CBR18 Book 53: "Monster, Monarch, Maiden by Rae Carson

Page count: 480 pages

Audiobook length: 12 hrs 55 mins

Rating: 4 stars

This was an ARC; thank you to NetGalley, Harper Audio and Greenwillow Books. My opinions are my own. This book is on sale now.

Bria Angarsold is an innkeeper's daughter (she mentions this at seven different points in the story, in case you were likely to forget) who was kidnapped by raiders, along with her sister and several other people who were at her family's inn at the time. Bria is one of the last surviving captives when the raiders' caravan is attacked by a mysterious young man. Seriously injured, but patched up by her rescuer, Bria knows that she won't survive in the wilderness by herself. Her sister is dead, and her family's inn was burned by the raiders. She has no home to return to, so she swears herself to the service of Titus, her brooding companion, vowing to help him on his dangerous journey.

It's obvious that Titus comes from wealth, from the expensive boots he wears to the impressive war horse he rides. He is on a perilous quest, assigned by the gods themselves, chased by assassins, and while he is initially reluctant to have Bria accompany him, her magical gift (which she had always seen as rather useless) proves to be a valuable aid in the challenges they face along the way.

As far as I can tell, this is a standalone fantasy novel by Rae Carson, and I was granted ARCs of both the audiobook and e-book versions of the story. I have to admit, I was glad when I got the e-book version, as I didn't entirely like the way Bailey Carr was narrating the story. So being able to read the story with my eyeballs was preferable. 

In this fantasy world, everyone is born with a magical gift of some sort. There are powerful and impressive gifts, like healing, shapeshifting or being able to take control over and manipulate everyone around you, but also small, seemingly harmless gifts like being able to change the colour of your nails, lighting small fires, or making things cold (Bria's gift). In a family of innkeepers, being able to make sure the food stays cold is very useful, but out in the world, kidnapped by raiders, it feels rather useless to her. As it turns out, once she starts experimenting with Titus' encouragement, her freezing powers can be a powerful weapon. It also makes her a lot more resistant to cold than most others, which is great when they have to traverse an icy lake to get into a cave to retrieve an object necessary for the quest.

Bria is resilient, pragmatic, and tries very hard not to dwell on the miseries she's gone through. She mourns her sister and her home, but tries to stay focused on Titus and his god-given quest to give her life a new purpose. He needs to retrieve several magical items in order to call down a dragon on a specific date, which will take him to where he needs to be in order to represent the goddess who selected him in a trial to determine who will become a new god. Each god in this world's pantheon has a chosen representative, and some are a lot more murderous than others, determined to take out their competitors before the divine trial. So Titus and Bria have to get to a specific destination on a specific date, or Titus fails. They also have to dodge assassins and various supernatural obstacles on the way.

It is obvious that any romance between them is doomed before it begins, as Titus is not only betrothed to someone (it's not a love match), but is also possibly going to become a new god if he survives long enough to summon the dragon and complete his quest. He is never going to be able to settle down and live a quiet life with a former innkeeper's daughter who might have a promising future as an ice merchant. Nevertheless, Bria can't help but fall for the handsome, stubborn and brave Titus, and he seems to return her feelings. 

"Breathtaking adventure and swoon-worthy romance for fans of Sarah J. Maas" is one of the promises in the official blurb, and while I can absolutely vouch for the adventure part of that statement, anyone who is expecting romantasy along the lines of ACOTAR or any of Sarah J. Maas' other books will be deeply disappointed. This is a fantasy quest with two interesting young protagonists, but the romantic subplot is extremely secondary, possibly even tertiary, and it is mostly longing glances and wistful sighs, all extremely chaste. Anyone expecting a steamy romantasy is going to be very disappointed by this. Stop it with the false advertising, publishers!

Standalone fantasy is rare these days, so I hope this isn't the start of a series. I wouldn't mind reading more books set in this world, though, which proved to be fascinating as it was revealed through Bria and Titus' journey. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR18 Book 32: "Bromantasy" by Máire Rocha

Page count: 352 pages

Rating: 3 stars

Thanks to G.B Putnam's Sons and NetGalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. This book is out on May 26th. 

