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Book #12: White Cat, by Holly Black
Wow, am I late to start reading books by Holly Black! I've actually met her IN PERSON (when Cassie Clare was on the book tour for "City of Glass", Holly toured with her, so I met them both at the same time), so I feel EXTRA SILLY for taking this long to get here.
That said, here I am, and I think "White Cat" was a good place to start. ;)
Spoilers below.
This book is a bit outside my usual thing, on account of being About A Boy, About His Brothers, About his Grandfather and About the Male Crime Boss They All (Sort of) Work For. There were six female characters, but they were all relatively minor (I'm counting, for example, a character's mother who has one scene). I get the feeling they'll be more important in the sequels. But still: lots of boys in this book. Which is great, don't get me wrong. Just...not the kind of book that burns through me.
Anyway, White Cat involves my current favourite form of fiction: practical magic. I suppose you could call it urban fantasy, but I prefer practical magic as a subgenre, because a) there are no vampires or other stock features of a paranormal romance, and b) I love worlds where Magic is all "Oh, and yes, there's MAGIC, and we have an alternate history, and by the way, here is what happened to Australia, and also WWII". IT IS JUST SO MUCH FUN.
(This is different, btw, from a book like Harry Potter or The Mortal Instruments, where magic is secret. In practical magic everyone knows. That's what makes it so much fun.)
In this world, you have "workers", people whose touch can make magic. Luck is the most common, but there's also death, body, memory, emotion, dreams and, the most rare of all, transformation. I will give you three guesses what kind of worker the main character turns out to be (and the first two don't count!). There aren't a lot of workers in the world, but there are enough that it's starting to become a Big Deal, and politicians are getting involved and workers either get snapped up by the government or tied into a life of crime.
The consequences for this magic are particularly excellent, and I'm glad Holly went there. The term given is "blowback", and basically you get what you deal. Cassel's grandfather, a death worker, is losing his fingers, bit by bit, as they rot off his hands. Phillip, a body worker, gets sick every time he injures someone. Cassel's mother, who works emotions, is becoming more and more unstable. It's a clever idea, and it adds a lot of depth to the magical world Holly created.
The book follows Cassel, the only non-worker member of his family, as he tries to figure out what happened in his life. He finds out that nothing is as it seems, that his brothers aren't who he thought they were, that his mother is an absolute train wreck, and that he isn't a non-worker after all.
(For the record, I don't think Cassel's being a worker and the truth about the cat were ever supposed to be surprises. The surprises were other things, and they were about a million times more awful. Like any good book about magic, this book wasn't actually about magic, but was actually about family and identity and all that stuff.)
There's quite a bit of conning and whatnot, which I enjoyed. The book turns very suddenly in the middle, but it's explained quite well, so once the shock wore off (not so much shock at the plot revelation, but shock at the shift in tone), it was fine. I loved Sam and Daneca, and I hope that they are both in Red Glove (which I am about to go pick up from the library).
The end (the very end), pretty much killed me. I was SO ANGRY and SO PROUD OF CASSEL all at the same time. I don't know if I'll be able to put up with Cassel forgiving his family too many more times, but at least he's not pretending they're not complete jerks, so...that's a start.
(Sidebar: after this, The Forest of Hands and Teeth, and Girl of Fire and Thorns, I've about had it of books where the main character is kept Out of the Loop For Their Protection. I mean, it's not a BAD way of telling stories, but, much like first person present, if I read too many in a row I start to get antsy!)
Anyway, mostly I'm glad that I am going to get Red Glove right now, and that the third book comes out soon!
8/10 for a great spin on practical magic, for breaking the trend when it came to the cat, for the details of the family and the mob scene, and for naming some of the crime families after people I've heard of. ;)
That said, here I am, and I think "White Cat" was a good place to start. ;)
Spoilers below.
