Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie (Books of Faerie, #2)

by Maggie Stiefvater

FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING NOVEL SHIVER Remember us, so sing the dead, lest we remember you James Morgan has an almost unearthly gift for music. And it has attracted Nuala, a soul-snatching faerie muse who fosters and then feeds on the creative energies of exceptional humans until they die. James has plenty of reasons to fear the faeries, but as he and Nuala collaborate on an achingly beautiful musical composition, James finds his feelings towards Nuala deepening. But the rest of the fairies are not as harmless. As Halloween--the day of the dead--draws near, James will have to battle the Faerie Queen and the horned king of the dead to save Nuala's life and his soul.

• ISBN13: 9780738714844
• Publish Date: 8 October 2009
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Flux
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 360
• Language: English

Reviews

[ladygrey]

This wasn't as good as Lament. Partly because it opens more like a James Patterson novel than with the elegant fluidity of Lament. Partly because overall it's not as elegantly written, possibly because it's a lot from a guy's point of view so I guess [a:Maggie Stiefvater|1330292|Maggie Stiefvater|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1268241579p2/1330292.jpg] wanted to make it plainer and a little more crass. It also didn't help that I didn't like Nuala.

But I enjoyed reading it. Because James was very cool and unique and he is a rather appealing smartass. Because a story so filled with longing is kind of a wonderful sort of torment, which it's designed to be so Stiefvater did that well.

Though as much as I enjoyed reading it, in the aftermath there were a number of things I found unsatisfying. Not that least of which was Dee. She was a strong, interesting, flawed character in Lament and now she's inexplicably devolved into a sniveling, kind of pathetic girl. I thought it was a really disappointing evolution of her character. And the end, though it didn't leave any loose threads really, was kind of vague. I mean, I guess we're to assume that Nuala came back human, even though that's never said. And I guess we assume she and James are together even though that isn't addressed - because they're in love and all. Apparently Dee has a "long road" though that's pretty vague and the only key we're given is that she killed someone, though we don't know anything about that - about the things that drove her to it, or the how the fairies tricked her head or what she felt or thought or anything.

So, it's kind of the opposite of those books that while you're reading them you keep thinking, "This isn't that great" but when you're done the story and the characters linger and your affection kind of grows and you realize by the end you do like it, maybe a little more than you should or it deserves, but you do. Yeah, with this one I was disappointed in the beginning but enjoyed it while I was in the middle of it and then at the end it left disappointment in its wake.