Juniper O'Reilly shares a house with his totally platonic best friend, Mo Elthorn, and they run a farm together. Juniper has a tendency to get into bar brawls, while Mo holds him back and takes him home afterwards. One memorable evening, however, Juniper gets into a fight with the wrong guy and incapacitates a henchman enough that he is forced to take said henchman's place on an epic quest (opting out means death). Mo is obviously not going to let his extremely platonic BFF go off on a monster-hunting quest by himself. Especially since Juniper has absolutely no idea how to survive in the wild, hates sleeping outside, away from his comfortable bed and cosy house, and wouldn't be able to light a campfire if his life depended on it.

The quest Juniper and Mo have to try to complete (because they'll be killed if they quit) is locating a dragon who has been terrorising the nearby villages. They are not the only ones looking for this wicked creature. Among their rivals are Bill Bronson, whom Juniper hates (I'm not sure it was ever specified why) and also the dashing Prince Edward. Juniper gets quite star-struck by the prince, but Mo is less impressed. 

When Juniper and Mo discover that at least one of the creatures flying about, setting fire to nearby forests and outbuildings, is just a child, things get even more complicated. Mo is not about to let anyone, royalty or not, hunt or hurt an innocent (if rather inadvertently destructive) creature, and he's determined to get the baby dragon to safety. Even if it means breaking the terms of their mandatory quest.

According to the blurb: "Bromantasy is a cozy, queer fantasy about the mortifying ordeal of being known by your totally platonic best friend and the epic quest that might force you to confront the truth."  Juniper and Mo spend most of the book totally pining and lusting for one another, while also very studiously not talking about said attraction, or the misunderstandings that have arisen in their relationship since Mo took off for a couple of months about ten years ago, leaving Juniper absolutely bereft. 

Juniper is truly terrible at trekking and camping, and also seems to have the common sense of a puppy that's been knocked over the head a bit too often. He has his utterly bull-headed dislike of Bill Bronson, but otherwise seems to be taken in by anyone, no matter how scheming they obviously are. He keeps wanting to do the right thing, and more often than not makes things worse instead. 

I didn't find this book particularly cosy, and the fact that Juniper has the POV throughout, a character I found exasperating at best and downright stupid at worst, did not help. I think it's supposed to be a literary romp; I cared very little for the plot, and the stakes never felt all that serious. 

There's a lot of hijinks throughout, and as previously mentioned, if Juniper can blunder in and make a situation worse than it was before, that's what's going to happen. By about 35% in, it became clear that this book was never going to be more than a 3-star read for me, and I debated whether I should DNF it or not. Instead, I skim-read the rest of the story, mainly to check if the plot gets any more engaging later on. 

This is probably a perfectly fun and entertaining book for some readers, but it just didn't work for me. 

Judging a book by its cover: Don't be fooled by the cat in the lower right corner of the cover. While there is a cat in the book, it stays behind on Mo and Juniper's farm when they go off questing. So it's not like it plays a prominent part in the story. The baby dragon needs to be instructed that cats are "friends, not food", though, which was pretty cute. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 47: "Partners in Crime" by Alisha Rai

Page count: 400 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Buzzword Cover Challenge 25: Skyline

CBR17 Pie Chart Challenge: Diversity 

Yet again resorting to the official plot summary, because I finished this in mid-April and I just cannot remember all the of details of the plot anymore:

At thirty-five, with a stable job as an accountant, Mira Chaudhary wants nothing more than to find a boring man to spend the rest of her life with. Having had enough excitement in her younger days and desperately trying to escape her dysfunctional past, she turns to a matching app specializing in Indian American singles to help her find someone to settle down with.

Enter Naveen Desai. An English professor with an uneventful, normal, and—dare she say it, boring—life, Naveen is perfect.