This book is a bit outside my usual thing, on account of being About A Boy, About His Brothers, About his Grandfather and About the Male Crime Boss They All (Sort of) Work For. There were six female characters, but they were all relatively minor (I'm counting, for example, a character's mother who has one scene). I get the feeling they'll be more important in the sequels. But still: lots of boys in this book. Which is great, don't get me wrong. Just...not the kind of book that burns through me.
Anyway, White Cat involves my current favourite form of fiction: practical magic. I suppose you could call it urban fantasy, but I prefer practical magic as a subgenre, because a) there are no vampires or other stock features of a paranormal romance, and b) I love worlds where Magic is all "Oh, and yes, there's MAGIC, and we have an alternate history, and by the way, here is what happened to Australia, and also WWII". IT IS JUST SO MUCH FUN.
(This is different, btw, from a book like Harry Potter or The Mortal Instruments, where magic is secret. In practical magic everyone knows. That's what makes it so much fun.)
In this world, you have "workers", people whose touch can make magic. Luck is the most common, but there's also death, body, memory, emotion, dreams and, the most rare of all, transformation. I will give you three guesses what kind of worker the main character turns out to be (and the first two don't count!). There aren't a lot of workers in the world, but there are enough that it's starting to become a Big Deal, and politicians are getting involved and workers either get snapped up by the government or tied into a life of crime.
The consequences for this magic are particularly excellent, and I'm glad Holly went there. The term given is "blowback", and basically you get what you deal. Cassel's grandfather, a death worker, is losing his fingers, bit by bit, as they rot off his hands. Phillip, a body worker, gets sick every time he injures someone. Cassel's mother, who works emotions, is becoming more and more unstable. It's a clever idea, and it adds a lot of depth to the magical world Holly created.
The book follows Cassel, the only non-worker member of his family, as he tries to figure out what happened in his life. He finds out that nothing is as it seems, that his brothers aren't who he thought they were, that his mother is an absolute train wreck, and that he isn't a non-worker after all.
(For the record, I don't think Cassel's being a worker and the truth about the cat were ever supposed to be surprises. The surprises were other things, and they were about a million times more awful. Like any good book about magic, this book wasn't actually about magic, but was actually about family and identity and all that stuff.)
There's quite a bit of conning and whatnot, which I enjoyed. The book turns very suddenly in the middle, but it's explained quite well, so once the shock wore off (not so much shock at the plot revelation, but shock at the shift in tone), it was fine. I loved Sam and Daneca, and I hope that they are both in Red Glove (which I am about to go pick up from the library).
The end (the very end), pretty much killed me. I was SO ANGRY and SO PROUD OF CASSEL all at the same time. I don't know if I'll be able to put up with Cassel forgiving his family too many more times, but at least he's not pretending they're not complete jerks, so...that's a start.
(Sidebar: after this, The Forest of Hands and Teeth, and Girl of Fire and Thorns, I've about had it of books where the main character is kept Out of the Loop For Their Protection. I mean, it's not a BAD way of telling stories, but, much like first person present, if I read too many in a row I start to get antsy!)
Anyway, mostly I'm glad that I am going to get Red Glove right now, and that the third book comes out soon!
8/10 for a great spin on practical magic, for breaking the trend when it came to the cat, for the details of the family and the mob scene, and for naming some of the crime families after people I've heard of. ;)
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Haha, I was hashing with Mel on Saturday night about the new plot and worldbuilding I came up with, and she was cross-examining my politics and societal structure (expound on the education system. Where do the independent craftsmen live? etc) and you came up when I was talking about the cross-examination I get on the ancient history side of things (what about the muses for the people who built the pyramids?)
Seriously, how would we write books without each other (even though you guys exhaust me)? ;-)
(Not really super-pertinent to your post, but I wanted to tell the anecdote while I was thinking of it)
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But they are well enough written that I'm willing to keep going, and that says something, I think.
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It's a genre that doesn't have a lot of play yet. Everyone always makes the magic secret. I'm kind of poking at something myself. We'll see.
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Which, again, no magic. But also no secrets. :)
(I like to call that sub-genre "Zoological UnRealism", which is to say, there have always been "monsters", and everyone has always known this.)
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