This review was originally written and posted in April 2016.

We open the book with our main character, who is out hunting in the dead of winter, despairing because it’s so late in the season that game is scarce. Also it’s starting to blizzard, and that’s never good.

especially from my position up in the tree […] I unstrung my bow before easing off the tree.

…so…how…was she going to shoot if she was in a tree? Pulling the string back takes a good bit of force, which is why standing is better, so you can use your whole body to do it. Plus, I mean, that back elbow has to go somewhere, not all that easy if there’s a tree branch in the way.

But hey, archery is “cool” and sitting in trees is “sneaky” and actually building a hunting blind is for losers, I guess?

She wants to get home before dark because

giant wolves were on the prowl, and in numbers.

And what exactly are they eating?

Our MC’s village is just a few miles from Prythian, a country if immortal fae, and everyone is afraid of them because there’s some history of attacks going on there. Rumors of said attacks are growing more frequent.

Still, her family is out out of food and she’s got two sisters to feed, so she sticks around a little while longer to hope something comes by.

Once it had been second nature to savor the contrast of new grass against dark, tilled soil, or an amethyst brooch nestled in folds of emerald silk; once I’d dreamed and breathed and thought in color and light and shape. Sometimes I would even indulge in envisioning a day when my sisters were married and it was only me and Father, with enough food to go around, enough money to buy some paint, and enough time to put those colors and shapes down on paper or canvas or the cottage walls.

Not likely to happen anytime soon—perhaps ever. So I was left with moments like this, admiring the glint of pale winter light on snow. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done it—bothered to notice anything lovely or interesting.

I do really like this.

Less than thirty paces away stood a small doe, not yet too scrawny from winter, but desperate enough to wrench bark from a tree in the clearing.

So…what is she eating, if winter is so lean and yet this deer isn’t? (Also, google says that ‘woody browse’ is normal winter fodder for deer, so not really desperate there.)

MC starts planning all the ways she’s going to cook this deer as she gets ready to shoot, but then she spies a giant wolf in the woods behind it! Oh, noes!

She’s got a special fairy-killing arrow that she bought years ago when they still had spare money, made of mountain ash and iron (both harmful to fae in this worldbuilding), so even though she’s trying to convince herself that the horse-sized wolf is not a fae, she pulls out that special arrow anyway. I’m okay with that, brains are funny.

There’s a decent bit of tension while she waits, and she lets the wolf kill the doe before she shoots it in turn. Handy, two birds one arrow. She skins the wolf and takes the pelt and the deer back home.

His remaining golden eye now stared at the snow-heavy sky, and for a moment, I wished I had it in me to feel remorse for the dead thing.

But this was the forest, and it was winter.

I really like this, too.

So that’s the end of the first chapter. Have to say, I’m kind of liking the writing so far. The descriptions are a bit long and ponderous, but they’re also low-key emotional, and I like that from a first person narrator. We’ve got a good sense of the character’s situation, a little bit of worldbuilding, a clear start to the book’s conflict (she so totally killed a fae, obviously) and only a few research errors. It’s a good opening. Not much for me to nitpick.

…so on to chapter two.

As I trudged up the path, each step fueled only by near-dizzying hunger, my sisters’ voices fluttered out to meet me. I didn’t need to discern their words to know they most likely were chattering about some young man or the ribbons they’d spotted in the village when they should have been chopping wood, but I smiled a bit nonetheless.

Ah, yes, there’s the quality I expect from the books that win polls on this blog.

There’s hardly anything wrong with boys and ribbons, no matter what your situation, but the book is pretty clearly trying to use it for shorthand here, and I don’t put up with that. Especially since the first chapter had our narrator rhapsodizing about colors and painting. Or does enjoying life’s pleasures only count when you can make it sound ~*~*~meaningful~*~*~. Oh, wait, you can do that with boys and ribbons, too.

She also mentions some ‘wards’ on the door that she’s sure are fake, but their father paid for it to be done and she didn’t have the heart to protest. It’s a long paragraph, which normally I’d say “so you know it’ll be important later,” but given the ponderous descriptions so far…

MC’s name is Feyre. I know I could have learned his off the back cover copy, but eh.

So we quickly learn that Feyre’s mother is dead and “boys and ribbons” was shorthand for spoiled and/or mean.

Me. Not her, not the others. I’d never once seen their hands sticky with blood and fur. […]Elain sometimes just … didn’t grasp things. It wasn’t meanness that kept her from offering to help; it simply never occurred to her that she might be capable of getting her hands dirty.

Okay, but, you guys are in desperate poverty, yes? Despite the rhetoric from certain politicians, desperate poverty tends to make people the opposite of lazy. So why would she not be used to doing stuff, because stuff needs doing in order for them to survive?

But at least Elain is described as sort of nice, the other sister Nesta is supposedly cruel and bitter, reacting to every comment with disdain and spending the family’s money and being pettily mean to their father. Frankly, I prefer this to Elain, at least it makes sense. And mean people exist, it happens.

They used to be rich, but lost their fortune through *backstory not found*. We do get some backstory on his ruined knee and subsequent depression, though.

Then there is family bickering.

Nesta picked at her long, neat nails. “I hate chopping wood. I always get splinters.” She glanced up from beneath her dark lashes. Of all of us, Nesta looked the most like our mother—especially when she wanted something. “Besides, Feyre,” she said with a pout, “you’re so much better at it! It takes you half the time it takes me. Your hands are suited for it—they’re already so rough.”

Okay, bitter I get, but…is Nesta not cold? Would she really rather shiver without a fire than just chop some wood? Feyre mentions she sometimes doesn’t come home every night from her hunting trips, so if the one working sister isn’t around to do stuff, then…????

And by the way, living in a cabin in a pre-industrial society isn’t a cakewalk. There’s TONS of work to do just in the name of routine maintenance. Fayre can’t do it all, and I mean that literally, especially since hunting tends to be a full-time job. If their dad has limited mobility and their sister is in the woods 24/7, their cabin should be falling apart around her sister’s ears, which is why this tired and ridiculous wicked-stepsister routine just doesn’t work in this setting. It would work if they were newly-impoverished and not used to it all yet, but this has been going on for eight years? No, the sisters would be doing stuff by now, even the laziest sister would be doing stuff by now.

They eat, and Feyre thinks about the tasks she needs to do tomorrow.

I knew a few vendors who might be interested in [the two hides]—though neither was likely to give me the fee I deserved.

Because…???? Do you have a reason for that, or do you just want to heap misery on Feyre because you think that makes her more sympathetic? Because carrying her family does that well enough without also making everyone else in her life mean to her, too.

In fact, the sisters wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t so extreme. Nesta could whine and moan and do only the bare minimum of work while constantly reminiscing about their rich days; Elain could be sweet and clueless and only do the tasks that she considers ‘hers,’ not noticing if someone else needs help with their own tasks. That would keep the broad strokes of both sisters’ personalities without getting into this weird self-sabotaging level of angst, and it would give Feyre something to feel burdened about without piling it on too thick. I mean, they’re completely broke, you really don’t need much more than that for the tone this book is trying for.

The chapter ends with more bickering, and I don’t really care to repeat it, it’s basically just another drawn-out example of Feyre’s family being mean. Although, frankly, it’s not a bad argument, very character-illuminating for everyone involved, and if it wasn’t for that whole “I do not do any work because I’d rather freeze to death than chop wood” bit, I wouldn’t mind it. It mostly revolves around the characters’ attitudes instead of actions, which is why it works. The book just…needs to tone things down a bit so that character stuff like this can shine better.