But just when things are going well, Mira receives news that her aunt has died. Suddenly, a trip to Las Vegas to settle her aunt’s affairs turns into a mad dash to escape kidnappers, evade art thieves, and consorting with hackers who can decipher just what it was Mira’s aunt was involved with. Mira just hopes that Naveen isn’t chased away by the very same life of “excitement” that she’s been trying to get away from. But maybe, over the course of one wild night, Mira and Naveen will find the love connection that neither expected.

Mira is trying to be traditional and respectable, to distance herself from her family's less than savoury past. Naveen is trying to help his grandfather keep his lawyer's practice. The two of them have a past, and Mira broke up with Naveen via text message. Not exactly classy. He's right to be pissed off at her.

However, when they end up drugged and abducted together to Las Vegas, they try to figure out what the bad guys want from Mira's dad and aunt's pasts, before bad things happen to them (or people they care about, like Naveen's grandfather). They are forced to work together to stay ahead of their pursuers, and over the course of a whirlwind adventure in Vegas, they also get a chance to reconnect, reevaluate their past relationship and see each other honestly as the people they really are now.

Unfortunately, I don't remember a lot of details particularly clearly, but at the same time, I also don't remember anything that annoyed me while reading it, either. It was a fun read, and I finished it in less than 48 hours. 

Judging a book by its cover: Standard grumble about cartoon cover trend - but I do appreciate that both the characters on the cover look approximately as described in the story, and the scene in question, complete with fancy car and evening wear, does actually take place in the story. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 10: "Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales" by Heather Fawcett

Page count: 368 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Nowhere Books Bingo 2025: A fantasy book by a female author

Buzzword Cover Challenge 2025: Contains books

Spoiler warning! This is book 3 in the series and not the best place to start reading. This book will contain spoilers for the previous books in the series. Start at the beginning, with Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries. 

Intrepid professor of dryadology (faerie scholar) Emily Wilde is facing her most challenging adventure yet - reclaiming the rather terrifying faerie kingdom of Silva Lupi, where her former academic rival, now impending husband, Wendell Bambleby (not his faerie name) is the rightful king. Emily loves Wendell, and doesn't regret her decision to marry him, but isn't entirely sure about becoming queen of a merciless and dangerous faerie realm. Nevertheless, the project offers up unique opportunities to further her research and writing, and Wendell has worked for so long to get back to his home. 

His wicked stepmother, who killed most of Wendell's family and stole the throne, has vanished. Emily successfully poisoned her towards the end of the previous book, but the lady isn't entirely dead yet, and has in addition managed to use her magical connection to the land to place a deadly curse on Silva Lupi, which keeps poisoning larger and larger areas. Emily's research suggests that the only way to break the curse is either to find and kill the former queen or for Wendell to sacrifice his life for the realm. Obviously, the latter option isn't very appealing to either of them. 

I'm not going to lie, I have been waiting for this book pretty much since I closed the covers to Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands, the previous book in the series. Our Emily has come such a long way since she was trying (and failing) to communicate with the sceptical villagers in Ljosland. Now she has a number of friends, family members and allies to assist her in her quest to free Wendell and his kingdom from the quest left by his stepmother. While she loves Wendell, seeing him fully embrace his faerie powers and the changes that brings takes some adjustments. She also struggles with the idea of herself as queen, a role she feels wholly unfit for. 

Did this book live up to my expectations? Not entirely, but after finishing the book, I see that my expectations of the story were unlikely to ever be satisfied. I had been hoping for more romance between Wendell and Emily, but the romantic subplot of these books has always been light, and I'm not sure why I didn't expect Wendell to be sidelined in the plot for much of the book, while Emily did what she's best at, researching and investigating folklore and faerie stories, and then of course, throwing herself into ridiculously dangerous situations to save the people she cares about. This was a very fitting and adventurous chapter in Emily's story, I shouldn't have suddenly expected the series to go down paths with more romance. Not to say there isn't romance here - some of Wendell's romantic gestures towards Emily are absolutely lovely (and show how very well he knows his grumpy intended). Emily, on her side, literally challenges death for his sake. 

