Crimson Bound

by Rosamund Hodge

An exhilarating tale of darkness, love, and redemption inspired by the classic fairy tale "Little Red Riding Hood," from the author of Cruel Beauty. When Rachelle was fifteen she was good-apprenticed to her aunt and in training to protect her village. But she was also reckless-straying from the forest path in pursuit of a way to free her world from the threat of eternal darkness. After an illicit meeting goes dreadfully wrong, Rachelle is forced to make a terrible choice that binds her to the very evil she had hoped to defeat. Three years later, Rachelle has given her life to serving the realm, fighting deadly creatures in a vain effort to atone. When the king orders her to guard his son Armand-the man she hates most-Rachelle forces Armand to help her hunt for the legendary sword that might save their world. Together, they navigate the opulent world of the courtly elite, where beauty and power reign and no one can be trusted. And as they become unexpected allies, they discover far-reaching conspiracies, hidden magic, and a love that may be their undoing.
Within a palace built on unbelievable wealth and dangerous secrets, can Rachelle discover the truth and stop the fall of endless night?

• ISBN10: 0062224778
• ISBN13: 9780062224774
• Publish Date: 3 November 2016 (first published 5 May 2015)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
• Imprint: Balzer and Bray
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 464
• Language: English

Reviews

“Do you think that doing the right thing will always be pretty?”

It's been a long time since I read Crimson Bound and I can't remember much of it, but I like the concepts and atmosphere in this Red Riding Hood inspired story. 

Richelle is the type of heroine that I usually like. She's a fighter, angry, vulnerable at times, flawed and full of complexity, but she lacks the spark that I was looking for and felt distant at times. I could understand her reasoning and although her actions are frustrating, they suit her character arc, but I couldn't get a sense of her emotions and what she's all about. Richelle is a Bloodbound which means that she has to make a choice to kill someone in three days or die. The choice and its potential consequences brought internal conflict and character development, but after a certain point, Richelle's grappling, anger and guilt became too much. 

The secondary characters aren't that compelling. The only character that stands out, aside from the love interests, is Amelie, Richelle's friend. Their friendship isn't perfect, but I like the parallels between them and the different ways they go about protecting each other. 

I'm conflicted about the love interests: Erec and Armand. They're both complex and interesting characters in isolation (also, yay for disability rep), but as love interests, they're meh. I didn't feel the chemistry between Richelle and either of her love interests, maybe because she's so guarded and distant, but the relationships didn't occur organically and seem forced. However, the way that the love interests are used to progress the plot is interesting and though the twists are predictable, the story is still engrossing. 

The best part of Crimson Bound is the worldbuilding and concepts. There's a magical and dangerous forest, terrifying creatures, a fairytale atmosphere and a story-within-a-story. The Forest is cool, but it's also quite abstract and difficult to visualise. I also like the story of Tyr and Zisa and how it was interwoven into the plot, but it can be confusing at times.   

Crimson Bound is engrossing, has good worldbuilding and deals with concepts in an interesting manner, but I was expecting to like it a lot more. 

“She had won them the sun and the moon, but she had become a monster.”

[Nessa Luna]

3,5 stars.

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

It took me a long time to get into this book. Crimson Bound has a really rich, vibrant world, but the writing moves at its own gradual pace, and the characters are hit or miss. The romance, too, was major eye roll material, but I suppose you can't have everything!

The Great Forest was where this book truly shined. I found Rosamund Hodge's descriptions of a dark, malicious forest come to life to be both chilling and exciting. Particularly in the segment in the middle, when Rachelle and Armand ride with the Wild Hunt... the bits of me in love with Celtic mythology were *screaming* at that! There are elements woven into the world building - layers of mythology, religion, political intrigue and dissent as well as judicial practices and the contrast between palace life and peasant life... all these things breathed so much vibrancy in the story that it was easy to let the Great Forest burst up around you.

I suppose if you *must* do a love triangle, the one in Crimson Bound is done pretty well. All three characters have life and motivation outside the relationship, making it a bit more three-dimensional than love triangles I've met before. Unfortunately, there were some cringe-worthy moments for me in the way Erec treated Rachelle and the way Rachelle thought about herself after the fact. Generally, though, I appreciated that the love triangle *wasn't* the plot, because that seems to happen in a lot of books, but no. Crimson Bound has a life of its own.

