Hello everyone, this week’s blog is covering Fairytale Apocalypse by Jacqueline Patricks. Remember that my twaddle clause is in effect. Anything I say can and probably will be complete and utter twaddle. This critique is solely about the contents of the book and does not reflect my opinions on the author. Warning: This critique will contain spoilers. You have been warned.
Fairytale Apocalypse is a unique story that revolves around three individuals: a pair of twins and the Lord of the Verge, a Fae nobleman. One of the twins manages to enter into the Verge (Faerie world) being guided by the voice of the goddess Danu. She informs the lord that she is destined to be Lady of the Verge, and thus, is to be married to him. Her protective sister, on the other hand, also finds her way into the Verge in hopes of “rescuing” her sister. After getting her sister back and stopping the engagement, a cataclysmic magical event turns the mortal world into a barren wasteland, mad max/walking dead style. The rest of the book then focuses on finding a way to restore the world back to its original state.
I give this book a Silver score of 3.25/5.
Now you may be asking yourself, ‘Why are you putting the book’s score at the beginning of the critique?’ Well, ask no longer. This book upsets me. Greatly. Like it rocks my very foundations to the core. Words can never be enough to express how much I wanted to flip my desk after reading the last page. Even still, I would recommend this book, if only so it will upset someone else so I can express my rage over it actively. That being said, while my criticisms may seem mostly negative, bear in mind that these are more for personal reasons than an analysis of the book’s technical contents.
Category 1: Literary Value
Literary value can be summed up as artistic expression and impact. Does the book challenge or reinforce important ideals? If it were a painting, would you hang it on a wall? Is it the sort of book you would leave on the coffee table to spark conversation or is it the sort you keep tucked with the rest of your collection?
This book is well written. I’ve said it, I’ve done my peace, now I can get to the meat and potatoes of it. Firstly, the level of description is crazy. I’d even go so far as to say it’s over the top to the point where it feels forced.
The story is original, and does a good job of blending the post apocalyptic genre with the high fantasy genre. The elements are well thought and the technique is more or less sound. There isn’t really much else I can say about it other than that.
In terms of Literary Value, I give this book a 4/5.
Category 2: Plot
Plot is the overarching story of the book and can be measured in terms of originality, entertainment value, and its ability to hook me in. A book with a high rating will be hard for me to put down, uses creative elements that aren’t cliche, and make me genuinely interested in what will happen to the characters next.
-deep breath- The story of this book is original. You don’t often see post apocalyptic combined with the surrealness of high fantasy, but the author does it well. The problem comes in when she tries to inject the romance.
Now, bear in mind, I am a romantic at heart. Truly, I am. I believe in soul mates and true love, and all that jazz. Romance/Fantasy is what I love, what I write, and what I know more than any other genre. Because of that, I typically come down harder on other writers of my genre. It’s sort of like two competing athletes. You can look at the other one and acknowledge their skill, but you’d be damned if you don’t criticize them for their every mistake.
That being said, the romance needs work. The best way I can think to explain it is like this: imagine if Beauty and the Beast had Belle and the Beast as twins. Belle, is madly in love with Gaston, but the Beast knows he’s an asshole. Now imagine if in the course of twenty four hours, the Beast changes his mind and ends up getting hitched with Gaston. Congratulations, you now understand the love triangle of this book.
In seriousness, the pacing is the plot’s glaring flaw. It feels like the book could be split completely in two, and it’s very irritating how clear cut the divide is. The problem I have is that the characters in the second half of the book shatter any preconceived notions you may have about them from the first half of the book, and not in a good way. I’ll get to that more in the Characterization segment.
Originality, I fear, isn’t enough to excuse the painful lack of karma that you want to see come of the characters. Get used to those disney analogies by the way, because they’re far from over.
In terms of plot, I give this book 3/5.
Category 3: Characterization
Characterization is measured in the quality of the characters found in the book. If you’ve read my previous blog posts, you’ll know that a character does not necessarily have to be a person. Good characterization shows depth, originality, adherence, and relatability. Note, a character can be a “bad guy” but be a good character. If you make me hate your villain, in terms of his character, then you’ve done your job well.
Alright, another deep breath. Here I go. This is going to be painful for all of us. Painful for me to go back over it, painful for the author reading it, and painful for the readers in that it’s going to mostly be me ranting.