As far as I'm aware, this is the third and final book in the Emily Wilde trilogy, and it's a very fitting end for Emily and Wendell. Fawcett nevertheless leaves the ending open-ended enough that she will be able to return to this imaginative world at some point in the future, should she choose to do so. 

Judging a book by its cover: Yet again, I think the UK cover is much prettier than the US one, although I wish it wasn't quite so pink. It also looks deceptively cute and quirky, considering how dark some of the themes explored in the book are. I'm not sure this cover entirely sells the story. Then again, I also hope people don't start a series with book 3, so even with the pastel pink cover, most readers know that Emily's adventures can go dark places. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR15 Books 84-85: "The Shepherd King duology" by Rachel Gillig

Total page count: 913 pages

One Dark Window - 3.5 stars

Two Twisted Crowns - 4 stars

Spoiler warning! Some minor spoilers for One Dark Window in this review. 

20-year-old Elspeth Spindle (all the noble families have surnames taken from trees) lives in the kingdom of Blunder, most of which is now enveloped in a thick, sinister fog. Most people who venture out into the fog without a talisman (bones, feathers, animal feet, braided horsehair, etc) go mad and run off into the forest, never to be seen again. The only ones who seem able to walk in the fog without nasty side effects are the survivors of a mysterious fever (which also grants the survivors some sort of magical ability), but such survivors are few and far between since the king has ordered all afflicted with the disease to be rounded up and taken to the palace (where they are experimented on and killed). Being found to have harboured a fever survivor is considered treason. 

However, Elspeth is one such survivor. Her father used to be the captain of the king’s Destriers (think a Royal Guard crossed with Secret Police). He couldn’t bring himself to have his eldest daughter killed, so sent her into the woods to live with her aunt and uncle. Remember how I said all survivors of the fever gained a magical power? Elspeth’s ability made it possible for her to absorb the essence of Providence cards, which is why she has an unwanted cohabitant in her head – known as the Nightmare.

A brief history lesson: Back in the olden times, Blunder was ruled by The Shepherd King (also the name of this fantasy duology). In the woods of Blunder there was an ancient power, The Spirit of the Forest, who people used to turn to for help and who could grant wishes and the like. All magic had a price, because balance is necessary and such trades with the Spirit should not be undertaken lightly. The Shepherd King, in an attempt to safeguard his kingdom, negotiated with the Spirit of the Forest and created a magical deck of cards, called Providence Cards. To create each of the cards, he had to sacrifice something, like years of his life, his memories, his ability to sleep, all his hair, and eventually his own soul. 

"Twelve different Providence Cards made up the Deck. Chronicled in our ancient text, The Old Book of Alders, Providence Cards were not only Blunder’s greatest treasures but the only legal way of performing magic. Anyone could use them – all it took was touch and intention. Clear your mind, hold a Card in your hand, tap it three times, and the Card is yours to wield. Pocket the Card or place it elsewhere, the magic would still hold. Three more taps, or the touch of another person, and the flow of magic would halt. But use a Card too long, and the consequences were dire. The cards were exceptionally rare, their numbers finite."

With some of the cards in the Providence Deck, there are multiple copies. There are only two Nightmare Cards, which grant the user the ability to speak telepathically to others. Eleven years ago, Elspeth touched a Nightmare card in her uncle’s library, and basically absorbed its essence, the werewolf-like creature depicted on its surface. The creature speaks to her, gives her warnings, and in cases of extreme danger, she can grant The Nightmare control over her body, so she gets stronger, faster and can defend herself. Of course, everything has a price, so each time she does this, The Nightmare gains a bit more control over her, and she starts having trouble controlling her own body. When Elspeth is in control, she has dark, nearly black eyes. When The Nightmare is in control, her eyes are yellow. 

