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attackfishThe subtitles I’m giving the book reviews in this trilogy are becoming more and more fanciful. There is no blood magic in this book, and the subtitle has nothing to do with anything except that there is magic, and organized crime.
Cassel has been forced to pick a side and he’s picked the FBI. With his brother Barron, he is trying to leave the criminal life behind for good and finish high school before becoming an agent himself and using his powers for as legal a purpose as he can put them to. But Lila is furious with him, and her father eager to bring him back into the fold, and his is mother neck deep in trouble with the Zacharov crime family for a theft she committed long ago. And with the FBI reminding him more and more of a crime family itself, Cassel doesn’t know whether it’s possible, or even worth it to work for instead of against the law.
With Black Heart, the transition from gothic disguised as noir to true noir is complete. None of Cassel’s secrets are hidden from himself anymore, and the threat his family poses to him has been mostly eliminated. Black Heart is about dealing with the fall out of the discovery of those secrets, and has only a minor mystery at Cassel’s boarding school in need of solving. The real drama and worry comes from the danger that is the FBI, and the Zacharov crime family. Lila’s father has Cassel’s mother, and since both Cassel and Barron both break the law every time they work magic, they are constantly under threat from the FBI, even when they work that magic at the FBI’s degression. This is the novel in the series where the danger starts to come from the system, where Black makes clear to us that even though Cassel has dug as much truth from his past as is possible and has dealt with the danger therein, he does not have the power to fight that system, and change it in any measurable way. Nor can Cassel go along with it, morally, (which, if truth be told is not his primary consideration) or practically, since the FBI has anything but his best interests at heart and is willing to arrest him, put him in prison, or get him killed as soon as they decide that they want to.
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lalunatique and I talked recently about the tendency of writers to not follow through on the negative implications of their worldbuilding and characterization. Black doesn’t flinch at doing just this. If anything, she revels in it. Hers is a deeply unpleasant world, in which I found myself glad that our world doesn’t have magic like this, and that I don’t have magic like this. Instead of feeling an escapist joy in reading this series, I felt a sense that I had escaped, been lucky to have been born in this world, and not in that one. Or maybe it’s just that I’m lucky not to be the child of con artists with ties to organized crime with two sociopathic brothers who only care about me as much as they can use me, or that I’m lucky not to be a street kid, that I’m lucky not to be one of the people like Lila and Cassel, for whom choice has been stripped away.
In an effort to show just how morally bankrupt Cassel’s brother Barron is, his entrance into the FBI marks a transition from a mind-raping murderer to corrupt cop, who doesn’t care that he is everything their family, raised steeped in crime, has taught him to despise, as long as he gets something out of it. There is absolutely no honor among thieves, or at least not thieves in the Sharpe family. Barron’s equanimity about becoming a dirty cop, and Cassel’s teenage amusement about becoming the one thing most hated in his old neighborhood of crooks is one of the few funny things about Black Heart.
I lied above when I said that the subtitle to this post had nothing to do with the novel. Thematically, it has a great deal to do with it, though it’s not the Organized Crime families demanding the blood, but the FBI. It’s blood, in the sense of family, and also in the sense of the dead bodies that Cassel had unknowingly left behind that draws the FBI to him, and also that forces him to take their offer. And it’s blood that they try to take from him in repayment when he foils their plans to trap him further. This is what Black Heart is about. It’s about Cassel, trapped on all sides, trying to get out alive.
Most YA Fantasy is also a fantasy of agency, the kid on the cusp of adulthood discovers magical powers, a secret, a status as the chosen one, and is able to save/change the world. Black turns that on its head. Yes, Cassel has the rarest and strongest magic ability of them all. As far as anyone can tell, he is the only transformation worker in the world. Yet, throughout the course of the series, he is used, he is manipulated, he is forced, he is trapped, and ultimately, he is absolutely powerless. The best that either he or Lila can manage is to run away. Their escape at the end is as cruel and tragic as it is inevitable.
Black introduced some plot threads close to the end of Black Heart that felt like they came out of nowhere, and that she didn’t wrap up particularly well, but I was too busy feeling like I had been punched in the stomach at the ending, because after all this, all Cassel and Lila got was a sliver of hope that there was a way out. It didn’t seem like enough. (But of course, it was).
These are not gorgeous books as some of the cover blurbs would suggest. They are painful, stark, brutal books that rip the false beauty and idealism away from their subject matter. When I had finished reading them, I was wrung out and exhausted. I can’t recommend them strongly enough, but I also can’t warn you away strongly enough.