This book is marketed as a Little Red Riding Hood retelling, and I feel like that does it a disservice. There is a bit of an appreciative gesture toward Little Red Riding Hood, but I felt like mythology and Hansel and Gretel played a larger role in this one. Additionally, I loved that the setting of the Court had a very French feel, specifically Revolution-esque, which I found highly appropriate. You won't often find me commenting on fashion - either in books or life - but I appreciated the care that was taken with it here.

All in all, I though Rachelle was a great character with a lot of spirit, and I loved Amelie. Several minor characters play key roles in the resolution that I really appreciated, and while the very ending was terribly predictable, I appreciated the fact that the journey was full of surprises. It wasn't perfect, but I really liked it.

[Kat @ Novels & Waffles]

"Do you think that doing the right thing will always be pretty?"

So really, this one's around a 2.5. One of the reviewers I follow could not say enough good things about this book, along with the author's first, [b:Cruel Beauty|15839984|Cruel Beauty (Cruel Beauty Universe, #1)|Rosamund Hodge|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1371652590s/15839984.jpg|21580669]. So, I decided to give them both a chance. I ended up loving Cruel Beauty because the main character was just so - yup, you guessed it - cruel. In the best possible way. She was twisted and flawed but it was those twists and flaws that made her hundred percent likable to me. She was complex and she was real - and it was nice to see that in a genre so often filled with cut-and-paste heroines.

In Crimson Bound , we are presented with a similarly intricate main character; Rachelle is a murderer and she knows that she can't be redeemed for that. She never tries to justify her actions, even when someone else in her shoes might. She is a person who has done horrible things, made terrible mistakes, and made the wrong choices, all of which she is not proud of.

And yet.

And yet, she still wants to do good; she strives to protect those she loves and vanquish the evil that crawls about in the dark. She is so much more complex than your average YA heroine, and I definitely liked that about this book. I'v got to give it to Hodge - she really knows how to write good, three dimensional characters. She plays on the reader's expectations and on stereotypes; just when you think you have a character all figured out, you find out that you were completely wrong. So, you have been warned. No one in this book is as they seem. Every character is multifaceted, deeply flawed, and crafted into something deliciously elaborate. Even the villain. Especially the villain. He is not who you think, and unlike many Marvel movies I've seen recently, his role in the story extends beyond the evil-for-evil's sake antagonist.

Another thing I liked was the setting - a country named Gévaudan that is based on Seventeen Century France. Drawing clear inspiration from the famous Sun King and the Palace of Versailles, this was an interesting backdrop for a Little Red Riding Hood reimagining. I say reimagining and not retelling because although Hodge keeps some of the key elements of the fairy tale - a red hood, a wolf, a forest - there is so much more going on here that was not included in the original.

That being said, I had the most difficult time falling into the rhythm of this book's world. The mythology and the worldbuilding were so confusing to me. There were a bunch of terms - forestborn, bloodbound, woodspawn - that took me a while to grasp. And if I'm honest, I'm still unsure if I truly understand it all, especially the woodspawn. This could just be a failing of intelligence on my part, but it definitely made the story harder to get into.

I found the middle to drag a bit, and really had to push myself in order to keep going. Like I said earlier, Rachelle is a complex character, and because of this I struggled to understand the way she thought and how she reacted to the moral dilemmas she faced. It wasn't until the end of the book that I truly started to catch the vision of what Hodge wanted the readers to feel and think about her.

I also felt like some of the more important character-building scenes slid right off of me, and I had to go back and reread them a few times in order to fully realize what was happening. Just when I thought I wouldn't be able to make it, the action started to pick up and I blew through the last fifty or so pages. In the end, this story makes the reader consider a lot of interesting questions about salvation, forgiveness, and love. It just didn't work as well for me as Cruel Beauty did.

[jeannamichel]

An impressive tale that definitely picks up towards the end. It becomes surprise after surprise. Review to come.

Quite frankly, the hardest part is determining whether my dislike is because the book I read before this one was so glorious or if I really just did not like it. I really think it's the latter though. I did not care for the romance at ALL. So boring and just not even sure where the interest came from. Beautiful writing but not much else going for it. By the end I was reading just to get it over with.
Full review to come.

[KitsuneBae]

Cruel Beauty and Gilded Ashes were awesome but this was so meeh that for a moment, I convinced myself that this was the work of a different author. If you want to read a much awesome story about forests with fucking powers, then try Uprooted by Naomi Novik.

