![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
attackfishI have bookstore gift cards from Hanukkah, and they’re burning holes in my pocket. The laser they’re using was on its highest setting yesterday, so I went nosing around the YA fantasy shelves for something new to read. To my bemused delight, I found that the next Wicked Lovely book had somehow been published without my being aware.
Ani has been growing stronger since Iriel left the Dark throne and her father returned, becoming more fae and less human by the day. As her power grows, hungers awaken within her, hungers she shouldn’t have, for touch, and for the dark emotions on which the Dark Court feeds. With the Dark Court weakening without the Ink Exchanges, Ani’s new power could help save her court. When Devlin, the High Faery court’s enforcer travels to the mortal world with orders to kill her, and Bananach, the embodiment of war and chaos offers her a deal for her life, Ani must take Devlin’s help if the Dark Court is to survive at all. And when Sorcha, the Unchanging Queen begins to change, Ani’s twin hungers and new powers, and Devlin’s faltering loyalties may be the only thing able to save Faery.
I was leary of diving back into Marr’s version of faery again, especially the corners of it inhabited by Iriel, Ani, Rabbit, and Tish, after the emotional difficulty of reading Ink Exchange. However, it’s disturbingly easy to forget while reading Radiant Shadows that these same characters, Ani, Rabbit, Tish, Iriel, who are so loyal to each other, and kind, even loving are the same ones who betrayed a friend and participated in her mental and magical rape after she had already been raped physically. Marr has already shown these characters at their worst. Now she shows them to us at their best.
Still, it’s disconcerting and creepy to read a romance where one of the partners involved helped do that to someone.
As ever, Marr’s text has some very interesting things to say about gender dynamics. Gabriel, Ani’s faery father, won’t allow anyone to date her (or sleep with her, or get close to her) unless he can defeat Gabe in a fight. Whoever she sleeps with will have to lead the wild hunt. Ani counters his assertion with the fact that she wants to lead the wild hunt, not just sleep with whoever does, but to her father, she’s too weak for him even to consider it. Textually, this is because she’s half human, and he fears she couldn’t control the hunt, but this is written in a culture where the father denying his daughter sexual agency in a possessive attempt to protect her is a common and even valued narrative. He outs her in the position of a prize to be won, a one step removed Red Sonja. Defeat is the only way he is willing to transfer ownership of her. Underlying all of this is Gabe’s unquestioning assumption that his children will and should do as he commands. He has acknowledged her and her siblings for only three months, wasn’t there for them when their mother disappeared, and still expects all of them, but Ani especially to abide by his rules because he is their blood father. However, the text itself challenges his right to demand his daughter only date someone who is willing to fight him and can beat him, and the morality of this demand. Furthermore, it portrays the effects this choice has on his daughter, and how it leaves her frustrated and unhappy. Right before the final battle, the scene where Ani punches her father, and he’s forced to really punch her back, and acknowledge her as an equal opponent was so very satisfying. And later, when she asks if he would be able to live caged as he’s asking her to do, and he still didn’t quite get it and says it’s different, when her brother answers, that it isn’t, I wanted to cheer.
Also, there are two women in Devlin’s life that he has disobeyed his sisters to save. The first case, Rae, actually comes across as a more typical YA paranormal romance heroine. She is human, or at least was when she met Devlin, and doesn’t even have physical presence without him to give it to her. The exploration of her character, and her limitations, and her way of making her later captivity in the High Court work and not work was one of the story’s most intriguing subplots.
Devlin is a very real threat to Ani. When she was a child, he was sent to kill her, and it was only the fact that he couldn’t bring himself to kill a child, even on the High Queen’s orders that keeps her alive. Now that she nears adulthood, he finds himself reconsidering sparing her when he sees her. But she is an equally real threat to him, more so because she could kill him accidentally, or just drain him dry if her hunger were to become too strong. If this were a vampire romance, she would be the bloodsucking fiend err sexpot, even if Devlin is actually the one who drinks blood. Their differing loyalties and obligations keeping them apart only compound the risk.
