The Near Witch

The Near Witch

By V. E. Schwab

The Near Witch is only an old story told to frighten children. 

If the wind calls at night, you must not listen. The wind is lonely, and always looking for company. 

There are no strangers in the town of Near. 

These are the truths that Lexi has heard all her life. 

But when an actual stranger, a boy who seems to fade like smoke, appears outside her home on the moor at night, she knows that at least one of these sayings is no longer true. 

The next night, the children of Near start disappearing from their beds, and the mysterious boy falls under suspicion. 

As the hunt for the children intensifies, so does Lexi's need to know about the witch that just might be more than a bedtime story, about the wind that seems to speak through the walls at night, and about the history of this nameless boy. 

I can't help comparing this to AWGTDB, which I read immediately beforehand, and honestly, the comparison was in Wizard's Guide's favor.

In my copy, the author notes that this is an early book of hers, which has been published after she's been successful otherwise, and maybe this is a self-fulfilling perspective, but it felt more derivative and less "established" than her other works. Of course, it also has that trope I hate, of the late teen/early twenties lady protagonist falling for some random "mystery" boy, and then making choices that range anywhere from silly/ill-advised to dangerous/dangerously stupid because she's just DRAWN to him, and no one else understands her and he's just misunderstood and therefore all choices must lead back to protecting this boy from outside forces (like older adults) who aren't as enamored of him.  I just wish there were more natural skepticism in these scenarios.  Romance is not even necessary in most of these cases! You can not want to make out with someone, but still object to the idea of them being summarily executed for a crime they probably didn't commit! Also, maybe it would be easier to convince people he's innocent if you weren't so clearly biased. 

So, a big part of the book was a non-starter for me, which made the rest of it feel very slight and maybe low-stakes?  It was very atmospheric, and the writing is good, but I guess I was never really surprised at any point - yes, her sister will disappear at a point when Lexi is supposed to be watching her (or was warned to watch her), yes, the town elders are all men who don't listen to her/believe her, no, her new boyfriend isn't actually responsible for the child abductions (although how awesome would it have been if he WAS?!), yes, the kids are found alive at the end (how??) and no one dies, except for maybe the bad actor (and sometimes one of the town elders who really deserves it).  It felt a little derivative, which I wouldn't use to describe her other work, so it surprised me - in a bad way. 

Other reviewers talk about it being fairy-tale like, and I guess I would agree with that - it works best if you just go with it and don't worry too much about nuanced characters.  Everyone here has a given role, and they will rigidly adhere to it!

There's an additional story - The Ash-born Boy - in my copy, which goes into Cole's background, and it was okay, although since I found him very uninteresting in Near Witch, I wasn't exactly waiting on bated breath for his backstory. Like I said at the outset, it compared unfavorably to Wizard's Guide, even though maybe the writing/story was more adult, but right now, I want something very different, more pep, less angst!  Even though I generally like heroines who get shit done, a lot of the choices Lexi made bugged me because they felt so antagonistic and needlessly invited pushback.  And I could have done without the romance, which dragged the story down.  I really am noticing that when I finish a book I'm not excited about, it takes forever for me to pick out my next one, which is counter productive, since what I really need after a less than excellent book, is a great book! Right now I'm in the mood for re-reads though, so we'll see what I manage to find.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

By V. E. Schwab

 

France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever―and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.

Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.

I am not entirely sure what I expected but I am pretty sure it is not what I got.  And I should know better, I actually have read some of Schwab's previous books, but this was both better and less sweet than I expected, and perhaps also more fleeting. I dunno, I spent a lot of the first half of the book just kinda going along with things, and then as soon as we got Henry's backstory, I was immediately anti-Henry.  Bitch, Addie just sweated through three hundred years of theft and homelessness and you out there complaining because one of the hundred available opportunities to you just didn't seem right? And cause you got broke up with you're going to jump off a building? So in the sense that Addie does not end up with Henry, I liked it!  Two thumbs up!

