Richelle Mead - Thorn Queen (Book Review)

"THORN QUEEN" (Amazon: UK, US)
by RICHELLE MEAD
Format: Paperback, 480/384 pages
Publisher: Bantam Books / Zebra Books (August 2009)

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About a year ago, I read and reviewed the first book of Dark Swan series, Storm Born, which came as a pleasant surprise. Naturally, I was excited to hear that the sequel was coming out this year and when I got the book, I started reading it as soon as I could find some time. Sadly, I have to say that it wasn't worth it.

The beginning once again introduces us to Eugenie's everyday (which I found pretty nice since I'd forgotten most of what has happened in the first book). This time around, Eugenie spends most of her days in Otherworld, since she is now the Thorn Queen there. Her country, being magical, has changed to suit her, but the inhabitants of Thorn Land have some hard time adapting to the climate changes. Eugenie is distraught and wants to help them, but by doing so, she has to put her talents to use, learn some more magic and decide on where her loyalties lie.

The plot is promising and pretty well-written, even if it seems that we've heard it all before. It's too bad that Mead doesn't leave it at that, but instead proceeds to throw in the element of paranormal romance – quite a lot of it. It seemed as if every chapter ended with a long scene of Eugenie and Kiyo having wild, rough sex. These love scenes are not even good, and after reading two or three of them, I simply started skipping them, because they were all the same. It was pretty annoying, not to mention being a really obvious filler for when Mead got out of ideas or simply wanted to prolong the book (without the sex scenes, it would've been shorter for at least a half) – I can't even say that she wanted to spice things up a bit, because it was all so utterly boring.

The humour, which I enjoyed quite a lot in the first book, has now faltered as well; in Thorn Queen, dialogues seem watered down and uninteresting. I admit I was under a lot of stress at the time of reading this book, so that might have influenced my views a bit, but I still think the fault lies mostly in Mead's writing. There was some lack of research on her part that did nothing to improve things – I could hardly laugh at Ladyxmara72 (a girl who met Eugenie in person and insisted on being addressed with her World of Warcraft character name), when I find it almost common knowledge that WoW characters can't have numbers in their names. It's a very silly, not to say sloppy mistake, but it destroyed that character for me, rendering her completely unconvincing. You can't submerge yourself into plot that way, not when such mistakes make you aware that the characters are just a product of an author that did not do her research well enough and don't, by any chance, resemble real people. And I always thought geeks were the easiest characters to write, because there are so many stereotypes about them that are actually true in plenty of cases. Meh.

Thorn Queen is a huge step backwards from what we've seen in Storm Born. The plot is all but put on the sidetrack and the whole book mostly revolves about Eugenie's sexual life, when it should be the other way around. Thus, Thorn Queen firmly sets itself into the sub-genre of paranormal romance, and will probably appeal to fans of Twilight and the like. Too bad, really – the plot had much potential, but has become more of an excuse for sex scenes.
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~Trin~

Richelle Mead - Storm Born (Book Review)

"Storm Born" (Amazon: US, UK)
by Richelle Mead (Homepage)
Format: Paperback, 384 pages
Publisher: Bantam Books

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- Warning: the first paragraph of this review includes (more or less) only my musings on the topic of urban fantasy and no information on the book, so feel free to skip it if you wish.
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You might have noticed that I'm the only member of RoSF review staff who reviews urban fantasy. There are several reasons for this:

• the other three prefer reading epic fantasy and space-opera tinged SF, and while I’m not the biggest fan of urban fantasy, I have no prejudice that would keep me from reading it

• I’m the youngest of the four (which is a rather silly reason, but on the other hand, it’s true that urban fantasy books usually aim at younger and less demanding audience)

• my girl-friends are avid fans of urban fantasy, so I’m, in a way, 'obliged' to keep track of this sub-genre
  

• and the most important reason, which is in a way related to the previous one: I’m the only female reviewer at RoSF and it’s a fact that urban fantasy is being written predominately for young women, since it’s mostly about young women with extraordinary powers who, in most cases, fall in love with equally extraordinary (and often non-human) young ‘men’. These elements of paranormal romance genre are often present up to the point where almost no actual ‘fantasy’ is left (e.g. Twilight), but however cheap that may sound, it usually works.

The problem is mostly that while I can enjoy well-written romantic elements in books I read, I still prefer them to remain only additions to a good plot and not, as it too often happens in urban fantasy, the other way around. That’s why I usually find urban fantasy easy to read and even easier to forget – but Storm Born came as a nice surprise and made me reconsider my opinion on the genre.

Meet Eugenie, a young woman whose life has never really been an average one. Introduced to a world of demons and fay at an early age, she’s been trained by her stepfather to become one of the world’s best shamans, known as Odile. Everyday routine has made her profession almost as ordinary as any other one, but all of a sudden, things start to go wrong. Every demon she is asked to banish seems to know her real name, the mysterious, sexy Kiyo is messing with her head and there seems to be a prophecy predicting she will bear the descendant of the Storm King, a powerful and feared ruler whose ability is to control weather. So, in a way, a client asking her to find his sister in the dangerous, gentry-inhabited Otherworld, is a good thing …

The plot struck me at first as eerily similar to the “Abhorsen” trilogy by Garth Nix – the most obvious of the elements they share being the banishing of evil creatures into a hidden, underlying world. It soon became obvious, though, that Storm Born’s Otherworld is nothing like Abhorsen’s Death, being much more like a colorful fairyland from folk tales, not to mention that finding a person in Otherworld takes much more time and labor. In other ways, Storm Born resembles Bloodring, with all the powerful gems, Eugenie's way of living and (sometimes rather demonical) visitors from Otherworld. As far as elements of paranormal romance are concerned, it's far from both previously mentioned books - it plunges boldly into sexuality, which (at least for me) is a welcome change form an adolescent naivete, especially after Bloodring, where the main protagonist does a lot of thinking on the subject but little else. In Storm Born, Mead introduces the super-sexy Kiyo very early in the book and there are whole chapters dedicated to whatever action he and Eugenie get involved into, be it lovemaking or solving their personal problems. Not to mention the decadent Otherworld palace of Dorian, a wise but rather bored gentry king, who tutors Eugenie and provides many comical moments.

As already mentioned, the first impression of the Otherworld being a rather dark and grim place falls away swiftly when we are introduced to a jolly and colorful land of the gentry. We follow what at first looks like a classical tale of The Chosen One's training, power-gaining and such, but it is brimming with very innovative ideas and twists. The characters we encounter are funny, witty, cynical, sexy and in a few cases rather obscure - in a way, they represent the book itself. The final twist is, for once, not exceedingly obvious, and it succesfully turns things upside down, leaving a reader wishing for more.

All in all, Storm Born is funny, full of sex-appeal, but it sometimes deals with the serious side of life, too. It balances the contrast between Eugenie's everyday problems and her Otherworldly adventures perfectly, not shying away from sexuality but never overstepping the treshold of vulgarity. It might not be an astonishing book, but is nevertheless a very good one - the best urban fantasy book I've came upon lately and one whose sequel I'll not only gladly read, but also actively seek out.





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~ Trin ~