This is a new thing for me. If you follow me on twitter, you'll know I about once or twice a week review SciFi and Fantasy books on my twitter feed. And I enjoy doing these reviews even if I think like maybe 5 of my followers actually care.
Still, Frequently I find myself taking some points off of books for things that are kind of spoilers - for example, books very often fail to stick the landing they set up, which can be a bit disappointing and hurt my review. But it's kind of hard to talk about those issues without spoiling things, and for some of the books I've liked the most, I really don't want to spoil them. So I'm going to try to now actually use this blog space to put up occasional short spoiler review discussions so I can express my thoughts on the books where I feel twitter is slightly incomplete.
So tonight's review was Roses with Rot. The Twitter review is as follows:
Now for a quick spoilery review. If you haven't read the book yet, please don't read this:
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Spoilery Comments: So I came really close to giving this a 10 out of 10 (or maybe a 9.5) as I loved Roses with Rot, but it kind of fell off slightly shortly before the ending. The book isn't quite setup like many books with a plot structure that builds the whole book to a climax - the book seems to do that in building toward the ceremony where the tithe is chosen, only for the plot of directly saving Marin to suddenly become the new objective in the last part of the book. This is totally fine - except then part of the solution to saving Marin in that final part of the book involves the use of some classic fairy tale anti-magic techniques (most significantly, running water).
Here's the thing: The book previously makes clear that faeries in this universe aren't like the ones in the tales so those rules in the old tales don't apply (Evan specifically rebuts Imogen's thoughts on his sculptures being a problem for faeries, for example) - and so it's just kind of odd that 80% of the way through the book, they suddenly do and the only good reason Imogen wouldn't have thought they might is because well....Evan tells her they don't apply earlier! It's kind of a cheap part of the ending. I kind of wonder if this wouldn't have bothered me if this was setup before the need for Imogen to interrupt Marin's ride ever came up (for example, like the fact that the tithe could be stopped was setup in the very beginning).
Other than that, my quibbles were minor - Beth's willingness to help Imogen against the Fae despite having little development is kind of random given her thoughts that the tithe is worth it, but that's minor. I thought Janet was so bitchy and obviously demented that Marin shouldn't have listened to her when she revealed the truth about the Tithe, but that can be handwaved by Marin being under the magical influence of the Fae at that point - same with Marin so quickly forgiving Imogen after she's saved (when presumably Gavin reveals the truth while Imogen is unconscious) - this makes a lot more sense if the Fae's been clouding her thoughts up to that point. And the idea the pretty damn happy ending every good character gets - even Marin who seemingly was lost without the Fae's help about a hundred pages before - might be a little cheap, but well....all the characters really deserve it. Especially Ariel who is awesome.
In short it's an awesome book with an ending that still feels good, even if some of the plot elements that lead up to it are maybe not set up perfectly.
