Welcome to Trash Tuesdays, brought to you by Brownian Motion.
'Brownian, when Rollercoasters aren’t enough!'
This week: a tale of music and faeries and out of the ordinary boys. At the end I've summarised my daily reaction and given the book a Brownian Rating (BR) out of ten.
Maggie Stiefvater* is the author of The Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy, which so far consists of Shiver and Linger. (The final book is due out of July this year - hopefully with simultaneous UK and North American release dates.) Shiver and Linger are both excellent but for various reasons, mostly because they've been done dozens of times already, I'm not going to review them here.
Instead, I'm going to look at Stiefvater's earliest book, Lament.
I like Faeries almost as much as I like Angels. Which is to say, not a lot. If I wasn't already hooked on Stiefvader's writing style, this one would have gone back on the shelf. Also - I'd already read Fallen at this point and liked it.*
I'll get my one big niggle out of the way first: Celtic salad.* Harp, bagpipes, four-leaf clovers. Yowza. If Deirdre played the flute, I probably wouldn't have noticed, but there's a reason I avoid Diana Gabaldon and it is Scot-overload. I'm happy to lay this reaction at the bleeding feet of my Highland dancing PTSD though.
Enough Celtic moaning - where was I? - right. Dee plays the harp, and on the day of the big regional competition she meets a Mysterious Boy(TM). Dee has problems with stage fright and so throws up before Every. Single. Performance. (Actually, suddenly the harp makes a lot more sense. You can’t throw up inside a harp). MB(TM) helps her clean up in the bathroom.
And here we get to the first thing I really like about the book. Mysterious-Boy (Hereafter known as Luke because it's shorter) is different from standard YA Romantic-Boy because he isn't automatically cruel to her for no reason. You know the drill: They Must Stay Apart – No He Will Drive Her Away and Fight! Against! Fate! (For Her Own Good!) (!!!!!). I really enjoyed that this didn't happen – and it’s a perfect example of why I like what Stiefvader does with her characters. It would have been so easy to go the usual route with this, but instead she stays true an actual, believable behaviour. Just because something isn't a good idea, it doesn't mean that you - particularly if you're a teenage you and the opposite sex is involved - are going to do as you're told.
Luke immediately decides that he and Dee need to perform together at the recital/competition/thing and they spend all of two pages rehearsing. And of course they're brilliant and everyone loves them.
If you aren't reaching for that iron horseshoe already, I’m worred about you.
Luke is an Assassin. An assassin working for the Faerie Queen. (This isn’t a spoiler because it's on the back of the book.) He turns up everywhere Dee is, freaks out her near and dear, sets Dee's little heart aflutter and you're never quite sure exactly what's going on. Is he good? Is he bad? I'm not spoiling, but I thought it was reasonably well done.
There is an acceptably creepy amount of peril in this book as well. The bad-guys don’t seem to be all that dangerous – but one of the major themes in Lament is that appearances are deceptive. Almost nothing is what it seems, including our Heroine, who has the spine that Luce was lacking.
Dee often saves herself from potential danger (she does some pretty stupid things too, but I'm letting them slide a bit because they mostly happen early on before she really believes what is happening). The most impressive thing? She uses her brain to outwit the faeries on several occasions. She does some research, she extrapolates from comments made by others and manages to muddle through. Often with Luke nowhere in sight. Three cheers for capable female characters.
So, Brownian Scoring:
Day One: BR: 6.5 The book was pretty good. Not great, but I did like it better than Fallen.
Day Two: BR: 7.5 Actually, harps and bagpipes aside. It was really good.
Day Three: BR: 8.5 There's a sequel!
Day Four: BR 7.5 It's stand alone.
Day Five: BR: 7.0 And it's about the best friend.
Day Six: BR 7.5 Okay. It has no sequel. There just happens to be a book with some of the same characters in it. I can live with that.
Day Seven: BR: 7.5 'I think you should borrow this book.'
I will pick up the companion book, regardless of my feelings about James (the best friend). Stiefvater writes well enough that I have the feeling she'll become one of those authors I watch out for and give the benefit of the doubt to.
Final Brownian Motion Rating: 7.5 (and possibly still rising)
Next week - Cina Mieville's Un Lun Dun
*Husbando refers to her as Magic Darth-Vader.
* Moral - Don't judge a book by its mythical protagonist.
*I have to admit that less than twenty pages into this book I was seriously beginning to lose faith in ol'Maggie. I suspect that my tolerance of ‘Celtic-ness’ is slightly lower than the average person's, having spent a good portion of my youth in cold basements learning to dance with swords and keep my spine ram-rod straight while simultaneously trying to stay on the balls of my feet and keep the bottle caps in my shoes from digging into my heels. To this day I tend to walk on tip-toe when I'm tense. The kilts were awesome though.
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