Ghosts of Fanon!Dracos past; or, a review of The Cruel Prince

This is not political intrigue. This is Riverdale with pointy ears, except Riverdale goes harder. A million possible worlds to explore, untapped legends to excavate, and you set your story in…fairy high school. Instead of plot, we get 200 pages of Cardan, the hero (?), sexually harassing Jude, the heroine, in a high school that she could easily drop out of, but won’t because she has to ‘prove herself’ to fairies who want her raped and dead. Fine, people concoct unrealistic fantasies in response to abuse all the time, and I love nothing more than a character from a despised class who claws their way up to the top, but the fantasy isn’t that all the terrible people respect you in the end and Really Acknowledge that You’re a Team Player. The fantasy is that you have the court in such a chokehold that everyone hates you and can’t do anything about it. Am I doing power fantasies wrong?

Wish this was Cardan.

Jude wanting the respect of would-be rapists isn’t bad writing, maybe she’s in a bad place or whatever, but the narrative rewarding her delusions is a terrible, unrealistic ending. I could go on Twitter and talk about how much of a tradwife I am to get culty misogynists to respect me. BUT WHY. WHAT DO I GAIN. Am I not better off if I leave the cult compound for good?

Jude refuses to leave the fairy cult (AKA the High King’s Court), despite signs that humans are treated better in other fairy societies. She has the option of leaving Fairy Land with her sister, Vivi, but doesn’t take it because she loves Fairy Land, which I would have bought if the book had focused less on her high school wannabe rapist boyfriends. Even if she has no friends and likes spending time with nature, I would need more nature descriptions, more long walks, more flowery poetry…

Maybe I should read Mysteries of Udolpho instead. Anyway.

I also wasn’t convinced that Jude could attain power that easily without facing obstacles and resistance that should have logically popped up. Am I supposed to believe that Madoc killed two people to get custody of his heir, Vivi, but is totally okay with the HEIR TO THE THRONE noping off to the human world with minimal supervision for a few years so that he can be “saved from the corruption of the Fae” instead of, idk, learning to rule his future kingdom? Oak is the heir to the kingdom in a family where the fairy father murdered his human ex-wife and got away with it. That corruption arc has already sailed.

What has Jude accomplished, besides making a more complicated version of Madoc’s plan and involving Cardan, a ticking time bomb who doesn’t want to be on the throne and is also friends with her attempted rapist, Locke (it was strongly implied). Oak becomes the king either way. Why get involved in this nonsense? The safest position for Oak is on the throne, according to the magical laws that govern their inheritance. Delaying his coronation and playing games with spare heirs and sending him to the human world is delusional. Why? Because Jude wants so badly to be a Team Player and Influence Things. This is all about ego, not her brother.

Then there’s the lack of communication in Jude’s family, which puzzled me. Sure, they hate each other, but in a political family like theirs, everyone has a job. You have to talk to coworkers you don’t like to make sure you’re betraying the same people and not accidentally siding with opposing factions (NOT THAT THIS WILL COME UP OR ANYTHING). If the family is supposed to be read as incompetent, that’s one thing, but they’re not? Madoc is shown as a formidable and deadly foe. If anything, reading between the lines, Jude gives Madoc one more reason to betray Dain because she’s given a psycho fairy prince (Dain, not Cardan) power over her life. I hate this book for making me stan the guy who killed his ex-wife, but everyone else is that dumb.

The only character who’s written well is Locke, who’s a scumbag, but I hated him for the right reasons. If I was supposed to interpret Jude as an incompetent dingbat who’s an unreliable narrator, I apologize.

Maybe I’m too old for YA, but I never want to read a book set in high school again.

Realistic (?) vampires, finally; or, a review of What We’ll Do for Blood

Contrary to what you might expect based on my reviewing habits, I’m not always in the mood for vampires who act more like typical Evanescence fans than sociopathic monsters. Sometimes it’s nice to take a break from romance for a while and return to the roots of the genre.

You know, back when vampires looked like this. Also, why is he on a boat? I still need to see this movie.

If I recall correctly, Dracula had no redeeming qualities whatsoever and was a symbol of Class Conflict or Subversive Sexuality or STDs or the Dangers of Immigration and Foreign Influence depending on which academic interpretation you go by. Whatever the preferred diagnosis, though, I think one thing is indisputable: Dracula has no charm. True charm is genuine, even if it’s used to manipulate. There has to be a sense of humor in there somewhere. Dracula is a blood-drinking machine and his politeness is purely a means to an end. I can’t remember a single memorable thing Dracula said, though I remember the story in general. I think this is because Dracula is a force of nature or a symbol rather than a character. Still not sure what he’s supposed to be a symbol of.

