Lament (Books of Faerie, #1)

by Maggie Stiefvater

[celinenyx]

I first encountered Stiefvater's wonderful writing in her Wolves of Mercy Falls series. I was blown away by her beautiful descriptions and dreamlike prose. It seemed to me that all this went down the drain in Lament.

When Deirdre meets Luke, she is immediately enchanted by his musical gift. His flute and her harp make magic together - literally. But her family instantly distrusts him, and there is something much darker going, something that has to do with an evil faery queen.

If I had to describe Lament to someone that has never heard of the book, it would be: "Standard YA, girl meets boy, they fall in love, he happens to be a hundred times her age or something, and there's something that keeps 'em apart. Oh yeah, and some faery shit". It didn't have the same magical quality Shiver had for me. I think Lament is written before Shiver (you can never tell for sure, who knows how long manuscripts have been gathering dust before they get published). It definitely felt as if Lament was the point where she still had to develop her talent with words. It was there, in some spots, but overall Lament was slightly dull and predictable.

Lament is a fast read, but in the end I had to force myself to continue reading it. It's not like there's necessarily anything bad about it, but I didn't see anything very good either. Deirde was okay, but nothing interesting. At the end of the book I still had no clue what the love interest, Luke, looked like. There is a hint of love triangle (because what would 2000-2010 YA fiction be without a love triangle?) and of course I ended up rooting for the wrong guy. There was a surprising lack of emotional depth on Deirdre's side. A LOT of bad stuff happens, yet somehow at no point does she break down. To me that doesn't say "strong", but "unrealistic".

The concept of the fey themselves was good. I always like reading about the fey, and Stiefvater did a good job keeping them bitter-sweet and mysterious, as they should be.

Also, the ending wasn't very satisfying to me. Maybe the unanswered questions will be answered in Ballad, the companion novel to Lament, I don't know. I probably never will, since I'm not interested at all what happens to Deirdre next.