Valiant by Holly Black

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Audience: Young Adult

Rating: A-

Synopsis:

This book, like the first in the series, is not the type of fairy tale your little sister hears at bedtime. This is a much edgier, darker story where magic is injected like heroin and power and loyalties are traded constantly. Val is an understated girl from a New Jersey suburb, ignorant of the existence of magic until she runs away from home and falls in with a strange group of teenagers who live in the subway and act as messengers for fairy folk. Val quickly gets caught up in their lives, their addictions, and a dangerous relationship with a monster that no longer seems so monstrous. In fact, he’s becoming scarily attractive.

Chatter:

(Spoiler Alerts! ) This seems more like a companion novel than a true sequel, but having read the back of the third book, Ironside, it seems like it will tie all of the plots together.

I was immediately sucked into this plot – I can’t imagine Val’s anguish when she catches her boyfriend with her mother and then discovers that her best friend knew about it. I was glad that Ruth is given a chance to redeem herself when she arrives in New York and refuses to leave until Val does. In some ways she’s braver than Val, because she stays and brake the cold and scariness of magic without the desperate motivation that Val had.

Val and Ravus’s relationship was sweet, but not as satisfying as Roiben and Kaye’s. It was clear that Val was developing feelings for Ravus, but to me it didn’t have the same level of intensity and build up that Kaye/Roiben did. At the end of Tithe I couldn’t wait to find out what happened next with those two… I don’t feel as much anticipation at the end of Valiant.

I was sad that Roiben and Kaye were barely in this book. Kaye is never even mentioned by name, but I assume she’s the green, winged faerie that makes Roiben smile. I had expected that his court would be a safer, less violent place – but from the way Luis and Val are treated, it doesn’t seem like this is true.

In some ways I hope that Dave gets the faeries’ vengeance – he’s earned it in both the human and faerie world. He should have consequences for poisoning all those faeries, causing the cop to shoot his partner, and for what he did to Lolli. It’s only fear about what would happen to Luis that makes me reluctant to see Dave punished. Hopefully this will be addressed in Ironside.

Questions:

What punishment does Dave deserve?

What would Kaye be feeling when she sees Val and Luis in Roiben’s court?

How will Mabry’s actions affect the relationship between the two faerie courts?

Keep reading!

Paige