by Maggie Stiefvater
Published by Flux, October 8, 2008
325 pages
ASIN: B002WGJX2G
Deirdre Monaghan has a gift. As far
most people are concerned that gift is her musical talent. But the truth is
much more than that. Deirdre is a cloverhand, one of the few mortals that can
see and interact with the realm of Faeries. Her life takes a turn towards the weird
when she meets Luke, a strange boy who is utterly obsessed with her. What
Deirdre doesn’t realize is that Luke is a gallowglass, an assassin for the Fae
sent to kill her. Luckily Luke has fallen in love with Deirdre and now wishes
to save her from the wrath of the Faerie Queen.
Lament is your typical YA romance
novel in the same vein as Twilight. You have a girl who is an extremely
talented musician but is otherwise invisible*. One day at a music competition
during her pre-performance ritual of throwing up in the bathroom she meets
literally the man of her dreams. He holds her hair back and practices with her
before the competition. Deirdre is immediately taken by him, and with good
reason, he’s mentioned often as being very attractive. Even other attractive
characters in the book are described as being as attractive as Luke but in a
different way.
(*This is never shown and always
talked about.)
Aside from an interesting premise
there isn’t much in the way of a story here. The plot seems to be driven by the
author’s sheer force of will. She ignores how real people would react in similar
situations and has her characters just go with the flow. I was watching an
episode of The Daly Show and Tim Daly was trying to identify with his character
to understand how Tim Daly the actor should be portraying Tim Daly the
Character. Whoopi Goldberg eventually told him that she had a similar problem
when she started on The View and decided onscreen Whoopi and real life Whoopi
should go see “Back to The Future” together.
The whole story was hilarious and preposterous
but more believable than a lot of the decisions Deirdre and company made.
If you’re into YA romance novels for
the sake of beautifully described fantasy worlds then this book is perfect for
you. But if you’re looking for a novel with a believable (believable doesn’t
have to be realistic) and coherent plot then I would recommend you look
elsewhere.
Rated 3/10
Rated 3/10
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