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This book is a smash hit and I wanted to see why.
Chapter One explains a lot of the reason why. It opens with the heroine, Feyre perched in a tree with a bow, desperately hoping to kill a deer because it's the dead of winter and she's the sole breadwinner for her useless family who used to be rich but have fallen on hard times and will starve without it.
She spots a deer, but it's being stalked by a wolf so huge it must be Fae. The Fee have left the human realm, but are separated in this location by a penetrable wall. The Fae murdered and enslaved humans before the land was divided between them due to a Treaty stating that no human can kill a Fae except in self-defense. But Feyre needs the deer and she hates the Fae, who prey on humans, so she shoots the wolf dead with an arrow of ash and iron, then skins it to sell the pelt and lugs the deer home. Her family (useless disabled dad; useless featherbrained sister; mean sister) is totally ungrateful.
You're probably getting the picture of how incredibly iddy and tropey this is, but let me walk you through a little more.
Then! A Fae beast whose description sounds exactly like the Beast in the Disney cartoon shows up. He menaces the family, causing everyone to cower but Feyre, who fights him. He's showed up because she murdered his friend (the wolf) and now she has a choice: cake or death!
That is, she must choose between going with him to live in Faerieland forever, or being murdered on the spot. After a lot of angsting, she chooses to go.
On her way out, her father begs her forgiveness and literally says, "You were too good for us!"
In Faerie, she finds that the Beast is also a really hot High Fae man named Tamlin who is unfailingly nice to her. She must live in his lavish mansion with its beautiful garden (albeit haunted by dangerous evil fairies on occasion) and his really hot High Fae friend Lucien who is snarky and interestingly scarred. Everyone wears cool masquerade masks. Feyre is given a beautiful room, a maid, lavish meals and clothes, told that her family is well-cared for, and basically given everything she could possibly desire.
Let's have a trope check!
Heroine: a cross between Katniss Everdeen (bow, hunting, family breadwinner), Cinderella (terrible sisters, dead mother, worked to death by ungrateful family), Beauty (her name is a version of Fair, her situation is pure "Beauty and the Beast") and Janet (she's in a romantic situation with a guy named Tamlin who's being oppressed by an evil Fae queen.) She's competent (well, at hunting anyway), talented (she's a painter), tough, brave, beautiful, spunky, and has a cool name. (Feyre is pronounced Fay-ruh, as is slipped into narration.)
Fairytale motifs: "Cinderella," "Beauty and the Beast," "Tam Lin," ( Read more... ).
Iddy tropes: Where do I even start. This book is nothing but id. Lots of lush, evocative descriptions of fairies and magic. Multiple hot guys who are all into her and have angst. Heroine is pampered and given everything she wants. Danger, secrets, and mysteries. Your terrible family realizes how badly they were treating you and that you're too good for them and apologize. Everything is awesomely angsty, awesomely terrible, or just plain awesome - sometimes all at once, like when Feyre is cursed with a permanent mark... which looks like a very beautiful elbow-length lace glove with intricate flower patterns.
In short, this book goes all-out on "Unappreciated, unhappy girl is taken away from her terrible home and brought to a gorgeous, cool, dangerous new place where she is given everything she could ever want, her skills are needed, she has hot men in love with her, and she finds a place, a purpose, and love."
The worldbuilding is lavish and lush and totally uninterested in actual logic. For instance, Feyre says that humans no longer have Gods or celebrate holidays ever since the Fae left, which would have fascinating implications if it was the kind of book where that sort of thing is meant to be a dangling clue rather than a "my human life was so terrible that holidays are literally banned." Later she mentions that they do celebrate Summer Solstice, but it's not a cool celebration like they have in Faerie. Let's just say this is a not a book for you if you like your fantasy worlds to have plausible economic systems.
Speaking of lack of logic, Feyre has some Too Stupid To Live moments, such as when she's warned that she'll be in danger if she leaves her room due to a magic sex ritual happening outside, and she decides based on very little evidence that it must be over and wanders out for a midnight snack.
That aside, the first half had a lot of elements that normally appeal to me, but was hampered by me not liking Feyre. Right at the beginning, she hated or disdained everyone, and even though her family clearly deserved it, it meant that until she started warming up to the Fae characters, we never got to see her interact with anyone she liked. Her purpose was to protect her family, but since she had literally nothing good to say about any of them ever, it felt shoehorned in for the sake of the plot rather than organic from her character.
Katniss loved Prim, Menolly loved Petiron even before she loved her fire lizards, and Bella loved her father, but Feyre doesn't even like anyone until about a third of the way into the book. I realized while reading this that I need a character to either love someone, have some kind of intense purpose that makes sense for their character, or have a very appealing narrative voice for me to be invested in them as a character.
And then we hit the second half, which is where I went from enjoying the aesthetic and balls-to-the-walls-ness of it, to getting actually invested. The second half has a number of twists, which are not shocking per se but are interesting and fun.
( Read more... )
I think how much you're likely to enjoy this book largely depends on how much you're in the mood for lush fairytale retellings with some cool original touches, which run entirely on id and Rule of Cool. I spent a highly enjoyable afternoon reading it on the sofa and have already launched into book two.
Content notes: For Reasons (one plot-related, one magic whammy) which are that the author is into it, both potential love interests have scenes where they non-consensually kiss or touch the heroine. Torture. A man gets shot while in wolf form.