I hate the characters. That’s all there is to it, I hate them. I only found myself able to relate to two characters in the story, and one of them dies and the other marries an asshole. So let’s do a basic breakdown of who they are and why I hate them.
Lauren (aka Laurie) is one of the story’s main protagonist. Specifically, she is the sister who is so overly eager to go to the Fae to escape her “horrible” twin. Lauren has what I like to call “singing gargoyle syndrome.” Ready for those disney references? So, “singing gargoyle syndrome” is the idea that a character who (while having slight importance to the story) has mannerisms that would be considered cute or endearing...in small doses.
Specifically, it gets its name from the Hunchback of Notre Dame (hands down, my favorite disney movie). I absolutely love the story, except for those damned singing gargoyles. Yes, they help Quasimoto, yes, they give him wonderful advice and push the story along, but their antics completely ruin the mood of the situation! When he’s alone and hurting, that is not the place in the story for an overly ecstatic musical number.
But I’m not reviewing hunchback, I’m reviewing Fairytale Apocalypse, so what does this have to do with anything? Well, simply put, Laurie is a wrecker of everything. She’s overly cheerful, teasing, wild, crazy, and above all stupid as dirt. Now, I’m a cheerful upbeat guy normally, but this girl runs around like she just did a boatload of crack.
But it gets worse. Laurie proves time and time again, that she’s as selfish as they come. All she really wants is power and authority to get out from under her tyranical twin (who is actually just making sure she doesn’t get into trouble).
Kagan Dunvall is an asshole. I’m sorry, but he is. Aside from shoving his weapon in damn near everyone’s face upon first meeting them (you’d think a nobleman would have more manners), all he ever really does is abuse those around them. The way he treats Lauren is the way a domestic abuser would treat their spouse, and despite all his talk about honor, he shows on multiple occassions that he doesn’t really stick to it well. Case in point: he won’t have willing sex with a sixteen year old girl. Okay, that makes sense. Good on you. However, he has no problems at all with the idea of murdering her unarmed twin sister. He even attacks her from behind. Like a dick.
But no, there’s more. Being a Fae, he’s constantly looking down on mortals and mocks them as weak and stupid in a superior-to-thou attitude. Needless to say, I am not a fan of him. Which makes the ending all that much more frustrating for me. But I’ll get to that with our next character.
Tessa is Lauren’s twin sister (and my favorite). Throughout the first half of the book she displays intelligence, reasoning, compassion, and most of all, it’s obvious she really cares for her sister. When Lauren first goes to the Verge, Tessa follows after solely to protect her.
Unfortunately for her, Danu doesn’t seem to smile as favorably upon her as she did Lauren, considering she seems to bump into every horrible threat in the Verge, only to just barely escape by the skin of her teeth due to her wits, her will power, or in some cases extreme amounts of luck.
In my opinion, Tessa is one of the only decent characters in the book. She goes to get her sister, who she’s convinced is in danger, only to basically get the crap kicked out of her on the way through the castle until finally, she makes it to the ceremony and stops it (Good! Lauren’s 16! She doesn’t need to be marrying a centuries old asshole anyway!)
Anyway, after getting slashed by Kagan’s magical talking sword, it seemingly dies and her and her sister teleport back to their house where a month has passed over the course of a day. Then the apocalypse strikes, their parents die and everything goes to hell. Blaming Kagan for this (I mean, who else will she blame), Tessa vows hatred upon him.
Skip six years later (two days for Kagan)...
They live in an old military fort fighting against hollows (zombies) and rovers (raiders). Kagan manages to follow Lauren with his magical fiance gps when Tess finds him. Some stuff happens, Lauren gets captured (being the never-ending damsel in the story), and Tess has to swallow her grudge with Kagan to go save her twin.
Now this is where I take the issue. Over the course of two days...Tess drops her six year grudge, not only finds him tolerable (despite that he’s STILL an asshole), but then falls in love with him because crazy elven bdsm pheremones. Okay, so the last part is something I made up, but it’s basically just ‘magic’ that brings them together.
They find Lauren, Lauren still wants to marry Kagan, finds out Tess is interested and shoves her down, telling her to basically screw off because Kagan belongs to her. One Danu-ex-machina later, Lauren is Lady of the Verge, Kagan gives up his throne, and he marries Tess. Oh and believe me it reeeeally grinds my gears.
