Stolen Songbird

Part of me wants to give this a 1-star. Man, I hardly know what to say. Two books – this one and Wintersong – that have similar subject matter (a girl is kidnapped and married/bonded to a goblin/troll in order to fulfill a prophecy, living underground, etc. etc.) ... both are just disappointing. Wintersong was boring, Stolen Songbird is cringe-inducing with the characters. Their love was barely believable, they acted like idiots, on and on it goes. Not going to finish the rest of the series, sorry.

After sitting on it for a night, I realize that I didn't really care about the characters in this book and the world building was not that compelling for me. I was certainly intrigued at first, but I just wasn't all that fascinated with the progression of the plot.

Technically, I wasn't displeased with the characters, but I wasn't invested in them. I couldn't connect with their struggle, I didn't feel the love they had for each other. I still don't get how/when Cecile fell in love with the prince. They barely spent any time together.

Even after the huge cliffhanger it ended with I'm still not all that convinced I want to find out what happens.

This is a fun imaginative story of a girl forced to marry a Troll. It sounds rather typical but there are a lot of twists and turns to make the story interesting. There's some subtle discussion of class and prejudices that make it somewhat enlightening as well.

This book is impossible to put down once the story starts moving. I picked it up thinking it'd be a nice fantasy read. IT WAS MUCH MORE THAN THAT. It has everything I love in a story: a good political drama, solid world-building, lovable characters, development, gradual romance, nice interaction, and clever twists. It's definitely not what I expected, but the story just pulls you in and refuses to let go until you're done.

...and when I'm done, the book left me crying and screaming in my mind because of how it ended.

WHY.

The second book is coming out next year in June. I'll be weeping until then.

I've read enough fantasy books that I have a pretty clear idea in my head what trolls look like. They're big and green. Preferably hairless, but if they have hair it's kind of rust colored and has the texture of a wire-bristle brush. They're kind of squish-faced with protruding tusks. Basically, a cross between an ogre and a hobgoblin.

The trolls in this book are nothing like that. In fact, I would most compare these trolls to elves. Some of them are exquisitely beautiful, but with an otherworldly wrongness to them, and others are disfigured horribly. They have a very limited worldview: human's are little more than half intelligent beasts-of-burden (blessed with opposable thumbs) and half-breeds are slaves for life.

I will admit, the first issue I took with this book was how gorgeous the main guy is. Not that it was truly unexpected, I was just half hoping that, with the physical appearance of the other trolls that he would be a little less perfect looking. And no, no matter how books try to convince you otherwise, there really isn't such a thing as too perfect.

While I am very glad that Tristan wasn't a ‘satellite character' and had his own story outside of being a love interest, I cannot help but think that I would have been much more interested in the book had it followed him instead of Cecile. The small clips we got to see from him in the first third of the book did nothing to quench my interest in his story.

I really liked the setting for the story though. It was actually French influenced - and that's rather unusual for fantasy stories. Though I'm not really sure if this was supposed to take place on earth, or in a fantasy world. There were mentions of traveling to ‘the continent'. But, for as much as I liked this idea, nothing was explained.

Cecile was, honestly, the bane of this book. She's wonderful. She's strong. She is the prophesied, but she fails. Seriously, how can this girl go wrong? Well, she did. She did shortly after she was bound to a certain handsome prince. With this bonding, she's able to sense his emotions. She cannot tell what he's thinking, but she can feel his fear, excitement and everything else. Makes me wonder if she could feel his indigestion.

She soon became all consumed in Tristan, even when he gave her no reason to be. She was extremely stupid while in ‘love'. If she could have kept some of that bravery and feisty-ness, I think I would have actually liked this book, even for the world building flaws.

(Originally posted on my blog: http://pagesofstarlight.blogspot.com/)