Chapter One explains a lot of the reason why. It opens with the heroine, Feyre perched in a tree with a bow, desperately hoping to kill a deer because it's the dead of winter and she's the sole breadwinner for her useless family who used to be rich but have fallen on hard times and will starve without it.
She spots a deer, but it's being stalked by a wolf so huge it must be Fae. The Fee have left the human realm, but are separated in this location by a penetrable wall. The Fae murdered and enslaved humans before the land was divided between them due to a Treaty stating that no human can kill a Fae except in self-defense. But Feyre needs the deer and she hates the Fae, who prey on humans, so she shoots the wolf dead with an arrow of ash and iron, then skins it to sell the pelt and lugs the deer home. Her family (useless disabled dad; useless featherbrained sister; mean sister) is totally ungrateful.
You're probably getting the picture of how incredibly iddy and tropey this is, but let me walk you through a little more.
Then! A Fae beast whose description sounds exactly like the Beast in the Disney cartoon shows up. He menaces the family, causing everyone to cower but Feyre, who fights him. He's showed up because she murdered his friend (the wolf) and now she has a choice: cake or death!
That is, she must choose between going with him to live in Faerieland forever, or being murdered on the spot. After a lot of angsting, she chooses to go.
On her way out, her father begs her forgiveness and literally says, "You were too good for us!"
In Faerie, she finds that the Beast is also a really hot High Fae man named Tamlin who is unfailingly nice to her. She must live in his lavish mansion with its beautiful garden (albeit haunted by dangerous evil fairies on occasion) and his really hot High Fae friend Lucien who is snarky and interestingly scarred. Everyone wears cool masquerade masks. Feyre is given a beautiful room, a maid, lavish meals and clothes, told that her family is well-cared for, and basically given everything she could possibly desire.
Let's have a trope check!
Heroine: a cross between Katniss Everdeen (bow, hunting, family breadwinner), Cinderella (terrible sisters, dead mother, worked to death by ungrateful family), Beauty (her name is a version of Fair, her situation is pure "Beauty and the Beast") and Janet (she's in a romantic situation with a guy named Tamlin who's being oppressed by an evil Fae queen.) She's competent (well, at hunting anyway), talented (she's a painter), tough, brave, beautiful, spunky, and has a cool name. (Feyre is pronounced Fay-ruh, as is slipped into narration.)
Fairytale motifs: "Cinderella," "Beauty and the Beast," "Tam Lin," ( Read more... ).
Iddy tropes: Where do I even start. This book is nothing but id. Lots of lush, evocative descriptions of fairies and magic. Multiple hot guys who are all into her and have angst. Heroine is pampered and given everything she wants. Danger, secrets, and mysteries. Your terrible family realizes how badly they were treating you and that you're too good for them and apologize. Everything is awesomely angsty, awesomely terrible, or just plain awesome - sometimes all at once, like when Feyre is cursed with a permanent mark... which looks like a very beautiful elbow-length lace glove with intricate flower patterns.
In short, this book goes all-out on "Unappreciated, unhappy girl is taken away from her terrible home and brought to a gorgeous, cool, dangerous new place where she is given everything she could ever want, her skills are needed, she has hot men in love with her, and she finds a place, a purpose, and love."
The worldbuilding is lavish and lush and totally uninterested in actual logic. For instance, Feyre says that humans no longer have Gods or celebrate holidays ever since the Fae left, which would have fascinating implications if it was the kind of book where that sort of thing is meant to be a dangling clue rather than a "my human life was so terrible that holidays are literally banned." Later she mentions that they do celebrate Summer Solstice, but it's not a cool celebration like they have in Faerie. Let's just say this is a not a book for you if you like your fantasy worlds to have plausible economic systems.
Speaking of lack of logic, Feyre has some Too Stupid To Live moments, such as when she's warned that she'll be in danger if she leaves her room due to a magic sex ritual happening outside, and she decides based on very little evidence that it must be over and wanders out for a midnight snack.
That aside, the first half had a lot of elements that normally appeal to me, but was hampered by me not liking Feyre. Right at the beginning, she hated or disdained everyone, and even though her family clearly deserved it, it meant that until she started warming up to the Fae characters, we never got to see her interact with anyone she liked. Her purpose was to protect her family, but since she had literally nothing good to say about any of them ever, it felt shoehorned in for the sake of the plot rather than organic from her character.
Katniss loved Prim, Menolly loved Petiron even before she loved her fire lizards, and Bella loved her father, but Feyre doesn't even like anyone until about a third of the way into the book. I realized while reading this that I need a character to either love someone, have some kind of intense purpose that makes sense for their character, or have a very appealing narrative voice for me to be invested in them as a character.
And then we hit the second half, which is where I went from enjoying the aesthetic and balls-to-the-walls-ness of it, to getting actually invested. The second half has a number of twists, which are not shocking per se but are interesting and fun.
( Read more... )
I think how much you're likely to enjoy this book largely depends on how much you're in the mood for lush fairytale retellings with some cool original touches, which run entirely on id and Rule of Cool. I spent a highly enjoyable afternoon reading it on the sofa and have already launched into book two.
Content notes: For Reasons (one plot-related, one magic whammy) which are that the author is into it, both potential love interests have scenes where they non-consensually kiss or touch the heroine. Torture. A man gets shot while in wolf form.