Holly Black can be found online at her website, blackholly.com, or on livejournal, asblackholly.
Cassel has been forced to pick a side and he’s picked the FBI. With his brother Barron, he is trying to leave the criminal life behind for good and finish high school before becoming an agent himself and using his powers for as legal a purpose as he can put them to. But Lila is furious with him, and her father eager to bring him back into the fold, and his is mother neck deep in trouble with the Zacharov crime family for a theft she committed long ago. And with the FBI reminding him more and more of a crime family itself, Cassel doesn’t know whether it’s possible, or even worth it to work for instead of against the law.
With Black Heart, the transition from gothic disguised as noir to true noir is complete. None of Cassel’s secrets are hidden from himself anymore, and the threat his family poses to him has been mostly eliminated. Black Heart is about dealing with the fall out of the discovery of those secrets, and has only a minor mystery at Cassel’s boarding school in need of solving. The real drama and worry comes from the danger that is the FBI, and the Zacharov crime family. Lila’s father has Cassel’s mother, and since both Cassel and Barron both break the law every time they work magic, they are constantly under threat from the FBI, even when they work that magic at the FBI’s degression. This is the novel in the series where the danger starts to come from the system, where Black makes clear to us that even though Cassel has dug as much truth from his past as is possible and has dealt with the danger therein, he does not have the power to fight that system, and change it in any measurable way. Nor can Cassel go along with it, morally, (which, if truth be told is not his primary consideration) or practically, since the FBI has anything but his best interests at heart and is willing to arrest him, put him in prison, or get him killed as soon as they decide that they want to.
lalunatique and I talked recently about the tendency of writers to not follow through on the negative implications of their worldbuilding and characterization. Black doesn’t flinch at doing just this. If anything, she revels in it. Hers is a deeply unpleasant world, in which I found myself glad that our world doesn’t have magic like this, and that I don’t have magic like this. Instead of feeling an escapist joy in reading this series, I felt a sense that I had escaped, been lucky to have been born in this world, and not in that one. Or maybe it’s just that I’m lucky not to be the child of con artists with ties to organized crime with two sociopathic brothers who only care about me as much as they can use me, or that I’m lucky not to be a street kid, that I’m lucky not to be one of the people like Lila and Cassel, for whom choice has been stripped away.In an effort to show just how morally bankrupt Cassel’s brother Barron is, his entrance into the FBI marks a transition from a mind-raping murderer to corrupt cop, who doesn’t care that he is everything their family, raised steeped in crime, has taught him to despise, as long as he gets something out of it. There is absolutely no honor among thieves, or at least not thieves in the Sharpe family. Barron’s equanimity about becoming a dirty cop, and Cassel’s teenage amusement about becoming the one thing most hated in his old neighborhood of crooks is one of the few funny things about Black Heart.
I lied above when I said that the subtitle to this post had nothing to do with the novel. Thematically, it has a great deal to do with it, though it’s not the Organized Crime families demanding the blood, but the FBI. It’s blood, in the sense of family, and also in the sense of the dead bodies that Cassel had unknowingly left behind that draws the FBI to him, and also that forces him to take their offer. And it’s blood that they try to take from him in repayment when he foils their plans to trap him further. This is what Black Heart is about. It’s about Cassel, trapped on all sides, trying to get out alive.
Most YA Fantasy is also a fantasy of agency, the kid on the cusp of adulthood discovers magical powers, a secret, a status as the chosen one, and is able to save/change the world. Black turns that on its head. Yes, Cassel has the rarest and strongest magic ability of them all. As far as anyone can tell, he is the only transformation worker in the world. Yet, throughout the course of the series, he is used, he is manipulated, he is forced, he is trapped, and ultimately, he is absolutely powerless. The best that either he or Lila can manage is to run away. Their escape at the end is as cruel and tragic as it is inevitable.
Black introduced some plot threads close to the end of Black Heart that felt like they came out of nowhere, and that she didn’t wrap up particularly well, but I was too busy feeling like I had been punched in the stomach at the ending, because after all this, all Cassel and Lila got was a sliver of hope that there was a way out. It didn’t seem like enough. (But of course, it was).
These are not gorgeous books as some of the cover blurbs would suggest. They are painful, stark, brutal books that rip the false beauty and idealism away from their subject matter. When I had finished reading them, I was wrung out and exhausted. I can’t recommend them strongly enough, but I also can’t warn you away strongly enough.
Holly Black can be found online at her website, blackholly.com, or on livejournal, as
blackholly.