Elspeth has stayed far away from the royal court for years, afraid that anyone will discover that she is a survivor of the fever. This Solstice, however, her uncle has finally decided to trade his very precious Nightmare card (the second one is believed to be lost – but is it?) to the King, in return for his daughter, Elspeth’s beloved cousin Ione, to be betrothed to the Crown Prince, a psychotic bully. Ione gets access to a Maiden card, which turns the user flawlessly beautiful but is rumoured to have the side effect that the user becomes cold and heartless. Obviously, with her uncle’s family suddenly guests of honour, Elspeth also has to join the festivities at the palace. She meets a number of new people, like Prince Elm, the younger prince, who doesn’t seem particularly fond of his father or brother. She also comes into contact with Elm’s cousin, Ravyn Yew, the current Captain of the King’s Destriers. He figures out that she’s a survivor of the fever, but doesn’t arrest her. Instead, he invites her to be part of a plot that can only be described as treasonous.

Raven Yew and most of his family are working with Prince Elm to locate one card of each of the ones that make up the Providence Deck. If all twelve cards of the deck can be united, the curse on Blunder will be lifted and the fog will no longer threaten the land. It is believed that those suffering aftereffects of the fever will also be cured.  Elspeth obviously can’t reveal to anyone that she has The Nightmare lurking around in the back of her brain, but reveals to Ravyn and Elm that she can «see» Providence Cards. Thanks to The Nightmare, Elspeth can see the colours of the various cards, even when a person has them hidden. This makes her incredibly useful to the conspirators, and they promise to keep her safe if she agrees to help them. 

It’s agreed that Elspeth come stay at the residence of the Yew family, under the pretext that Ravyn is courting her. Of course what starts out as pretense doesn’t take long before it becomes a reality, although Elspeth has to keep lying to her new friends, and the man she’s falling for about the extent of her magical abilities. 

Things got really complicated after Elspeth had her wrist broken when Ravyn, Elm, and their gang of fake highwaymen tried to stage an ambush to steal another Providence Card. Elspeth came into close contact with the Crown Prince, who broke her wrist. Elspeth only got away because she let the Nightmare take over, and he clawed the Prince savagely. While everyone claims Elspeth broke her wrist falling off a horse, this cover story isn’t really very convincing to anyone, least the cruel Crown Prince. He may be a psycho, but he’s sadly not stupid. He’s suspected his brother and cousins of being up to something treasonous, and he gets his claws into Elspeth both to question her and use her as bait to capture her co-conspirators.

As a result of that rather unpleasant encounter, Elspeth has to let The Nightmare take over permanently, and the Crown Prince is found nearly torn to pieces. Elspeth is taken prisoner, but the Nightmare, now in total control, reveals to the enraged King that he knows where the Twin Alders, the only unique card in the Providence Deck is hidden. It will be impossible for anyone to unite the Deck and break the curse on Blunder without this card. Ravyn pretends to still be loyal and offers to take The Nightmare/the husk that was once Elspeth to find the card. The blood of someone afflicted by the fever will also need to be spilled to break the curse, and the King plans for that to be Elspeth, once the card is found.

Prince Elm, who hates his family, now has to step up and act as heir, as his elder brother is horribly injured and may not survive. He’s unable to accompany Ravyn to find the final Providence Card, but to make his time back at the palace more bearable, he makes a deal with Ione, his brother’s unwilling betrothed, to help her find the missing Maiden card that still has her under an enchantment. Thanks to Ione, Elm also discovers a previously unknown benefit the Maiden card grants those under its spell.

Will Ravyn manage to locate the missing Providence Card required to unite the Deck and break the curse on Blunder? Will he be able to exorcise The Nightmare from Elspeth’s body and save his beloved from being sacrificed by the king? Will Elm and Ione find the missing Maiden card, and return Ione to her former self? Will our stalwart heroes triumph over corruption and evil and live happily ever after? 

