A History of Glitter and Blood

by Hannah Moskowitz

[Angie]

I received an ARC through NetGalley.

I was super excited for A History of Glitter and Blood because that is one awesome title and it's about fairies. I love awesome titles and fairies! Sadly though, this book is one big ol' mess. I honestly hated it from the first chapter. I'm not one to normally care about writing style, but the one used here drove me crazy. It's very distant, rambly, jumpy, and confusing. The story is also boring, since it's just the characters doing stuff and talking about how the war is over, but they still want peace. Um, okay?

The writing immediately put me off of A History of Glitter and Blood. It kind of felt like this weird mash-up of a history book and a fairy tale. There's a lot of "She did this," "She did that," "She didn't know that..." type of statements. I do not like this at all. At times it felt very juvenile aside from the liberal use of swear words. Our narrator also frequently interrupts the story with annoying little notes such "That part sucked. Let's forget it and start the story here" or things about them not remembering if that's exactly how it happened. I don't mind unreliable narrators, but I do mind having them pop in every few pages with their nonsense, when I was finally starting to follow this mess of a story.

Aside from the awful narrative, A History of Glitter and Blood suffers from a severe lack of world building. The only things I know for sure are that there are at least three species: fairies, gnomes, and tightropers. The gnomes eat the fairies, and the tightropers live in the sky somewhere doing stuff. But the actual world could have been anywhere. It was like our world, complete with industrialize cities, rollerskating, coffee, and grocery stores. There is nothing special or interesting about Ferrum except that it's inhabited by the last three fairies, who themselves are not special or interesting. Except that Beckan is the only girl.

I couldn't help but feel like the author was making some kind of social commentary with A History of Glitter and Blood. It's a story about a war between races, and a group of teenagers coming together to make change and forge peace and equality. That's all fine, but it was very in your face. Same with the sexism. These are great causes, but it was very loud. I was struggling with the story to begin with, and then to have all of these messages hurled at me, made me want to disengage more.

The only thing I even remotely liked about A History of Glitter and Blood was that these fairies are unusual. They're immortal, but not in the way that you'd think. Beckan carries her father around in a jar. All that's left of him is an eye, ear, and a tooth. But he's still alive. WTF!? In fact, all of the fairies are maimed in some kind of way. Also, Beckan and her friends are all prostitutes for the gnomes and shed glitter. There's also GLBT themes! I should love this! But everything else made me hate it.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.