[cornerfolds]

Earlier this year I read Cruel Beauty, Rosamund Hodge's first novel, and absolutely loved it! When I saw that she was writing a new book, I decided I'd probably have to buy it, even though I'm not a huge fan of the Little Red Riding Hood fairytale. Hodge has such a unique style of storytelling that's always dark but somehow hopeful and it's amazing! That carries over into Crimson Bound, which is not just based on the fairytale of Red Riding Hood, but also on the story of The Girl Without Hands, which I'd never heard of. What she weaved together from those two tales was something truly unique.

Rachelle is the main character in Crimson Bound. At age 15 she was marked by one of the creatures of the Great Forest - the forestborn. When a person is marked they have to kill someone within three days or die. Since Rachelle is 18 in this story, it's safe to say she chose the first option. Now, though, she is a bloodbound and it's only a matter of time before she joins the evil in the Great Forest. Through some kind of loophole, she works for the king, which buys her time before she loses her heart and goes into the Forest.

Because she's, well... a murderer, Rachelle may not immediately be the most likable character. But I found myself sympathizing with her from the very beginning of the book and really enjoyed her as a character. She has super awesome powers because she's not entirely human anymore and is kind of a badass. It seems like a lot of people hated Rachelle for a certain physical decision she made with a certain man, but honestly? It didn't seem that shocking and it really wasn't that unbelievable. That's not to say it was morally okay, but she's part evil-forest-being so I'm not sure it's fair to hold her to human moral standards. Given the situation she was in and her background, I'm willing to forgive her one mistake.

Another one of the king's bloodbound is Eric - and he's the one in charge. Rachelle has been fighting alongside him for three years and they have a kind of attraction that she's never fully given into. But Eric is persistent throughout the book and he has a mean sarcasm streak. I actually kind of liked him for most of the book... until he turned into one of the most repulsive characters I've ever encountered. Even then though, I found myself sympathizing with him and could never fully hate him.

Of course, this wouldn't be a YA novel without a love triangle and the other love interest is Armand, a man who parades himself around the kingdom as a saint who has met the forestborn and lived. At first he comes off as kind of an arrogant jerk, but as the book goes on and more is revealed about his past, I found myself liking him more and more. This is a book where I actually felt the love triangle worked and I enjoyed it.

I could go on and on about all of the secondary characters who took this story to the next level, but we might be here all day, so I'll just move on.

Sometimes certain authors are able to write about their world in a way that makes me feel like I'm watching on a TV screen and can see every single thing as it's being described. That is how Rosamund Hodge writes. I loved every time she moved to a new location because every single one was described in such detail that I almost felt like I was there.

My favorite location was definitely the Great Forest. Despite the fact that it's supposed to be super scary I felt like it was just beautifully detailed and I almost kind of wished I could have tagged along with Rachelle just to see it in person! I also really enjoyed reading about all of the different places in the chateau. Reading about how the Forest manifested itself at different places inside made me feel like I was in Jumanji!

I do wish there was a little more explained about the relation of the Great Forest to the rest of the world - maybe a map? I felt a little disoriented when they went from one place to another and struggled to understand where exactly they were geographically. But I feel like that's a pretty minor complaint in the grand scheme of things.

I loved all of the unique backstory and magical lore presented in Crimson Bound! That was one of the things I really enjoyed about Cruel Beauty too - having to really think about everything I was being told and putting all the pieces together. I really felt Rachelle's race to beat the Devourer and really think the whole story was just really well done.

There was also a plot twist. Like, a HUGE plot twist! I didn't see it coming at all and when it actually happened I turned back and reread it probably three times to make sure I read it right. I just kind of sat there with my mouth hanging open for a few minutes, said "No way," and then finally moved on. Basically, it was brilliant.

Rosamund Hodge is amazing. That's all. She's a brilliant writer with some incredible ideas that make me stare at the closed book and wonder where in the world she comes up with these stories. But I'm so glad she's done it again! I'm a little disappointed that there don't seem to be anymore fairytale retellings on the docket. However, she is releasing a Romeo and Juliet retelling next year and that's high on my TBR list!

[Stephanie]

I TRIED. I tried really hard to like this.

[tweetybugshouse]

Copy provided via http://edelweiss.abovethetreeline.com/

This was a very interesting read, i not had a chance to read Cruel Beauty but i really got sucked into this story. It had a great plot twists and turns. Kept me guessing from one moment to the next what was really going to happen. Thanks for the opportunity to be an early reviewer.