While One Dark Window is told entirely from Elspeth’s POV (with little snippets from The Old Book of Alders at the start of each chapter, giving us helpful information about the magic system and the Providence Cards), Two Twisted Crowns is told through Elm, Ravyn and The Nightmare’s POVs. There are brief glimpses of Elspeth's consciousness, but she's pretty firmly stuck deep in what seems to be The Nightmare's subconscious.

One Dark Window was the November pick in my fantasy book club. For the first half of the book, it was really only the interesting magic system that kept me going. Elspeth is not the most dynamic of heroines and her romance with Ravyn really didn't grab me all that much. Her strange connection with The Nightmare helped keep me interested, and I really wouldn't have expected the first book to end the way it did. The second book is miles better, especially because all three POV characters are more interesting, especially Elm. He develops a romance with Ione, which is complicated because she's promised to his loathsome brother. Since I liked both Elm and Ione a lot more than drippy Elspeth, that storyline worked better for me than Elspeth and Ravyn's. 

I'm always happy when a fantasy series can be contained in two, rather than three books. In this case, I would highly recommend readers stick with it, even if One Dark Window isn't entirely grabbing them. The world-building and magic system is very interesting, and everything develops so well in Two Twisted Crowns, finishing off the story in a really satisfying way. 

Judging the books by the covers: I think the cover for One Dark Window is supposed to be a red-clad woman (most likely Elspeth) in the middle of a bridge. The black smoke is probably something to do with the Nightmare? It's not a great choice - it looks like a tiny volcano. The cover for Two Twisted Crowns is much better, with the twisty trees adding to the spooky atmosphere. If the woman on the cover is supposed to be Elspeth, her hair should really be cut short - but you can't have everything.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR15 Book 64: "Gods of Jade and Shadows" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Page count: 384 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Caseopea Tun is basically treated as a servant by her grandfather, cousin, and extended family because her mother ran away and made an ill-advised marriage. Caseopea suffers the indignities mainly because her tyrannical grandfather has promised to leave her some money once he dies. However, during another turbulent row with her spoiled cousin Martín, he reveals that their grandfather has no intention of leaving anything to Caseopea. She feels furious and rebellious, which leads to her opening the forbidden chest at the bottom of her grandfather's bed, hoping to possibly find some treasures she can steal. 

Instead, Caseopea finds a lot of old bones and having pricked her finger on one of them, they reassemble into a man, the embodiment of the Mayan death god Hun-Kamé. Apparently, Caseopea's grandfather aided the god's brother, Vucub-Kamé in imprisoning him, and he now needs to go on a quest to reclaim certain stolen body parts to regain his full power and battle his brother for dominance of the Mayan underworld. Caseopea has no choice but to accompany him, as a tiny bone shard is lodged inside her and she and Hun-Kamé are linked, and the god is siphoning life force from her. If they don't succeed within a reasonable time frame, Hun-Kamé will become fully human, and Caseopea will die.

This is set during the Jazz Age in Mexico, but apart from the occasional mentions of short skirts and flapper haircuts, it doesn't really come into the action all that much. Caseopea eventually gets a short haircut, but it's to clean up the remains of her hacked-off hair after Hun-Kamé required her hair to burn in a magic ritual to summon ghosts. Because of the historical setting, our protagonists travel by ship and train, rather than airplane, and obviously, this means they get to spend more time together in small quarters. 

Caseopea is an engaging heroine. She is clever and resourceful, and dreams of a life in the city away from her controlling relatives. Nonetheless, she's also pragmatic and while upset about the dangers her quest with Hun-Kamé exposes her to, possibly even ending in her own death, she accepts it as a consequence of her rather impulsive rebellion. Luxury and beautiful clothing are things that Caseopea has only been able to dream about. Hun-Kamé is a god and travels in style, and Caseopea, who has been a poor relation her whole life, enjoys the change in circumstances, knowing it might not last very long.

