize the original setup: girl lives with her father and sisters in a shack, father went broke when his merchant vessels went missing at sea, sisters are frivolous, girl or her father accidentally wrongs beast and beast demands her as payment, father doesn’t want to give her up as payment but she goes anyway. None of that should be a spoiler. What makes Beauty different is that she’s a scrawny, starving artist-turned-hunter who won’t go down without a fight, and she hates her family but protects them anyway.

From there, it starts to go all Fantasy genre on you. It’s a classic case of the fey stealing away a human and most fey considering them gullible food—and faeries, famous for their cruelty, play with their food. Throwback to Julie Kagawa’s The Iron Fey series: once you cross that gateway into the faerie realm, there’s no undoing what you see and experience. If you loved The Iron King, you’re going to feel nostalgic. Especially if you were rooting for Ash and Puck the whole way through and couldn’t decide between them.

I picked up this book because it came highly recommended to me from both strangers and friends. I’m a sucker for the Beauty and the Beast trope, but I’m also a stickler for uniqueness. That conflicted me a bit over this retelling.

S.J. Maas was a master of crafting suspense in this book. Not only that, I was biased against the book after reading Throne of Glass, and she overcame that bias by leaps and bounds. I read this entire book in one day. I, who am so picky that I rarely finish a book anymore.

That being said, I had two frustrations and one confusion about this story. One frustration was I could not connect to Tamlin—and he was the male lead, and eventually the “damsel in distress,” so that was really important. I must be really visually dependent (as far as visualizing in my mind) to have had this much trouble with picturing Tamlin’s appearance around a mask. There were allusions to his facial structure, but way more time was spent on his claws than on what his face might look like underneath. Granted, Feyre (the main character) did express need to know what he looked like, the longer she was around him, and even spent some intermittent paragraphs musing over what it would be like to see his face. But the only time I felt the giant blur that was his face (which made him feel impersonal) was overcome was at the pool of starlight. The rest of the time, I felt closer to Lucien than I did to Tamlin. While I realize that was somewhat by design, it actually had me rooting for a relationship with Lucien rather than Tamlin, which was counterproductive.

The confusion part came from Tamlin’s name. I spent half the book trying to figure out why his name sounded so familiar. Turns out I was thinking of the female Tamsin in the fey TV series Lost Girl. My bad. To Maas’ credit, the name Tamlin really does suit him.

The second frustration was getting almost zero info drops. I kept waiting to find out more about the regular plot, but learned more about the romance instead. As a Fantasy-Romance cross-genre writer myself, I well appreciate the romantic plot arc and the regular plot arc being inseparable; one cannot exist without the other, or the story would fall apart. But because most of what was revealed were the classic Beauty and the Beast storyline and the extent of Tamlin’s shapeshifting capabilities (full-body and partial-transformation), the main character and I were both left completely in the dark as to what was going on until it was time to go save Tamlin. I knew dark things were happening behind the scenes, but I had NO IDEA about what was truly going on. It would have been nice to feel like Tamlin was at least trying to help Feyre guess. If I hadn’t been gifted such a spectacular breakup sex scene right about the time I was getting mega frustrated, I don’t know if I would have finished the book. Kudos to Maas for the perfect timing, delivering on long-built sexual tension throughout the story.

The end, I admit, is a little troubling. It’s a great finale, and a great ending, make no mistake. I was riveted the whole way through the ending sequence. I just don’t know how I feel about Feyre’s aftermath.

Consensus:
It’s obvious why this book came highly recommended, and I recommend it as well. It bridges well that gap between just-out-of-high-school Young Adult and adult Fantasy, so well that I’m surprised it’s not openly classified as New Adult. The narrative style is engaging, there are no blackout scenes, Tamlin on summer bonfire night is electric, I almost fell on myself when I first saw the High Lord of Night, and the villainess absolutely dominates everything that a stereotypical male villain can do (and yes, you can take all the dominating implications there) without feeling like you’re watching a catfight.

I did figure out the answer to the riddle way before the end of the trials, because I have experience with the answer. If you don’t have that kind of personal experience yet, or overthink things, you might have a hard time guessing it. But it doesn’t matter either way, because what you really want to see—why you keep reading—is to find out whether Feyre will have a self-reflective epiphany moment in time to save the ones she cares about. So in terms of character development, Feyre gets a gold star.

If you’re one of those people who likes to piece together everything, like a detective novel, throughout the story, you’re going to get a little frustrated. It’d be better if you just tried to figure out and enjoy the fey creatures instead. There will be payout, I promise. You just have to make it through 2/3 of the book first.

I did order the second book; I heard the second book is phenomenal, so I’m looking forward to it. I’m also hoping to see more of Rhysand in Book 2, but I’m hoping Rhys and Feyre’s little “arrangement” doesn’t make Feyre a cheater.

View all my reviews

Disclaimer / Side Note: I read this book 14 years after I started writing my own Beauty and the Beast series, BeastKing Chronicles, and was alarmed to discover that Maas and I have similar ideas as to what a beast character should look like and what kind of partial-shifting body modifications should be prevalent. One of my ideas was inspired by a particular painting I came across on Pinterest, and of course I mutated what I saw into a new idea, but apparently Maas had the same one—and I had told nobody about that mutation idea. They say “there is nothing new under the sun,” but this one struck too close to home. Though Maas and I were FictionPress contemporaries, there is no way we would have copied this from one another. I even tried researching mythology to see if we might be referencing a known mythological creature, but no such luck. I am, of course, not writing about fey in BeastKing Chronicles. But I will be seriously reconsidering some of Rome’s beast characteristics before pursuing any form of traditional publication, for the sake of original design and trademark uniqueness.