DEVLIN: Hi, I’m Spock.
ANI: You taste yummy.
DEVLIN: My queen sent me to kill you. It’s the rational thing to do. She knows all about rational. But I like you, and you’re kinda hot.
ANI: You taste really yummy.
DEVLIN: The way I feel when I’m around you isn’t logical. I don’t know what to do with this.
ANI: You taste really really yummy.
Again, Marr sets up an ending to set my teeth on edge, with Ani learning to rearrange her loyalties around his, but she again yanks the rug out from under me and delivers an ending where both characters need to set aside old loyalties and create new ones so that they can be together, and so that the world can be kept safe.
Ani’s defiant joy at being a creature who raises fear in others, and her palpable loneliness and wish to belong hits home hard, and if the theme of the first three Wicked Lovely books was identity and the dangers of losing one’s self, Radiant Shadows is about the wish to belong and connect, and the wish to assert ones own wants and desires. Devlin finds his wants uncomfortable. Ani finds her inability to fulfill her wants uncomfortable. In the end, he needs to learn to let loose, and she needs to learn to challenge the people she loves.
Along with the romance, Marr delivers a suspenseful plot that once it gets going just doesn’t stop. Radiant Shadows is the most just plain fun of the Wicked Lovely books so far.
Sometimes, Marr’s imagery actually cracks me up with just how very overblown it is, especially next to the emotional poignancy of the rest of her prose, but sometimes her metaphors just hit so well that I can forgive whatever rough patches the prose otherwise contains.
On a side note, It’s fascinating seeing Seth for once through the eyes of someone he annoys, someone who sees him in the way, but who doesn’t discount him completely the way Keenan does. It’s also very strange to see Iriel as someone who is sad, lonely and guilty, instead of creepy and terrifying. Ani is safe around him, and trusts him, and is herself as dangerous as he is.
All told, Radiant Shadows is the best kind of second to last book in a series, the kind that makes me crave the finale, makes me want to turn time forward so that I could read it right now.
Melissa Marr can be found on Livejournal at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
melissa_writing.
Ani has been growing stronger since Iriel left the Dark throne and her father returned, becoming more fae and less human by the day. As her power grows, hungers awaken within her, hungers she shouldn’t have, for touch, and for the dark emotions on which the Dark Court feeds. With the Dark Court weakening without the Ink Exchanges, Ani’s new power could help save her court. When Devlin, the High Faery court’s enforcer travels to the mortal world with orders to kill her, and Bananach, the embodiment of war and chaos offers her a deal for her life, Ani must take Devlin’s help if the Dark Court is to survive at all. And when Sorcha, the Unchanging Queen begins to change, Ani’s twin hungers and new powers, and Devlin’s faltering loyalties may be the only thing able to save Faery.
I was leary of diving back into Marr’s version of faery again, especially the corners of it inhabited by Iriel, Ani, Rabbit, and Tish, after the emotional difficulty of reading Ink Exchange. However, it’s disturbingly easy to forget while reading Radiant Shadows that these same characters, Ani, Rabbit, Tish, Iriel, who are so loyal to each other, and kind, even loving are the same ones who betrayed a friend and participated in her mental and magical rape after she had already been raped physically. Marr has already shown these characters at their worst. Now she shows them to us at their best.
Still, it’s disconcerting and creepy to read a romance where one of the partners involved helped do that to someone.
