Stolen Songbird by Danielle L Jensen: I'm extremely put out

WARNING

My sister Deina, a.k.a. my editor, is absent today doing my job of entertaining guests. So prepare yourselves for a lot of spelling mistakes. 

Stolen Songbird 

by 

Danielle L Jensen

Cecile has been groomed sense childhood to be a singer like her mother. She’s trained, and trained and today she’s finally ready to join her mother on the stage. Unfortunately, she’s kidnapped on her way home and brought to a secret city under the mountain. I don’t know about anyone else, but I imagined it kind of like the Haven City from Artemis Fowl. The difference? The inhabitants of this city are trolls. These trolls are trapped inside their underground city by a curse that, according to their oracle, can be broken by Cecile.  But Cecile doesn’t care about the troll’s plight (an understandable stance given her violent kidnapping), her only intention is to escape. But singing isn’t a particularly useful talent against the strong and magically enhanced trolls. Despite herself, Cecile becomes invested in the lives of the trolls trapped under the mountain.

Characters

Cecile: 80% of the time she was about as interesting as a brick. She just, doesn’t do anything! Y’all know Nick, from Great Gatsby? How he wasn’t even rightly a character, he was just a blank slate so that us readers could see the world through his eyes in a thoroughly un-biased way.  That was Cecile. Except she was worse. Because she had a few interesting moments! But then she’d switch back to being a boring weepy damsel in distress. What was worse was that every time the book switched to Tristan’s point of view he’d talk about how brave and stoic she was being about the whole ‘we kidnapped you to break a curse’ thing. Dude are you blind?

Tristan: Honestly, I kind of liked Tristian. Except when he had to go all, ‘I’m an angsty love interest who will beat the crap out of anyone who touches my girl’. 

 I’m guessing it was in his contract, seeing as how this is a YA and all. 

  Anyway. He’s the troll that Cecile marries (well, is forced to marry) to break the curse. As a troll, he’s got magical powers and strength but he’s completely unable to lie. Now, that’s a massive problem, because Tristan is working on a rebellion that will free the slave caste and depose his crazy evil family. Good times. But can you imagine trying to plan and instigate a revolt without being able to lie. Color me impressed.  

A bunch of other people: yeesh! This book didn’t read like a high fantasy. But if you wrote down the number of characters you’d think it was. There’s villains and alliances and a billion different characters who hold the fate of this rebellion in some way or another. If the book had chosen to focus on the courtly intrigue/rebellion/Troll-civil-war it would have been much more interesting.

Likes

Basically everything that didn’t involve Cecile: everything to do with the trolls was fascinating. Ignoring the fact that they’re not even trolls, they’re more like fairies, no I’m not revealing a plot twist it’s the most obvious thing to be put down on paper! They look human! They have magic! they’re allergic to iron! They aren’t trolls. A third grader could tell you that. But I digress. While Cecile was pinning in a corner Tristan was planning rebellions, his allies were risking gruesome death to help him and a million different things were poised to kill them. How is that not interesting! Give me fairies trapped under miles of rock! Give me a faerie class war! Give me tricky fairies who can’t lie! Give me a faerie civil war!! Because that crap is brilliant.

Dislikes

Everything that involved Cecile: ugh. Romance. It’s just all romance. Oh, Cecile I know you were kidnapped and forcibly married to this troll fella but don’t worry! He’s hot. If you were going for a Beauty and the Beast vibe you have dropped the ball there my friend. Besides other than a few moments here and there Cecile has basically nothing to do other than cry and make foolish decisions like running blindly into a cave full of monsters then stopping to have a freaking conversation. Whatever. Her part of the story wouldn’t have been that bad I suppose if we’d been able to spend more time with Tristian and crew. But their duel narrative is weirdly unbalanced. Like I mean 80-20 at best. I guess he just came in whenever the author felt that we needed to be reminded of Cecile’s bravery or some such.

I felt like I was spoon-fed every single aspect of the plot: And I mean to a ridiculous amount. Like every plot point was repeated slowly by the main character who then turned to the reader like ‘okay got that? Good. On to the next pointlessly angsty romantic subplot thingy!’. You might think I’m kidding but I am totally not making this up. You know that whole fairy thing? We learn that they’re fairies (but no one will admit to it) the protagonist constantly thinks about it and then we have a character ‘accidently’ slip up and almost call trolls fairies. Something that hasn’t happened at all in the rest of the book. By the end I was tempted to shout ‘I KNOW!!’ at the book and be done with the whole thing. Was this padding!? Did they just think we were legit idiots? I don’t know but I’m mildly insulted anyway.

By the end I was basically reading this book for what it could have been rather than for what it actually was. Because in a way it could have been interesting. At least, if it had just been from the point of Tristan and perhaps with a slightly less useless heroine. There’s just so many unique pieces to this book. But none of them fit. We have trapped fairies and a curse and human witches and a fairy rebellion! It could have been awesome. But, nope. Honestly, I almost recommend this book for simple brainstorming because the world is really unique. Just don’t take any pointers from the romance.