book: The Darkest Part of the Forest
May. 5th, 2015 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraOkay, so. If Holly Black's previous book, Coldest Girl in Coldtown, was everything I find hard to take in YA anymore - teens who can't wrap their heads around adult time-horizons making unfortunate permanent decisions - The Darkest Part of the Forest is everything that is best and most powerful about YA as YA and why I will never quit this genre despite being old enough to be a YA's mom.
This is an outstanding book, you guys. This book made me gasp and say "ohmygod, ohmygod" out loud at the playground which you better believe got me an odd look from the mom sitting closest by but I have *no regrets* because it was *so good*. Black is tapped right into the deep, real stuff of fairy tale tropes (and the Jungian collective unconsciousness, maybe) - siblings, changelings, bargains, quests, parents, adolescent yearning. It's not quite a flawless book, there's a bit of clunky exposition in the last act, but up to that point it was just exquisitely put together.
For those as may be curious, there's some very, very minor reference to Black's Tithe trilogy, but you definitely don't need to have read those, and I liked Darkest Part significantly more than even the one of those I liked most.
To get specific for a minute, the night-Hazel concept is very similar to something I've been playing around with in my head for many years - the version of you that is aging with you and having your normal life-growth but is also having a fantasy-adventure life you're not sharing, and what happens when those two versions of you are brought into fusion or conflict - so it was really interesting to see Black's take on that. (Fortunately that particular long-held idea is not the one I'm going with for my own novel-in-progress or I probably would have been shaking my fists at the sky rather than clapping in glee.)
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aryky, I am pointing at you in particular, READ THIS ONE.
This is an outstanding book, you guys. This book made me gasp and say "ohmygod, ohmygod" out loud at the playground which you better believe got me an odd look from the mom sitting closest by but I have *no regrets* because it was *so good*. Black is tapped right into the deep, real stuff of fairy tale tropes (and the Jungian collective unconsciousness, maybe) - siblings, changelings, bargains, quests, parents, adolescent yearning. It's not quite a flawless book, there's a bit of clunky exposition in the last act, but up to that point it was just exquisitely put together.
For those as may be curious, there's some very, very minor reference to Black's Tithe trilogy, but you definitely don't need to have read those, and I liked Darkest Part significantly more than even the one of those I liked most.
To get specific for a minute, the night-Hazel concept is very similar to something I've been playing around with in my head for many years - the version of you that is aging with you and having your normal life-growth but is also having a fantasy-adventure life you're not sharing, and what happens when those two versions of you are brought into fusion or conflict - so it was really interesting to see Black's take on that. (Fortunately that particular long-held idea is not the one I'm going with for my own novel-in-progress or I probably would have been shaking my fists at the sky rather than clapping in glee.)
aryky, I am pointing at you in particular, READ THIS ONE.
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Date: 2015-05-06 01:08 am (UTC)ETA: Oo, and there's an audiobook version at the library.
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Date: 2015-05-06 01:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-14 03:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-06 04:30 am (UTC)