Stolen Songbird and Hidden Huntress by Danielle L. Jensen

4 out of 5 stars

This review may contain spoilers for the first book.

I received an ARC of the second book.

This as yet unfinished trilogy really hit a lot of the right notes for me. Cecile is a normal girl, ready to join her mother in the big city and sing at the opera, when she is sold to the trolls. They believe she is part of a prophecy which will break the curse set on them that traps them in their kingdom beneath a mountain. Cecile is quickly bonded to their Prince Tristan, but the politics of the kingdom go to hell when the curse remains unbroken. The elite aristocracy, inbred to the point of deformity but still magically powerful, are furious that one of their own has had to defile himself by bonding to a human for nothing. The half-bloods, made weak by the mixing of troll and human blood and made slaves to the aristocrats, are pushing closer and closer to rebellion. The king, knowing that any harm to Cecile will hurt his heir, uses her to control Tristan and Tristan’s insane but powerful brother can see openings to take the crown and rule.

The politics are done very well in these two books. There are enough characters and factions to keep you on your toes, but not enough to get seriously confusing. The plots play out with thought and intricacy and keep you interested and engaged trying to figure out all the angles and anticipating the character’s actions.

Cecile and Tristan are a great couple. They are both bonded to each other against their wills but end up making a great team. Tristan is a complicated character who has to weigh the pros and cons of his actions very carefully. Breaking the curse will mean unleashing his father, brother, and other powerful and evil creatures onto mankind, possibly returning the earth to the state of bloodshed it existed in before the curse. Leaving the curse in place will continue to subject the half-bloods to slavery at the hands of their full-blooded brethren. Either way, blood will be spilled. Cecile is not politically savvy, but is brave and has some unusual magic of her own. She quickly comes to feel sympathy for the half-bloods, and even some of the full-blooded trolls as they languish beneath the foot of a tyrant.

The first book takes place mainly in the troll kingdom, and the second takes place mainly in the human world. To break the curse, the witch who cast it must be tracked down and either persuaded to undo it or killed. Cecile is able to escape the king and the troll kingdom itself, but since Tristan cannot, the King uses him as leverage to force Cecile to track down and kill the witch. Cecile goes undercover as an opera singer following in her mother’s footsteps and must try and master her magic enough to track down and kill someone who has escaped detection for generations all the while trying to deal with her controlling mother attempting to mould her into the next stage sensation.

The contrast between the two settings was great. There are politics going on in both the human and troll realms, but Cecile’s roles are so different you really get to see two sides of here character. She and Tristan also make progressively more and more difficult decisions as tensions rise in the troll kingdom and they get closer to having to decide the fate of two peoples.

The thought put into all the characters reflects very well on the author. Some of them make decisions we might not have made ourselves, but you can always see the internal justification for it. This is not a pure good-against-evil book, where everything is black and white. Characters think and act rationally according to their own logic and circumstances, and even as you root for one side, it is possible to see where the other side is coming from.

The writing flows well and never interrupts the narrative, and the story is not overloaded with too much sappy romance. The characters feel like people and the narrative voices are clear and distinct. I would definitely suggest this to anyone who loves fantasy.

The Kanin Chronicles by Amanda Hocking

I received an ARC of the second book in this series.

2 out of 5 stars.

Bryn is a troll and works as a tracker, a special agent of the troll kingdom tasked with tracking down changelings left with humans and bringing them back to their real parents and people. Everything is going well until someone starts targeting changelings still in the human world. Even worse, it looks like the same criminal who tried to assassinate Bryn’s father years ago and has been on the run ever since. As the plot thickens, it looks like what they hoped was a few random attacks is a mysterious political plot spanning several kingdoms.

These two books are essentially political thrillers masquerading as fantasy. The troll people are not portrayed as otherworldly beings like faeries usually are. Instead, they are completely human, just with weird skin, hair, and occasional powers. They send their children out as changelings for financial reasons, drive Hummers and Jeeps, and wear designer clothing. It sounds like a neat way to go, but for me it spoiled most of the reasons I read fantasy. The characters rarely use their abilities and personality-wise, they are too human-like. If I wanted to read about tracking down criminals and uncovering political intrigue and plots I would read those genres. I don’t, so it is disappointing to find something in one of my preferred genres that is almost completely focused on those plot elements.

Bryn’s job is to uncover a plot against the elite and track down a fairy terrorist. This might have been an interesting crossover, but not enough attention was paid to the fairy elements. I read like someone had taken a Robert Ludlum book and given the characters fake spock ears. It did not integrate enough to be compelling or convincing.

The books make some interesting points about loyalty to superior officers coming up against personal ethics that could lead to some fruitful discussion, but since it is done in the context of monarchies, it loses a lot of its relevance. It would be interesting to talk about whether soldiers in the Middle East should be able to ignore their commanding officer’s orders if it means avoiding war crimes without being charged with treason. It is less interesting to talk about what loyalty we owe to a monarch, since most North American and European countries (whom I presume are the intended audiences) have decided that we owe monarchies who order us to do stupid or criminal things no loyalty, and maybe we should take away most, if not all, of their power altogether.

Bryn is an adequate character, but we do not really see much of her thought patterns or emotions. Her two personality traits are her obsession with her job and her crush on her boss. I did not really get to know her that well and she does not have any of the quirks or rich inner life that makes characters real.

The system built around changelings, as it was represented in these books, is completely unconvincing. The one changeling we see closely is immediately convinced to leave his parents and takes quite happily to his new life, despite not being ill treated by his human family at all. The troll world is built up on the premise that many of their most important children spend their entire childhoods in one world, but then are expected to effortlessly transition into being royalty in a troll kingdom, knowing that their parents abandoned them for monetary gain. It is an interesting, even great premise, but the ramifications are not explored at all. There is no resentment or massive emotional scars crippling this society, and there really should be.

These books fell flat for me. Neither the characters nor the world captured my attention enough to make up for a plot I really did not find interesting. There is going to be a third published, but I do not think I will be reading it.

Chasing Ravens by Jessica E. Page

I was given an ARC of this book.

4 out of 5 stars

For those of you who love fairy tales, this one is straight up out of that tradition. Anouk is a young healer with a gift for herbs who has to run away from an undesirable marriage into an adventure straight out of classical Russian fairy tales. Baba Yaga, Koschei the deathless, and the Rusalkas all play a role (if you do not recognize those names, go read some Andrew Lang and check back in after). Anouk’s kindness, determination, and knowledge of herbs are the only things that stand between her village and a brutal war with the trolls.

It is written true to form, with little to no internal dialogue and action taking up most of the text. This book pieces together lots of Russian and Eastern European fairy tale characters which I really enjoyed. The description of the forest and other landscapes was more vivid than you would usually find in fairy tales, but since this is a full-length novel the author had some room to include it without breaking the rhythm or mood of the story. Magic takes place with really no explanation needed, and randomly helping an animal in distress is always a good idea. There is little humour in this book, but lots of imagination and wonder. This is a great contemporary rewrite of the Russian fairytale tradition that really captures the spirit of the original tradition.

I am still unsure whether this is meant for older elementary or junior high students. I guesses elementary just because of the cover design and the age of the protagonist, but I think it could still be a valuable read for older kids (or adults) who love magic and fairy tales. I very much look forward to other books by this author if they are all similar in quality to this one.