I didn't really like Luc either though, so I wasn't entirely pleased she was hanging with him either, plus, I know we get glimpses here and there, but they basically spent twenty or thirty years together and it's swept by in about five pages? After spending a hundred pages on sad-sack Henry? Is that because if we spent more time on Addie and Luc's relationship we wouldn't even consider Henry a viable option, or that we would be mad that she's planning on exiting her relationship with Luc with a bang? {although I have to say, she calls herself cleverer than Luc, but she honestly thought that Luc making a deal with Henry and her finding Henry was a "mistake"? That doesn't bode well for her future strategizing}

I mean, it was a little bait-and-switchy, but since I wasn't ever really attached to Henry, I didn't mind the ending.  Addie herself, honestly, I was a little let down by what she ended up doing with her life - maybe there's more we don't know about, but for someone who can't be injured and will live forever, it took her a hundred years just to leave the country? And then it was by force, so I don't even know if that counts.  Where else is she going? I mean, no wonder she's depressed, she's basically been like one of those old people living in an apartment and never going outside for the last twenty years of their life.  Also, and this is just me, but if I made that deal and couldn't tell people my real name, I would immediately pick a different one that I would just use.  People change their names all the time.  Am I attached to mine? Yes.  If I couldn't tell it to anyone, would I consider going by a new one? Absolutely!  

I just - for all that she seems like she's got a routine and everything down by the 2014 sections and is in a groove, like, what is she doing? She lacks purpose.  So she's a "muse" (and I appreciate that we kind of elide over however inspiring she can be if they forget her as soon as they leave the room) but she's so taken up with this idea about leaving a mark of some kind that she seems to have spent no time considering whether her mark would be worthwhile.  I dunno, maybe I just don't understand artists. 

Stylistically, nothing really bothered me.  The chapters were brief enough that it never felt like it dragged - except for Henry's POV sections - although I think a lot of repetition could have been excised without losing anything. Another reviewer called it "hollow" and I guess I kind of agree with that. It's a good story but not one that gripped me or that I'll be returning to.   

Vicious

Vicious

By V.E. Schwab

Victor and Eli started out as college roommates―brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognized the same sharpness and ambition in each other. In their senior year, a shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death experiences, and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to the experimental, things go horribly wrong.

Ten years later, Victor breaks out of prison, determined to catch up to his old friend (now foe), aided by a young girl whose reserved nature obscures a stunning ability. Meanwhile, Eli is on a mission to eradicate every other super-powered person that he can find―aside from his sidekick, an enigmatic woman with an unbreakable will. Armed with terrible power on both sides, driven by the memory of betrayal and loss, the archnemeses have set a course for revenge―but who will be left alive at the end?

About a third of the way into the book, I told my fiance that I wasn't sure how much I liked it, as it was "unpleasant".  That's the problem with anti-hero books sometimes - there's nobody in the book that you want to spend time with, or see succeed, so any storyline is going to fall a little flat in the face of your "don't-even-care" -ism.  What happened in Vicious, to make me enjoy it, is that in then later parts of the book, Victor becomes less monstrous and more sympathetic (possibly because we just spend less time inside his head in the second half) and you start rooting for his side to win, if only because Sydney and Mitch are basically innocents in all this (the least bloody hands of the characters, shall we say) and because everyone can agree that a killer who is a religious hypocrite is, like, just the worst.

I don't know that the structure of the book - flipping back and forth from the present to various points in time of the different characters' stories - was necessary, or added anything to the book.  I think the struggle is that you want to create some tension between the "pre-EO" transformation, and the current revenge rampage events, but the problem is that, while necessary to show the relationship between Victor and Eli, the "pre-EO" events are not all that exciting.  It's a lot of Victor being weirdly obsessed with Eli, and, as I mentioned before, it's a fairly unpleasant viewpoint to inhabit.

It's only as we focus more on the final showdown between Eli and Victor that things ramp up, and the book becomes more engrossing.  I will say that although I did enjoy the ultimate resolution and how things worked out, I found it kind of silly that, on the eve of their great battle, both Victor and Eli decide to fill the hours by...tracking down a completely new EO with an unknown skill and looking to recruit or kill him, respectively.  Like, how you do decide that shortly before you face your nemesis is a good time to go hunt and kill some other rando?  Like, "Oh, I've got a few hours to kill.  Let me decompress and prepare by going to a bar and killing someone else." Or conversely, "I have a few hours to kill.  Let me track this rando down and hope that he'll miraculously (a) be useful to me and (b) want something desperately that only I can provide, so as to convince him to join me."

The whole thing felt very deus ex machina, and kind of unnecessary, like, why introduce this new guy at the eleventh hour? But ignoring that (and the original deus ex that involved the two sisters somehow hooking up on opposite sides with Victor and Eli to begin with) it's still fun to watch all the pieces come together - and the small hoodwinking of you as you discover in the final pages what Victor's plan really was, all along.

I was originally thinking I would read the sequel but the reviews have dissuaded me - this stands perfectly well on its own, and no sense in gilding the lily. 


18: A Book About Someone With A Superpower