White Cat by Holly Black - A Mini Review

UK Cover 

Cassel is cursed. Cursed by the memory of the fourteen year old girl he murdered. Life at school is a constant trial. Life at home even worse. No-one at home is ever going to forget that Cassel is a killer. No-one at home is ever going to forget that he isn't a magic worker.
Cassel's family are one of the big five crime families in America. Ever since magic was prohibited in 1929 magic workers have been driven underground and into crime. And while people still need their touch, their curses, their magical killings, their transformations, times have been hard. His granddad has been driven to drink, his mother is in prison and his brothers detest him as the only one of their family who can't do magic.
But there is a secret at the centre of Cassel's family and he's about to inherit it. It's terrifying and that's the truth.
The White Cat is a stunning novel of a world changed by magic. In this world only 1% of the population can work magic but they have the power of nightmares.

The extraordinary new adult fantasy of magic in our world and the price we pay for it by the author of THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES.

I just quickly had to share some thoughts about White Cat by Holly Black with you.

When the proof first came in last year, I dropped everything and motored through the first hundred pages, reading at top speed and not really taking in what I was reading.  I realised I was being really dumb, doing this.  Spoiling the book for myself by reading too fast, being to greedy, instead of enjoying myself.

I set it aside and subsequently read it over several sittings in mass paperback form, which was so great, a few weeks ago.

Cassel is a great character - far more innocent than he would like to think and portray to the world.  He thinks he knows what the score is all the time and that he doesn't get to be conned by any cons.  In the end it is those closest to him who has been working him.

As realisation dawns, Cassel really grows rapidly as a character and he tries to do the best he can in a  crappy situation.  He comes through on the other side, a bit battered and scarred but knowing better and probably a bit more world-wise than before.

Holly Black is such a great writer - like thousands of others really enjoyed her Tithe novels and subsequently adored the Spiderwick books. (Mine are all signed and I even have a glow in the dark Spiderwick poster!)  In White Cat you can tell how much Ms. Black has matured as she comes across as at ease in her craft as both a writer and storyteller - because one does not necessarily mean you are the other.

There is just enough information about the world-building in White Cat to make readers realise that this is not quite our world, yet there are obvious similarities.  Again, this is something I liked.  Each bit of information she gave us about the laws and how workers are exploited / portrayed in the media, the lore and stories about them, gets added to this scrap book in your mind and slowly you build up this image of the world Cassel lives in.  It's maybe not the nicest place in the world and I can't help but feel it has this Depression Era feel to it, in my mind at least.  With colours in sepia and shadows darker than dark.  I am very keen to see what happens in The Curse Workers Book 2: Red Gloves out later this year.

White Cat is being marketed as an adult book (with a release later this year from Orion's YA imprint Indigo) with a teen protagonist.

US Cover 

The Poison Eaters by Holly Black

Holly Black is one of my must-buy authors so I was excited to get my hands on her first short story collection. I must admit I've yet to read the last few stories in this anthology so I'm sure I'll be back before the month is out with another favourite. I'm quite spoilt for choice already but one of the most poignant was Virgin.

It's written from the viewpoint of Jen, a girl who's run away from her foster home. She's living on the streets of Philadelphia during the summer, mulling over what she should do when the weather gets colder. She meets Zachary, a homeless boy who juggles for cash and is instantly drawn to him. He's quiet, kind and completely different to the other people she knows from the streets. They bump into each other in the library where's he's researching Unicorns.



Zachary lets Jen in on a secret. His mum was a drug dealer who sold information to the police. She and Zachary are dumped in some woods and, as they walk aimlessly, she's shot and killed by the people she betrayed. As Zachary is crying and scared in the woods a unicorn arrives and changes his life. Jen is enthralled but she tells her friend and Zachary's story soon turns into something to mock him with. The events that follow are a mixture of touching and tragic. I felt desperately sorry for Zachary, the innocent with the awful past who trusts too easily.

As with all of the stories I've read so far from this collection, Virgin is a perfectly formed gem which had a flavour of Valiant where beauty and magic can be found in the most desperate of places.

The Good Neighbours: Kin by Holly Black and Ted Naifeh

Synopsis:

Rue Silver's mother has disappeared . . . and her father has been arrested, suspected of killing her. But it's not as straightforward as that. Because Rue is a faerie, like her mother was. And her father didn't kill her mother -- instead, he broke a promise to Rue's faerie king grandfather, which caused Rue's mother to be flung back to the faerie world. Now Rue must go to save her -- and must also defeat a dark faerie that threatens our very mortal world.



Thanks to the very lovely Sarah, fellow reviewer, writer and geek, I received a copy of Holly Black's graphic novel, Good Neighbours: Kin (book 1) recently.


So I set it aside for a while, devoured a few other things and subsequently read it in one fell swoop this morning during my commute into work.


I lurve this little book so much. It stands out - for me at least - because of it's artwork by Ted Naifeh. Some pages are illustrated to quite obviously show the fae in the mortal world, all around us. And then there are bits that are illustrated where the fae presence is only hinted at. It's subtle and lovely and wonderful and I'm a fan. I also liked the tiny sneak in of a box filled with items and ontop is a copy of The Spiderwick Chronicles. And I think I spotted Jay and Silent Bob lurking in the background too in one panel...but maybe that was just me being too observant.


Of course there is the story that forms the backbone of Good Neighbours. At the heart of it we have Rue trying to cope with her mum walking out / disappearing on them. Then her father's odd behaviour when she did: he's not gone to work and been sitting around in the house for days on end. So with her home not being somewhere she wants to be she prefers hanging out with her friends. But even then things aren't going well. There are glimpses of odd beings and creatures that do not belong to our world that haunt her days.

When it's revealed that a student of her father's, a professor of folklore, has been found murdered and Rue's father is the main suspect, her world is shaken. Further injury is added when the police extend their investigation to determine if her mom had left out of free will or if she had been murdered.

There are some twists and turns here and there but those who know Holly Black's writing and those of us who are fans of fairy tales will find a lot of familair threads within Kin, but I'd hasten to add that this does not detract from the story or from Ms. Black's storytelling. She is so comfortable in her narrative that it's palpable. Kin is a great addition to a library for any person who has an interest in the supernatural or the fae. I can't wait for Book 2 - Kith - to be in my grubby little paws.

Lavishly illustrated and well written, Good Neighbours: Kin, feels a bit like a trophy book to me. It's a very tactile bit of published niceness that I'm very pleased to have on my shelf, along with all my other Spiderwick books and posters.