Ballad by Maggie Stiefvater + Contest!

Published October 1, 2009.

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. (bn.com)

You know, I know a lot of people, A LOT, really like Maggie Stiefvater's books. A lot. I'm not one of them. I think they're superfluous, overwritten and disingenuous to the characters she writes. I somewhat enjoyed her lyrical writing in Lament although I wished she would have gotten to the point faster. In Ballad I was completely over it and still wished she'd get to the damn point already.

There's a lot of pining in this one: James for Dee, Dee for Luke (whom she knew for like 2 weeks before he got sucked back into Faerie, yeah, totally believable for utter love, thanks for that SMeyer, you wench). And it's unenduring. SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY! I get you. You want Dee but she doesn't see you that way. You want Luke but you're probably never going to see him again, not to mention your emotions are completely unfounded and you use that rejection as a means to use James in an attempt to fill a void that only backfires on you. God I'm so sick of this emo crap.

Nuala was a cool chick and probably the only one that remained true to herself in terms of writing. I loved her spunk and her snark and her all around attitude. You know, if I was burned every 16 years, I'd probably be bitter too.

But with James, Stiefvater just couldn't help going all lyrical and describing things in a way that, from what I've gathered of him, he would never say. His great personality shined through in most of his dialogue but his rambling diatribes of inner monologues just screamed to me "WRITER FLEXING FINGERS!" than being believable as really coming from the character's head.

The good thing was that Nuala's and James's relationship is so much more believable. It develops so much more naturally and while it still happens in what I see as a short amount of time (2 months), it's still developed longer than Dee's and Luke's was, not to mention it was actually developed. I actually felt for James at the end when he had to make a decision between Dee and Nuala. I truly believed that his heart was torn between the two. Him and Nuala are such better characters than Dee and Luke, I just wish Stiefvater would let the character speak for himself instead of inserting her language into his head.

I feel the book could have easily been half the length and still maintained the intensity of the story than what it is now. It meanders too long on the details, on the intricacies. We could have gotten all of that information in a much more compact setting and still maintained the feelings for the characters. In fact, I think cutting out a lot of that needless verbiage would have done a service for the characters. I hated being in James's head because all he did was pine for Dee for 3/4 of the book. God how boring that got. I get it. Move on with the story. Nuala was interesting albeit just as redundant at times. Just say it and move on. I found myself not really wanting to pick the book back up because for most of the book, it's more of the same. It's a lead up to the final battle that ended just as quickly as it did in Lament and, for me, it left the same kind of dissatisfaction that it was all resolved a little too easily. Granted it was more painful for the characters this time around and it affected them more but the grand picture, the big production, wrapped rather nearly for my taste.

I really commend Stiefvater on her knowledge of Irish fey. She doesn't go into grand detail on them and her research doesn't show, which is a really good thing (her superfluousness hangs around characters as characters) and I liked what she included in her mythology. It just made me that much more interested in fairies and the fey. The balance between having enough of them to understand what's going on and not being an overkill was expertly held. I just with she did that with her characters and the plot as a whole.

The only reason I read this book was because I had it sitting in my pile from BEA. I wouldn't have bothered otherwise.

Contest Time!!!

So I have 2 ARCs of Lament and 2 ARCs of Ballad. I'll have two winners that'll get one of each! You want a set? Here's what you have to do--

Leave a comment with your email answering this question--

What's your favorite fey?

No answer, no entry. Period.

+2 for new followers
+3 for current followers
+3 for linking (up to 3 for a total of +9)

Contest is open to US residents only and will end on December 3rd at midnight, EST. Good luck!