Hun-Kamé starts out as very imperious and distant, with little care for his companion, but as their quest progresses and he remains connected to Caseopea, he takes on more and more human aspects and even gains the ability to dream, something he claims no gods can do. His brother is convinced that this added humanity is the thing that will ensure his downfall, but in the end, he comes to love Caseopea and be loved in return, and that is one of the elements that eventually defeats Vucub-Kamé. 

The book has multiple POVs, and I understand why the author chose to tell the story like this, but also admit that I felt my interest waning every time the perspective changed to that of Martín, who is tasked by Vucub-Kamé to track down his cousin and try to persuade her to abandon Hun-Kamé, or the chapters where we follow Vucub-Kamé (although it gave some interesting insight into Xibalba, the Mayan underworld. 

This is the first novel I've read by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and while I didn't love it, I found it an entertaining read, where I learned more about mythology from another culture. I have many more of Moreno-Garcia's books on my TBR shelf and look forward to reading more of her stories in the future.

Judging a book by its cover: I think this is a lovely cover, and Ms. Moreno-Garcia always seems to luck out with her cover designers, because I'm hard-pressed to remember seeing a single bad cover for one of her books. This cover is absolutely one of the things that drew me to the book in the first place. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR15 Book 2: "The Stolen Heir" by Holly Black

Page count: 368 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Wren thought she was a normal human girl until the night when scary monsters out of a nightmare came and claimed she was in fact their daughter and had to come back to Faerie with them. Lord Jarel and Lady Nore of the Court of Teeth rip away her human glamour and make sure that Wren sees her human parents reject her faerie self (bluish skin, blue hair, mouth full of razor-sharp teeth) with horror and disgust. The cruel faeries, accompanied by the fearsome Stormhag threaten the lives of Wren's human family, and though only nine years old, Wren is forced to go with them to keep her loved ones safe. 

In the Court of Teeth, she is Queen Suren, but queen in name only. She is kept captive and tortured both physically and emotionally until she's barely a shell of her former self and an angry, vicious feral child. Her faery parents keep her literally chained and controlled with a magic bridle and their plan is to marry Suren to Prince Oak, heir to the Greenbriar Throne, and then have him (and probably Wren/Suren) murdered, so they can be High King and Queen. Their plan fails spectacularly, High Queen Jude publicly chops off the head of the giant serpent that used to be her husband and saves not only High King Cardan but increases his power and their joint hold on Elfhame. During the brief time of negotiations and attempted betrayals, Wren/Suren gets to know Prince Oak a bit better. He doesn't seem scared of her and treats her with kindness, but after the Battle of the Serpent, as it comes to be known, Suren is still forced back to the now disbanded Court of Teeth, with Jude having ordered that henceforth Lady Nore and Lord Jarel need to obey all of Suren's commands. Terrified and despondent that she couldn't find safety in the High Court, Wren basically nopes out and runs away to the human world, living homeless in the woods and trying to engage with Faerie as little as possible.

At nineteen, Wren survives by foraging for food in the woods, eating leftovers she finds in rubbish bins, or stealing food from the house of her un-family (what she has learned to call her human family), who she's unable to let go of. She can never forget the horrified reaction of her parents (even though she now knows they were spelled to react so badly) and she fears that they or her former sister would react just as badly if they saw her again. Nevertheless, she keeps creeping around their house, breaking in when they're asleep. Wren has discovered she has the power to dissolve spells and curses if she works hard enough, so she tends to try to save foolish humans from faerie curses when she's able.

Then one night, the Stormhag is coming for her, and to her surprise, the one who rescues her is none other than Prince Oak, all grown up and very formidable. He claims to need her help, as Lady Nore has reclaimed power in the North, now using dark magic to animate hideous creations from sticks, snow, and the body parts of the dead. She's clearly building an army and will be looking to Elfhame for revenge and conquest. As the deeply reluctant heir to the throne, Oak has spent his adolescence making himself into the perfect target for all the assassins coming for the royal family. He's taken it upon himself to stop Lady Nore and rescue his captured father, former Grand General Madoc. He needs Wren, as she is the only one with the power to control her mother. 

