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Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr
The Blurb On The Back:
Rule 3: Don’t stare at invisible faeries.
Aislinn has always seen faeries, although they would certainly blind her if they knew of her Sight. Powerful and dangerous, they walk hidden in the mortal world.
Rule 2: Don’t speak to invisible faeries.
But now faeries are stalking her. One of them, a beautiful boy named Keenan, is trying to talk to her, asking questions Aislinn is afraid to answer.
Rule 1: Don’t ever attract their attention.
Now it’s too late. Keenan is the Summer King and has sought his queen for nine centuries. Without her, summer itself will perish. He is determined that Aislinn will become the Summer Queen at any cost ...
I want to start off by making the point that I did enjoy this book. It’s well written, Marr keeps the story moving and Aislinn is an interesting protagonist with a particularly tricky problem. Having spent her whole life following the three rules that will prevent faeries from ever discovering that she has the Sight, she’s now faced with a faerie who is actively trying to get her attention but who doesn’t know that she sees him for what he really is. Aislinn wants to avoid Keenan’s attention, whilst not tipping him off as to her gift but Keenan cannot be persuaded because he’s seen Aislinn has a potential Summer Queen in his dreams and must therefore pursue her to try and make her accept a challenge that will determine whether she is the Summer Queen. At the same time, Aislinn is being followed by Donia, the Winter Girl, who must try to persuade her not to accept the challenge.
Marr creates interesting characters and interesting situations – Donia is someone who was once a mortal woman but who was pursued by Keenan as a Summer Queen, only to fail the test and become the permanently cold Winter Girl. She’s bound to follow the rules of the test, but she still has feelings for Keenan. Keenan is desperate to find his Queen to regain those powers that have been bound by his mother, Beria, the Winter Queen because by finding his Queen he can save the Summer Court. Seth is a mortal boy who lives in an iron train car and who is in love with Aislinn and who, whilst he cannot see faeries himself, believes in her enough to try and support her through her dilemma.
It’s a testament to Marr’s writing skill that you don’t really identify the key problem with the book until you’ve finished it – and the key problem is that the story itself is slightly underdeveloped. Marr never explains why Beria bound Keenan’s powers and this is a crying shame because she does such a good job with conveying the icy power of this character and her cruel attitude to her son that you want to find out more in order to understand her. Marr gives you interesting hints and snippets – the idea of a deal made with another court and a hint at the relationship between Beria and Keenan’s father, the previous Summer King – but it’s never developed further, which frustratingly leaves Beria as just a little flat on the page – more of a stock villain than a full character in her own right.
I’d also like to have seen the test process more developed – again, Marr hints at the dreams that Keenan has when he picks the next potential Summer Queen and she does explain what the girl has to do and what happens to them both if they take the test and fail, or refuse to take the test at all (which I thought was a wonderful catch 22 dilemma). However, it’s not clear how exactly the test relates to Keenan’s powers and there’s a slight hole between Keenan dreaming about a mortal girl and how they then become marked to take the test (i.e. is it automatic or does it only occur when they succumb to Keenan’s charm?) This is particularly frustrating when you learn more about Aislinn’s family history because Marr sets up an interesting idea but skirts over it in a page or so, which feels too superficial.
The biggest failing however, I felt related to Donia’s role in the proceedings. We are expressly told that her job is to persuade mortal girls not to take the test. We are also told that she is very effective at this job. Yet we never really see her do this with Aislinn and whilst the hint is that this is because she sees Aislinn as being different to the others, we’re constantly told that she will abide by the rules of the test, only to see that she doesn’t. As I said, Donia is an interesting character and I was intrigued by her relationship with Keenan and her interactions with Beria. However, I’d really liked to have seen her make more of an effort to dissuade Aislinn at the start.
With regard to the test, I think that Marr misses a trick because the result is really a foregone conclusion from the start. Aislinn’s dilemma, which had been building nicely until that point, falls away as she finds the obvious solution (and indeed, I was surprised that it took her so long to work it out). As a result, the last quarter of the book feels a little robbed of tension and too by-the-numbers to be truly gripping, although Marr does compensate for that with a nice twist that allows an interesting set-up for future books (although I think that the idea of having an epilogue with a split time-frame didn’t quite come off with the execution).
Saying all that, there is enough in Marr’s writing for me to want to buy her next book in this series. She has plainly thought about her world and how faeries interact with mortals and I was particularly impressed with the way she depicts a parallel world that most people can’t see.
The Verdict:
Melissa Marr writes well and maintains pace. I was interested in her main characters and in particular, the love triangle element that is drawn out in the story. The story itself is slighter than I’d hoped and as a reader, I would have really liked to see more time given to setting up the background history relating to Beria and what her motivations are as the lack of this left her a little flatter than the author perhaps intended. However, there are some very good set-pieces within the text (the carnival being a particular favourite) and the ending showed that Marr is not interested in conventional endings. I am interested in reading more of this author and look forward to the next book in this series.