In What We’ll Do for Blood, Maria (the vampire) is similar. She exists to drink blood. This is her only motivation. This may sound like Maria is overly simplistic, but no, Maria is an accomplished predator who excels at manipulation, deception, and brutality. Maria is terrifying because she works in the system to get what she wants. Like many real life abusers, she makes her victims seem unreasonable and dangerous when they defend themselves. If your neighbors aren’t vampires, of course, breaking and entering and trying to stake them is rather antisocial. Maria has a network of people she threatens and hypnotizes into donating blood; some of them know what she is, and some don’t. When she sets her sights on high school student Scott’s dad, the plot begins. It’s never clear whether Scott’s dad is having a genuine affair or is brainwashed by Maria’s vampire hypnosis (maybe both), but his constant visits to Maria’s house late at night throw Scott’s family into a tailspin.

So far, so good. My problem with Scott’s family is that, perhaps in an attempt to make them interesting, Mannarino skews too far in the other direction and makes them unsympathetic social climbers who never seem very distant from their son. Not that unsympathetic victims aren’t okay! But because Scott’s parents seemed to have few human moments, I never really felt Scott’s concern for them. I loved his sister Nikki, but that was it.

The ending, though, made up for it. I didn’t see it coming at all, but no spoilers. I just wish less time had been spent on Scott’s family and more time telling the story at the end. All the same, I look forward to the sequel. 🙂

Cruel Beauty

Well, I didn’t end up reviewing Deathless, mainly because it was so beautifully flawed that it defied description (I feel like people wouldn’t have had much time for BDSM and two-timing during the Siege of St. Petersburg. Too cold. Too hungry. But I wasn’t there, so what do I know?). Also, college fried my brain, so yeah. There never was a promise I could keep.

However, post-finals, I was looking for subpar brain candy to destress, and I found it in Cruel Beauty, courtesy of Rosamund Hodge–except it wasn’t subpar! Who says brain candy can’t also be art?

WHAT THIS BOOK DID TO ME

First of all, the setting is gorgeous. I adore gorgeous settings, probably because I can’t write them at all. Nyx Triskelion (cool name) lives in Arcadia, which is…a dome? made of parchment? I was never really clear on how to picture it (notoriously bad at following descriptive details, sorry), but it sounded cool.

The wavy, golden rays of the sun looked like a gilt illumination in one of Father’s old manuscripts; they glinted, but their light was less painful than a candle. Once the main body of the sun was risen over the hillside, it would be uncomfortable to look upon, but no more so than the frosted glass of a Hermetic lamp. For most of the light came from the sky itself, a dome of cream veined with darker cream, like parchment, through which light shone as if from a distant fire. Dawn was no more than the brighter zone of the sky rising above the hills, the light colder than at noon but otherwise the same.

Arcadia (land Nyx lives in) has been closed off from the world, seemingly forever, with only a Gentle Lord in a ruined castle to rule it. Many have theories as to why. Unfortunately, the Gentle Lord is excellent at making bargains, but they don’t always work out so well for the bargainers. There’s always a misinterpreted clause, like the one Nyx’s father falls prey to. Wife will give birth to two healthy daughters? Excellent. Wife will die in the process? Oh.

So Arcadians hate the Gentle Lord because he’s a ruthless haggler who tells tons of lies by omission. Also Nyx’s dad promised him one of his daughters. OH. Instead of beating himself up over not totally owning his Dad of the Year award, like maybe he should, he spends Nyx’s entire childhood training her as a magical weapon so that she can take her future husband down. No, really. DAD OF THE YEEEEEAAARRR.

Me whenever Nyx’s daddy was remotely mentioned in any way.

To make matters worse, the Gentle Lord’s hotness is in dispute.

I knew that the Gentle Lord was different enough from other demons that people could look on him and not go mad. But some said he had the mouth of a snake, the eyes of a goat, and the tusks of a boar, so that even the bravest could not refuse his bargains. Others said he was inhumanly beautiful, so that even the wisest were beguiled by him. Either way, I couldn’t imagine letting him touch me.