While the thought of going back to the Court of Teeth and seeing Lady Nore again fills Wren with dread, she also can't allow the psychotic creature who claims to be her mother to succeed in her sinister, necromantic plans. Nor can she forget that she and Oak seemed to be friends for a very short while as children and that he's now grown into a very handsome, charming, and manipulative young man, who's clearly not going to hesitate to get her to agree, one way or the other. Bogdana, the Storm hag, catches up with them before they've gotten very far on their quest, and shocks Wren/Suren with the truth of her "birth". Faeries can't lie, and Wren, who's never exactly been happy in her own skin, comes to doubt herself further. 

She reluctantly accompanies Oak and his two companions. Tiernan is Oak's bodyguard (not that he gets to do much guarding, the way Oak throws himself headfirst into danger) and Hyacinthe, their prisoner, is a former soldier of Madoc's, now under a curse and able to give them information about the Ice Needle Citadel, as he served Lady Nore there for many years. Tiernan clearly doesn't trust Wren one bit, and Wren is only too aware that Oak has several hidden agendas and if his pleasant looks and manners are a deception, she could end up a captive in the Court of Teeth once more. Faeries can't directly lie, but as a result, they become very skilled at twisting the truth, and Oak, for all that he is only seventeen, has clearly been hardened by years of near-successful assassination attempts and interacting with two-faced courtiers. Desperate for love and belonging, Wren is all too aware that if she's not careful, she'll lose her heart to his honey-tongued words, and considering all the pain and loss she has suffered so far in her short life, she doesn't think she'll survive the pain of having her heart broken by the prince.

I've been eagerly anticipating the release of this book for months and months, since it first came to my attention that Holly Black was writing more from her dark and twisted Elfhame universe. Toxic and damaged as they are, Jude and Cardan shouldn't work as a couple, yet ended up doing after all and after such a feat, Black (whose writing I was already pretty enamored with) owns my eternal loyalty. Turns out, that shocking and brutal as the opening to The Cruel Prince is for Jude and her sisters, Wren/Suren has it SO much worse. Seriously, Jude and Cardan played mind games and tried to kill one another before they kind of reluctantly fell madly in love with each other, and both got some serious baggage growing up in Faerie. Neither of them had to face a fraction of the f*cked up sh*t Suren has to go through before she's even 12 and when you add to her torment some of the stuff she eventually suffers in this book - let's just say the girl has my metaphorical sword and I wan to eviscerate anyone who harms a blue hair on her head henceforth. 

In interviews, Black has said that this is the first part of a duology, and while Wren/Suren is our point of view character in this book, the next book is Oak's, and we're going to see a lot of the same events that we see in this one through his eyes instead. While all of the books in the Folk of the Air trilogy were sort of exhausting because Jude and Cardan are really extreme personalities and not necessarily pleasant people to spend time with, in this I loved Wren from the start, but was also very aware that there were clearly a whole lot of things under the surface, and people waiting to double-cross or manipulate and all sorts of twists and turns, and even when a lot of things became clear, it's obvious that there is so much more going on that we won't know about until the second book. Based on how this book ends, I cannot imagine that Oak's book won't also continue the story, because if Wren and Oak's relationship ends where this book left it, I may have to burn some things down. 

As of now, I've rated this book four stars, but which rating it's ultimately going to end up with very much depends on whether Black can deliver with the second part of the story (which based on her previous novels, I'm pretty sure she can). There is no release date for Oak's book on Holly Black's website and I don't even know if she's started writing it yet. So I guess I'll just have to pine listlessly until the next book comes out, hopefully early next year. 

Judging a book by its cover: Is it a cage? Is it Wren's hidden willow den in the woods? I love that the cover image easily evokes both images. I'm also guessing that since this cover is mostly white (some of the limited special editions are all black), Oak's book is going to be mostly black. Although based on the way he's described in this book, maybe the theme will be heavy on the gold instead. It'll be interesting to see in a year if my prediction holds true.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.