She tried to swim to the surface but it kept stretching out of reach. It was like the cusp between waking and sleep, where you couldn’t hold on to your thoughts. Couldn’t hold on to anything.
But she held on to him.
Once in a while, you come across the kind of written work that makes you wish you had the talent to craft something so beautiful out of something that’s so dark and twisted.
I’ve loved V.E. Schwab ever since I picked up the Shades of Magic trilogy last year. As an author, I think there are no limits to what her imagination can conceive and what she can put into words. In a time where everyone seems to be writing about love triangles and sparkly vampires, she dares to be different.
This Savage Song, the first book in the Monsters of Verity series, opens up with our “heroine” committing arson by burning down the chapel in the Catholic school she was attending. Talk about something starting with a bang. The opening chapter alone made me sit up and take notice. Right out of the gate, I knew this was not going to be a typical YA fantasy novel.
The concept behind this series is simple and yet strangely complex at the same time. Verity is a city teeming with monsters that arise in the aftermath of horrible crimes and savage acts. There are three known kinds: Corsai, who are born out of violent but non-lethal acts, like to prey on flesh. Malchai, born out of murder, feed on blood.
And last but not least, the Sunai, who are born out crimes so horrible that they take out the lives of more than one person, feed on souls. However, they can only feed on the souls of sinners, and to hear their song is to feel your soul being reaped from you one note at a time. They are considered to be the worst kind of monsters because they look, walk and talk just like humans, until you look into the bottomless depths of their eyes.
The city itself is divided into two factions: the North City, ruled by Callum Harker, who “controls” the monsters and who makes the inhabitants pay for his protection; and the South City, ruled by Henry Flynn, whose small band of soldiers patrol the streets in order to keep humans safe from the monsters.
And because this is some kind of retelling of Romeo and Juliet (in like, a sick, distorted kind of way), OF COURSE, Callum and Henry have two offsprings that meet somewhere and get to know each other in a way that makes readers hopeful that some kind of love story will arise from the gruesomeness of this tale.
Right.
If you’re looking for happily-ever-after, you might want to move on to the new Stephenie Meyer novel or reread Twilight. There are no cutesy, holding hands in the dark and chasing each other down the beach moments here.
Kate Harker is no Juliet. And while August Flynn may have the looks of someone who would spout sonnets in the moonlight and liken his lady love to a summer’s day, he would just as likely kill someone with his violin than he would make love to a woman.
I love atypical and imperfect main characters. I think they’re so much more relatable than those characters that are perceived to be perfect by everyone around them. I think the fact that these characters are neither purely good nor evil makes them more compelling and interesting, and it mirrors the truth of what it means to be human.
Its not always black and white. We are defined largely by the sum total of our life experiences and the choices we’ve made and have stood by. I think what I realised while reading this book is that life tends to be one large grey area most of the time, and no one really has the right to judge anyone by what they do when faced with an impossible situation.
Apart from being thought-provoking, this two-book series is also action-packed and gruesome in the best way possible. It is not afraid to be graphic and descriptive about mankind’s capacity for violence, and it just makes me think about how we’ve come a long way from the days when YA was synonymous to Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield in the Sweet Valley series.
There is a lot of violence in these books, but the good thing is that it never feels gratuitous or senseless. The violence feels like an integral part of the story; it feels like we NEED to see and get past the bad parts in order to get to some kind of resolution, just like real life.
Some part of me always knew how this series would end, and I wasn’t far off in my predictions actually. Still, when I came to the climactic conclusion of ‘Our Dark Duet‘ (the second book in the series), I found myself sobbing like a baby and crying ugly tears, even as I knew it could not have ended any other way.
The author allows you to develop such a personal connection with her characters. You are able to share in their joys, sorrows, triumphs and loss. But it also means that the ending of the story packs a real punch because you feel like you’ve gone through this roller coaster journey with them.
So no, it wasn’t a happy ending, but what it was was hopeful and redemptive. It leaves you with the feeling that this is a story that is just beginning, and that there is so much more work to be done before there can be real and lasting peace in Verity.
People were messy. They were defined not only by what they’d done, but by what they would have done, under different circumstances, moulded as much by their regrets as their actions, choices they stood by and those they wished they could undo. Of course, there was no going back – time only moved forward – but people could change.
For worse. For better. It wasn’t easy. The world was complicated. Life was hard. And so often, living hurt.
So make it worth the pain.
I am under no illusions that this is an unbiased review. I love love love this series. To me, it is absolutely faultless, and I would really recommend it for people who love world-building, fantasy and a taste of something different. Happy reading, bookworms!
Blabbaholics and Bookworms 