*checks genre* Yeah, let’s go with inhumanly beautiful. I know that it can be hard to marry an evil demon Prince, but I think I’ve read so much of this genre that I’ve gotten a bit jaded. Honestly, I was just waiting for Nyx to fall in love with him so that we could all go home already. However. Elements kept surprising me.

For one thing, Ignifex, the demon prince in question, was more of an asshole than I expected. Also, almost zero angst over what a douchecanoe he was being, which I personally found refreshing. Maybe I’m tired of cheap angst, which is something I never thought I’d say. I don’t like cheap assholery either, but Ignifex’s reasons for acting out, if not exactly laudable, are at least understandable…ish? No spoilers, though. Also, he gets better. 🙂

Maybe what surprised me most, though, was Nyx herself. I’m sad to say that in YA, I sometimes end up reading for the hot dude of the week because heroines can be a little subpar, and I hate doing it. On the other hand, I also hate reading solely for the heroine because the hero’s terrible. Not the case here! I was able to read for both. Nyx is a QUEEN, and I cannot emphasize this enough. She doesn’t take the fate handed to her lying down, but she also doesn’t waste time on pointless rebellion or wilting sacrifice. Instead, she is quietly and murderously furious, clever enough to realize that something is horribly wrong with her family, but socially conditioned too well to reject the future planned for her. She is her people’s only hope of breaking the curse, so she meets her fate gracefully.

Fortunately, her new husband is way more interested in building card towers and eating bon-bons than being, you know, absolutely terrible. In fact, he offers something that no one else in Arcadia can give her: unconditional acceptance and love. Awww. See, not that much of an asshole. More and more, Nyx starts to doubt her mission and whether her father really knows what he’s doing (obviously not). Before this book, I never wondered what would happen if the protagonist got sick of the hero gig and kicked back with the villain for some nice bonding time and snacks, but now I guess I know.

Actual footage of Nyx and Ignifex.

Actually, if I have one criticism of this book, it’s that it briefly flirted with the abandonment of the heroic role, only to veer back in a more traditional direction. Not that the ending I got wasn’t satisfying–honestly, I probably cried a little (POST FINALS-EMOTIONS, THAT’S ALL), but I would have loved to see a world where curses aren’t broken, villains aren’t defeated, and heroines aren’t sacrificed. Oh, well. Maybe I’ll have to write one.

I wanted to like it, but I COULDN’T, or, a review of A Great and Terrible Beauty

It’s not that I object to reading about schoolgirl bitchery, though it’s not exactly my preferred genre. Dumb schoolgirl bitchery, on the other hand…

I wanted to like this book. And, when I started, it had every promise of being likable. The setting of India was interesting, and the author took a risk in making her character a bit more historically accurate than most (at first). You see, Gemma Doyle is a bratty sixteen-year-old who hates living in India and makes no bones about it. I actually liked that detail because in historical fiction about Britain, India is usually presented as this far off exotic land tasting of spice and freedom–not an ordinary place with ordinary people. A sixteen-year-old British girl wanting to party in London seems pretty natural to me, regardless of how low she descends in reaching her objective.

Surprisingly nice for a demon, or, a review of After Eden

After Eden has a special place in my heart. It was the first self-published book I ever bought (Actually, no, according to my Amazon order history, it was the second. Never mind). Since then, I’ve downloaded quite a few more reads (whether I will ever get around to reading them all is the question). But out of all them, I remember After Eden most fondly. On paper it sounds ridiculous: A high school girl without a spirit falls in love with a demon. I am here to report that it doesn’t get any less ridiculous once you read it, but perhaps that’s the story’s strength. It knows exactly what it is, and it is unashamed.

Let’s start with the story line. Devi, a girl who has endured debilitating pain ever since an angel took her brother, decides to stop by a bookstore. Just as she is about to put back a truly horrendous romance novel, a headache attacks, and she blacks out. She wakes up on an old couch in the back of the bookstore getting kneaded by temperamental cat named Princess, who belongs to a young man who goes by Oz, the one who brought her inside. To Devi’s utter shock, he can cure her pain with a touch, something not any amount of epilepsy medication has been able to accomplish. What follows is a visit to a 24 hour restaurant, where they discuss surrealist art, eat pancakes, and play the guess-which-supernatural-creature-I-am game. Oz insists on walking her home, which Devi accepts because, hey, he’s nice for a guy who thinks he’s not human. After Oz leaves, though, a creature named Forneus appears in her home with a deal to offer…

Still here? Good, because it’s only going to get whackier.