Simply put, Tessa should know better. She’s smarter than that. She’s seen, first hand, the jerk that Kagan is. And believe me a six year long grudge against a guy who tried to kill you doesn’t break in a day, magic be damned. In my personal opinion, Kagan doesn’t deserve her and she deserves better.
However, there is one more character I have to throw in as an honorable mention. Cenia is Lauren’s lesbian lover. For the six years that Kagan was gone, Lauren has sworn off men (as Danu told her to), so finding a loophole, she gets with this girl. Cenia, like Tess, quickly earns my favor. She loves Laurie. Like, genuine sacrifice-myself-for-you love. Even still, she is (again, like Tess) constantly thrown under the bus.
Literally, the same day Lauren agrees for them to be an actual couple, she straight up dumps her to go running back to Kagan when he shows up. Obviously, the girl is heart broken, and immediately she sees through Kagan’s bullshit. He doesn’t love her, and she knows it, and she even calls him out on it. He’s too much of an asshole to even deny that he doesn’t love her.
Well, when Lauren decides she’s going to make up for the last six years by marrying the asshole the next day anyway, Cenia makes an agreement with the Rovers. She lets them do a quick raid while everyone is distracted, take some people, and in exchange, Lauren stays unharmed and the two escape into the Wastes (desert).
Naturally, this backfires. After they beat and rape Lauren (yeah, it gets dark quick), Cenia is pissed that they went back on their deal. Cue Kagan and Tessa showing up. After a bloody and murderous game of tag, Kagan and Tessa make out and Kagan gets back his super powerful magic, and works to kill the entire army around them...where Cenia and Lauren happen to be. Cenia dies by leaping onto Lauren and shielding her with her body to keep her alive from Kagan’s magic. (Again, total asshole.)
Now, despite my rather long rant, the characters are pretty well developed. They each have their personalities and are well designed, but the only problem is they either A)Break character too often or B) Are just plain unlikable.
Now, I loved Tessa as a character, as I explained earlier, but when Kagan comes in the second half of the book, everything I loved about her just seemed to disappear. She stopped being the brave, independent, headstrong protector of her little sister. She turned into a weak, sniveling, grumpy girl. When her and Kagan finally get together, he dominates her completely, which is a complete atrocity to her character and potential.
In Characterization, I give this story a 2/5.
Category 4: World Building/Setting:
I already gave props earlier for Ms. Patricks’ creativity and originality in combining the post apocalyptic genre with high fantasy. It was obvious she put a great amount of detail into the story, and she did a pretty good job of fleshing out everything needed without going into a big info dump (one of the most common pitfalls of a fantasy writer).
However, at times it felt as if it swung too far the other way. Despite all of her physical description, I found myself overwhelmed more by all the terminology and technicality of the Verge and its mechanics. It’s mentioned that Danu is one of many Fae gods, but her name is literally the only one ever mentioned. A sylph in the story (who claims she’s not very threatening compared to what else is in the Verge) kills a hag which according to Kagan later is basically the boogey man of the Verge. All in all, a lot of it feels disconnected or just thrown in for the heck of it.
It’s my understanding the author writes primarily short stories, and to be honest, it shows in her segways and transitions. Even still, I found myself interested and entranced by the swords and sorcery of the world, and because of that, I’m willing to give her a pretty high score.
For World Building/Setting, I give this story a 4/5.
Now let’s go back to the start for a moment. The story gets a 3.25/5 but I gave over a page of reasons for why I hated the book? It just doesn’t make sense, right? Well, I don’t really hate the book. It was an entertaining read and I did enjoy the time I spent reading it. Many of the events and characters severely pissed me off (at one point I was ready to punch a hole through my wall in frustration). But I could say the same thing about Game of Thrones and Harry Potter.
When you get attached to a character and that character gets killed off in an otherwise humiliating way (Sirius falls behind a curtain and dies. I mean, c’mon) it hurts. But the only thing that hurts more than that for me is seeing a character you really love and respect losing all the things that make them great and winding up with a character you just can’t stand.
Once again, I give this book a silver rating of 3.25/5.
I recommend you pick it up if you’re a fan of high fantasy and are looking for something different. If you’re a heavy-hearted romantic like myself who becomes a little too attached to characters in the story, I caution you before picking it up. I’m not going to say not to read it, but if you do, prepare for for a week of cursing, throwing the book across the room, and overall grumpiness.
You can buy Fairytale Apocalypse by Jacqueline Patricks here.
Remember to leave a review if you do read it. Thank you all for your support.
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