As the final Friday Reads entry of this week I have the review for one of those books that I was expecting to like and was not surprised when I did, but that surprised me on how they managed to make me love it! It's urban fantasy, with the Fae as central part of the story but also set in high school and it's one of those wonderful diverse books full of queer characters that weave everything together flawlessly!
I read the finished copy of this one, but I also got an ARC from Flux Books via NetGalley (THANK YOU FLUX!!) so I'm also counting this one towards my 2014 Review Pile Reading Challenge and I'm hoping it'll also improve my NG ratio! Will I manage to reach 80% before the end of the year??
The Last Changeling by Chelsea Pitcher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I loved Chelsea Pitcher's debut last year, The S Word, a wonderful contemporary book and when I heard she was writing a fantasy book about the Fae next, I knew that I had to read it too. She had written a contemporary that I had loved, and I'm not the biggest contemporary fan, so I knew she'd write a Fae book that I as a not a big Fae fan would like. And I was right!
I got the ARC for The Last Changeling via NetGalley but with my vacation time I run out of time to read it before release day, so I ended up reading my finished copy I had preordered. I also read the finished copy because Chelsea said she had added a lil change to the finished book and I decided I wanted to read that small but big detail.
The Last Changeling is the first book in a duology of urban fantasy with some queer characters mixed with Fae politics. The book is told in dual POVs, Elora a Fae princess of the Unseelie court and Taylor, a broken boy that is surviving along and not living.
Elora comes into the human world on a quest to find the answer to a riddle to end the war between the Fae but she finds herself embroiled in human life and human affairs in a way she didn't expect. She comes to care for humans, their lives and their causes and she finds herself leading another revolution, like the one she leads in Faery. And most surprising of it all, she finds that some of the rules she has always believed in are harder to believe in when your feelings say a different thing.
Elora was a character not as hard to connect with at first as I had expected, give her Fae princess on a mission, but when she shows that she will always find herself fighting for what she thinks it's right now matter if it's about the Fae or the humans, I was rooting for her and hoping she will find a way to get the Seelie court on her side without turning herself again into a monster.
Taylor was somewhat easier to connect with, even with his grief and his prickly exterior, even when it seems to take him a while to take a stand against what he thinks it's wrong. He finds himself falling for a stranger girl he takes into his small space and ends up not only head over heels in love with her, but also finding a way to heal himself from his emotional wounds of the past because of her.
I was mesmerized at how well Chelsea managed to mix both the fantasy part of this book with the wars between the Fae courts and the Fae politics with the contemporary setting and the fights the characters are undertaking, all mixed up but separate till the very end when from one victory we go to an unexpected fight with what looks like a sure defeat.
The ending felt like both a proper conclusion to a book but of course more than open enough to prepare the way for book two. The stage is set, the players have already shown some of their cards, but there are some questions teased about and there's some things that happened that change everything. Thankfully no horrible cliffhanger in this one and for that I'm ever so thankful!
Very much deserving of 4 to 4.5 stars this one!
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I read the finished copy of this one, but I also got an ARC from Flux Books via NetGalley (THANK YOU FLUX!!) so I'm also counting this one towards my 2014 Review Pile Reading Challenge and I'm hoping it'll also improve my NG ratio! Will I manage to reach 80% before the end of the year??
The Last Changeling by Chelsea PitcherMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I loved Chelsea Pitcher's debut last year, The S Word, a wonderful contemporary book and when I heard she was writing a fantasy book about the Fae next, I knew that I had to read it too. She had written a contemporary that I had loved, and I'm not the biggest contemporary fan, so I knew she'd write a Fae book that I as a not a big Fae fan would like. And I was right!
I got the ARC for The Last Changeling via NetGalley but with my vacation time I run out of time to read it before release day, so I ended up reading my finished copy I had preordered. I also read the finished copy because Chelsea said she had added a lil change to the finished book and I decided I wanted to read that small but big detail.
The Last Changeling is the first book in a duology of urban fantasy with some queer characters mixed with Fae politics. The book is told in dual POVs, Elora a Fae princess of the Unseelie court and Taylor, a broken boy that is surviving along and not living.
Elora comes into the human world on a quest to find the answer to a riddle to end the war between the Fae but she finds herself embroiled in human life and human affairs in a way she didn't expect. She comes to care for humans, their lives and their causes and she finds herself leading another revolution, like the one she leads in Faery. And most surprising of it all, she finds that some of the rules she has always believed in are harder to believe in when your feelings say a different thing.
Elora was a character not as hard to connect with at first as I had expected, give her Fae princess on a mission, but when she shows that she will always find herself fighting for what she thinks it's right now matter if it's about the Fae or the humans, I was rooting for her and hoping she will find a way to get the Seelie court on her side without turning herself again into a monster.
Taylor was somewhat easier to connect with, even with his grief and his prickly exterior, even when it seems to take him a while to take a stand against what he thinks it's wrong. He finds himself falling for a stranger girl he takes into his small space and ends up not only head over heels in love with her, but also finding a way to heal himself from his emotional wounds of the past because of her.
I was mesmerized at how well Chelsea managed to mix both the fantasy part of this book with the wars between the Fae courts and the Fae politics with the contemporary setting and the fights the characters are undertaking, all mixed up but separate till the very end when from one victory we go to an unexpected fight with what looks like a sure defeat.
The ending felt like both a proper conclusion to a book but of course more than open enough to prepare the way for book two. The stage is set, the players have already shown some of their cards, but there are some questions teased about and there's some things that happened that change everything. Thankfully no horrible cliffhanger in this one and for that I'm ever so thankful!
Very much deserving of 4 to 4.5 stars this one!
View all my reviews
Great review Pili :D I'm so happy you loved this book. <3 I do admit it seems pretty interesting ;p just not sure yet if I want it :p Still, the cover is gorgeous. I hope you will love book two as well when you get to read it :D Thank you for sharing sweetie. <3
ReplyDeleteThank you so much sweetie! Just so you know, there's no love triangle in this one! ;)
DeleteWooo, no cliffhanger! So it's part of a series? I might binge-read the series once it's over, if it is a series. I'm glad you loved this one so much! I'm feeling optimistic about Fae-related books, especially since I just loved The Treachery of Beautiful Things :D Excellent review, Pili!
ReplyDeleteAlyssa @ The Eater of Books!
It's a duology! So hopefully next year we'll have the second and last book!
DeleteAnd this is another of those Fae related books I loved and I think you would too!
Thank you Alyssa!!
I must go out and find this book. I haven't read anything Fae in a while and this looks like this would fix that problem right up. I'm glad you enojoyed this one. Great Review! :)
ReplyDeleteAmber @ The Book Bratz
I hope you get it and like it Amber!
DeleteThank you!