Publication Date: March 12th, 2024
Read: February 2th - March 2nd
Rating: 3/5 stars
Maybe this book and I just have different priorities.
A Feather So Black is the story of Fia, a changeling who was left in the human realm as a child, with no memories of her past. At first, her eerie resemblance to the princess she replaced made people fear and shun her, but over time...Well, they still actually shun her, but the high queen eventually warmed up to her.
Fia has been trained in various skills by her adoptive mother's druid advisor, and we meet her when she's trying to steal a captured faerie creature from a prince. This does not go incredibly well (which is foreshadowing for my experience with this book, I suppose) but she does end up running into ROGAN, childhood friend to lover to ESTRANGED AND ANGSTY CHILDHOOD FRIEND. They have a "let's kiss in a dark corner to throw off the people who are chasing us" moment in like, chapter 2. This, perhaps more than anything, sets the tone.
Very soon after this, Fia and Rogan are each given a quest by Fia's adoptive mother, the high queen. Rogan, who's betrothed to the queen's original daughter Eala, is to go find Eala in the faerie realm and break the curse that makes her turn into a swan by day. Fia is to find a powerful magical artifact that will give humans the power to wield magic once again. They travel to a rundown castle near a gate into the faerie realm, and then spend approximately the next year visiting the faerie realm once a month on the full moon. Fia meets the guy who's supposedly responsible for Eala's curse, Irian, and decides to spend her time in the faerie realm trying to get more information from him about the curse and the artifact she's supposed to get.
There's a lot of things about this premise that I found intriguing. Fia's relationship with her mother is immediately and obviously fraught, as evidenced by her mother repeatedly telling her that she is the only one who will ever be able to love Fia. Plus, there's the fact that Fia is a faerie raised to hate faeries, who also knows that she's an unwanted replacement for Eala. And then there's the swan lake influences, with Eala and her fellow swan maidens! The set up, with Eala as white swan, Fia as black swan, Rogan as the prince, and Irian as the "Rothbart"/misunderstood villain character, was really interesting to me. I like fairytales, I like fairytale retellings, and I love Princess Tutu, which does a lot with the idea of characters struggling with the archetype or role they've been assigned. And Princess Tutu also has four central main characters, including a prince and two girls who are kind of the white and black swan, so I was hoping for this story to, like Princess Tutu, explore the dynamics between all four of these characters in an interesting way.
Let's explore Eala as the human princess raised by faeries, who doesn't necessarily want to go back to the human realm to become her mother's perfect daughter! Let's explore Rogan as someone who wants to be good but is also torn between personal fulfillment and fulfillment of duty! Let's explore Irian as someone who has chosen a villain's path, and is doomed to a villain's end!
Or we could spend the entirety of the middle of this book embroiled in the angst of Fia and Rogan's will-they-won't-they (they won't) situation. We could spend way too much of our time having Irian and Fia tell each other their backstories via "once there was a girl"/"once there was a boy" monologues. We could also make Fia spend a ton of time building up her stupid relationship with Irian and then have her instantly believe the first person who tells her that he's Evil, Actually. We could make Eala an almost totally flat character who's really just here to be beautiful and evil and manipulative, and we could make it super clear that Rogan is NOT endgame and then spend way too much time on him anyway.
In a way, I guess you could argue that part of the reason that I'm disappointed with this book is that I expected it to be something other than it was. But at the same time, I wouldn't have been that disappointed if it were different than I expected And Also Good. And I just didn't think this was that good. I think it had promise, but labored pacing and repetitive plotting. I ended this book with no interest in reading the sequel.
However, if you're just here for hot guys with shadow powers and sad backstories, who more or less believe in women's empowerment (even if they've accidentally oopsie been keeping 12 girls captive as swans for 12 years or whatever), I guess this delivers on that.
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