This Savage Song (Monsters of Verity, #1)

by Victoria Schwab

[Jennifer | Pushing Pages]

Setting:

I liked the setting of Verity/V City. I pictured a very clustered, tight metropolis. We saw way more of North than we did South. Most of South we just saw the Flynn compound and a little around it. However, I do hope we get to explore even more of this universe as it's set in a real-world environment that has been transformed into these city/settlement factions for safety. I'm hoping I see something different with Prosperity.

Characters:

I liked each character in this book in their own way; even the antagonists. Schwab was incredibly consistent with her characters. I had multiple theories about what was going on with Sloan/Callum throughout the third and fourth verses (parts), and it was refreshing to have something different thrown at me. (Spoiler, I guess: All of the antagonists, and borderline-antagonists were working together all along!!!! Dun dun dun...)

The imagery associated with these characters was particularly poignant to me, moreso when it came to the Sunai, who for obvious reasons we see more of in this story.
- Leo: A self-assigned judge and jury to the world, holier-than-thou, and his markings leading down to his fall into darkness were crosses.
- Ilsa: A wonderful person/monster who was always concerned more about the vastness of the world and the ones around her, never herself, marked by stars.
- August: A young boy/monster who dreaded each new day as it came, mentally clawing at this feeling of being incomplete. His tallies were akin to a prisoner carving the days that pass on their cell wall, consumed by their own imprisonment.

Through the three Sunai, Schwab did a great job of making Leo the strong-arm, stoic kind, while August was the unsure and suffering kind. And in between was Ilsa, with a warmth to her that you felt every time she was on a page. Ilsa was, obviously, my favorite. And she played her role well.
- Also, Ms Schwab how dare you make me think she was dead???? That was so much. When she ended up being okay in the end, I legitimately had an emotive response I didn't even expect. OH, and I really liked August's monster design.

Kate was extra. How else can I put it? But I really enjoyed her - desperate to be taken in and accepted by her father. Desperate to keep people at arm's length so she can achieve her goals and give her reputation the backbone it needs to prove herself to her father. It was very interesting. Plus the whole I'm-gonna-burn-a-chapel-down-just-to-get-my-way bit was such a ride for the opening of this book! Not to mention when she's in the subway cart bleeding out, August is trying to help her, and - while dying - calls him a shitty monster. What a fun time!

Sloan was an antagonist that I was constantly intrigued by. I knew he wasn't going to be redeemable, but I also didn't care. (Because I'm not constantly trying to redeem every character.) But he had a snark and darkness about him that made him fun to watch throughout the book.

I liked that we only saw Callum in parts, because it really did represent just how distant and disconnected from Kate he truly was. He was a figurehead throughout the book and then he was behind it all - trying to open up the Seam and city to war. I also loved Leo's role in that; August did a great job of dropping hints about how he has lost his inner-human-like qualities over time. It made sense that in the world he saw - being a man in uniform, seeing its worst, but also being one of the monsters - that he would find more satiation from relishing in his own power and bringing it down upon others.

I also appreciated that there were notable hotties~ in this book, but this book wasn't full of ridiculously stunning people just for stunning's sake. This book was led by two main characters with no discernible features that would make them beautiful in that classic YA way. I mean, should this ever become a movie, I'm almost positive that will change. Because movies love to do that. But Kate was very plan with a very noticeable scar, and was never really described as anything standout in any of her descriptions. August was lanky, malnourished, stringy/curly hair... Nothing that immediately makes you think handsome, though I'm sure he's growing into himself, too.



Relationships:

Briefly, I just want to say, that I appreciated that we didn't just jump directly into a romance with August and Kate. I don't know that I would have hated to see that, but it was nice to know that there was more emphasis this round on their desperation for connection.
- Kate was enthralled August never recoiled because no one in her life would ever give her the slightest bit of contact.
- August used to be a unintentional prisoner of the Flynn compound, so he was just nice someone could relate to him on the outside world.

I have a feeling, because it felt sorta hinted at, that it might turn towards relationship in the sequel, if we see them together again, but it's nice to know their foundation wasn't just that.

I'm just so over the "we met a week ago, but I love you" YA/movie romance schtick. It's gotten very old.

Wavy Hand Things:

This isn't a dislike, but I do wish we knew exactly what was going on with the Phenomenon. It's referenced a lot, but never explained. What I gleamed from it was that I guess monsters hadn't always been a product of this world. But I would hope we would know more about it before the end of the first book. Perhaps that's the point of the sequel, though? We shall see.

The repetition really worked in Schwab's favor as it pertained to Kate and August playing the where are you game, August constantly falling/trying to bring himself back up. There were some moments before Kate introduced the aforementioned game to August, where I was growing a little tired of the repetition. But once we got to that point, it really started to fit into the prose a little better for me.

Overall, this was very fun to read, and I'm excited to read the sequel.