As ever, Marr’s text has some very interesting things to say about gender dynamics. Gabriel, Ani’s faery father, won’t allow anyone to date her (or sleep with her, or get close to her) unless he can defeat Gabe in a fight. Whoever she sleeps with will have to lead the wild hunt. Ani counters his assertion with the fact that she wants to lead the wild hunt, not just sleep with whoever does, but to her father, she’s too weak for him even to consider it. Textually, this is because she’s half human, and he fears she couldn’t control the hunt, but this is written in a culture where the father denying his daughter sexual agency in a possessive attempt to protect her is a common and even valued narrative. He outs her in the position of a prize to be won, a one step removed Red Sonja. Defeat is the only way he is willing to transfer ownership of her. Underlying all of this is Gabe’s unquestioning assumption that his children will and should do as he commands. He has acknowledged her and her siblings for only three months, wasn’t there for them when their mother disappeared, and still expects all of them, but Ani especially to abide by his rules because he is their blood father. However, the text itself challenges his right to demand his daughter only date someone who is willing to fight him and can beat him, and the morality of this demand. Furthermore, it portrays the effects this choice has on his daughter, and how it leaves her frustrated and unhappy. Right before the final battle, the scene where Ani punches her father, and he’s forced to really punch her back, and acknowledge her as an equal opponent was so very satisfying. And later, when she asks if he would be able to live caged as he’s asking her to do, and he still didn’t quite get it and says it’s different, when her brother answers, that it isn’t, I wanted to cheer.
Also, there are two women in Devlin’s life that he has disobeyed his sisters to save. The first case, Rae, actually comes across as a more typical YA paranormal romance heroine. She is human, or at least was when she met Devlin, and doesn’t even have physical presence without him to give it to her. The exploration of her character, and her limitations, and her way of making her later captivity in the High Court work and not work was one of the story’s most intriguing subplots.
Devlin is a very real threat to Ani. When she was a child, he was sent to kill her, and it was only the fact that he couldn’t bring himself to kill a child, even on the High Queen’s orders that keeps her alive. Now that she nears adulthood, he finds himself reconsidering sparing her when he sees her. But she is an equally real threat to him, more so because she could kill him accidentally, or just drain him dry if her hunger were to become too strong. If this were a vampire romance, she would be the bloodsucking fiend err sexpot, even if Devlin is actually the one who drinks blood. Their differing loyalties and obligations keeping them apart only compound the risk.
DEVLIN: Hi, I’m Spock.
ANI: You taste yummy.
DEVLIN: My queen sent me to kill you. It’s the rational thing to do. She knows all about rational. But I like you, and you’re kinda hot.
ANI: You taste really yummy.
DEVLIN: The way I feel when I’m around you isn’t logical. I don’t know what to do with this.
ANI: You taste really really yummy.
Again, Marr sets up an ending to set my teeth on edge, with Ani learning to rearrange her loyalties around his, but she again yanks the rug out from under me and delivers an ending where both characters need to set aside old loyalties and create new ones so that they can be together, and so that the world can be kept safe.
Ani’s defiant joy at being a creature who raises fear in others, and her palpable loneliness and wish to belong hits home hard, and if the theme of the first three Wicked Lovely books was identity and the dangers of losing one’s self, Radiant Shadows is about the wish to belong and connect, and the wish to assert ones own wants and desires. Devlin finds his wants uncomfortable. Ani finds her inability to fulfill her wants uncomfortable. In the end, he needs to learn to let loose, and she needs to learn to challenge the people she loves.
Along with the romance, Marr delivers a suspenseful plot that once it gets going just doesn’t stop. Radiant Shadows is the most just plain fun of the Wicked Lovely books so far.
Sometimes, Marr’s imagery actually cracks me up with just how very overblown it is, especially next to the emotional poignancy of the rest of her prose, but sometimes her metaphors just hit so well that I can forgive whatever rough patches the prose otherwise contains.
On a side note, It’s fascinating seeing Seth for once through the eyes of someone he annoys, someone who sees him in the way, but who doesn’t discount him completely the way Keenan does. It’s also very strange to see Iriel as someone who is sad, lonely and guilty, instead of creepy and terrifying. Ani is safe around him, and trusts him, and is herself as dangerous as he is.
All told, Radiant Shadows is the best kind of second to last book in a series, the kind that makes me crave the finale, makes me want to turn time forward so that I could read it right now.
Melissa Marr can be found on Livejournal at
melissa_writing.