Aislinn has always seen faeries, although they would certainly blind her if they knew of her Sight. Powerful and dangerous, they walk hidden in the mortal world.
But now faeries are stalking her. One of them, a beautiful boy named Keenan, is trying to talk to her, asking questions Aislinn is afraid to answer.
Now it’s too late. Keenan is the Summer King and has sought his queen for nine centuries. Without her, summer itself will perish. He is determined that Aislinn will become the Summer Queen at any cost ...
I want to start off by making the point that I did enjoy this book. It’s well written, Marr keeps the story moving and Aislinn is an interesting protagonist with a particularly tricky problem. Having spent her whole life following the three rules that will prevent faeries from ever discovering that she has the Sight, she’s now faced with a faerie who is actively trying to get her attention but who doesn’t know that she sees him for what he really is. Aislinn wants to avoid Keenan’s attention, whilst not tipping him off as to her gift but Keenan cannot be persuaded because he’s seen Aislinn has a potential Summer Queen in his dreams and must therefore pursue her to try and make her accept a challenge that will determine whether she is the Summer Queen. At the same time, Aislinn is being followed by Donia, the Winter Girl, who must try to persuade her not to accept the challenge.
Marr creates interesting characters and interesting situations – Donia is someone who was once a mortal woman but who was pursued by Keenan as a Summer Queen, only to fail the test and become the permanently cold Winter Girl. She’s bound to follow the rules of the test, but she still has feelings for Keenan. Keenan is desperate to find his Queen to regain those powers that have been bound by his mother, Beria, the Winter Queen because by finding his Queen he can save the Summer Court. Seth is a mortal boy who lives in an iron train car and who is in love with Aislinn and who, whilst he cannot see faeries himself, believes in her enough to try and support her through her dilemma.
It’s a testament to Marr’s writing skill that you don’t really identify the key problem with the book until you’ve finished it – and the key problem is that the story itself is slightly underdeveloped. Marr never explains why Beria bound Keenan’s powers and this is a crying shame because she does such a good job with conveying the icy power of this character and her cruel attitude to her son that you want to find out more in order to understand her. Marr gives you interesting hints and snippets – the idea of a deal made with another court and a hint at the relationship between Beria and Keenan’s father, the previous Summer King – but it’s never developed further, which frustratingly leaves Beria as just a little flat on the page – more of a stock villain than a full character in her own right.
I’d also like to have seen the test process more developed – again, Marr hints at the dreams that Keenan has when he picks the next potential Summer Queen and she does explain what the girl has to do and what happens to them both if they take the test and fail, or refuse to take the test at all (which I thought was a wonderful catch 22 dilemma). However, it’s not clear how exactly the test relates to Keenan’s powers and there’s a slight hole between Keenan dreaming about a mortal girl and how they then become marked to take the test (i.e. is it automatic or does it only occur when they succumb to Keenan’s charm?) This is particularly frustrating when you learn more about Aislinn’s family history because Marr sets up an interesting idea but skirts over it in a page or so, which feels too superficial.
The biggest failing however, I felt related to Donia’s role in the proceedings. We are expressly told that her job is to persuade mortal girls not to take the test. We are also told that she is very effective at this job. Yet we never really see her do this with Aislinn and whilst the hint is that this is because she sees Aislinn as being different to the others, we’re constantly told that she will abide by the rules of the test, only to see that she doesn’t. As I said, Donia is an interesting character and I was intrigued by her relationship with Keenan and her interactions with Beria. However, I’d really liked to have seen her make more of an effort to dissuade Aislinn at the start.
With regard to the test, I think that Marr misses a trick because the result is really a foregone conclusion from the start. Aislinn’s dilemma, which had been building nicely until that point, falls away as she finds the obvious solution (and indeed, I was surprised that it took her so long to work it out). As a result, the last quarter of the book feels a little robbed of tension and too by-the-numbers to be truly gripping, although Marr does compensate for that with a nice twist that allows an interesting set-up for future books (although I think that the idea of having an epilogue with a split time-frame didn’t quite come off with the execution).
Saying all that, there is enough in Marr’s writing for me to want to buy her next book in this series. She has plainly thought about her world and how faeries interact with mortals and I was particularly impressed with the way she depicts a parallel world that most people can’t see.
The Verdict:
Melissa Marr writes well and maintains pace. I was interested in her main characters and in particular, the love triangle element that is drawn out in the story. The story itself is slighter than I’d hoped and as a reader, I would have really liked to see more time given to setting up the background history relating to Beria and what her motivations are as the lack of this left her a little flatter than the author perhaps intended. However, there are some very good set-pieces within the text (the carnival being a particular favourite) and the ending showed that Marr is not interested in conventional endings. I am interested in reading more of this author and look forward to the next book in this series.