Happiness is a book to read♥
I have been partial to Holly Black books since The Spiderwick Chronicles.
I enjoyed Tithe muchly and Valiant was a great followup. I wasn't as thrilled with Ironside.
But still, Black stays on my To Read list on the strength of her no-nonsense writing. Women writers have a tendency to overwrite (this is my general observation; not a scientific one) but Black is straightforward and her plots and characters follow the dark path into the dark in a logical way.
I like that.
So when the first book of her new series became available on Amazon vine to read (The Curse Workers: The White Cat), I had to jump all over it.
The reviews so far at Amazon have been solidly 4-stars for this story of Cassel Sharpe, a 17-year-old from a family of curse workers (those who specializes in cursing people in various ways and using the work to work the con). Cassel doesn't seem to have the touch so he isn't a "worker". He is, however, being haunted by dreams of a white cat. He doesn't know where or why it is happening. It may be related to his killing of his best friend when they were thirteen. Perhaps her family has finally caught on. Or it may be something else.
As a character, Cassel is closer to Charlie Huston's Hank Thompson than the usual teen hero of YA paranormal novels a la Shiver. He's a guy who is paying for his private education by being the school bookie. He works the con by playing the odds. He's a liar but not a thief. And he may be a killer.
The plot points are simple: What is the white cat? Why is it haunting Cassel? And what happened to Lila Zacharov?
Black writes it simple and to the point and I love when an author does that. No extra modifiers. No extra descriptions when not needed. No extraneous characters for fluff but in the end don't matter. No fluff period.
Just the story and the characters and things getting done.
I enjoyed Tithe muchly and Valiant was a great followup. I wasn't as thrilled with Ironside.
But still, Black stays on my To Read list on the strength of her no-nonsense writing. Women writers have a tendency to overwrite (this is my general observation; not a scientific one) but Black is straightforward and her plots and characters follow the dark path into the dark in a logical way.
I like that.
So when the first book of her new series became available on Amazon vine to read (The Curse Workers: The White Cat), I had to jump all over it.
The reviews so far at Amazon have been solidly 4-stars for this story of Cassel Sharpe, a 17-year-old from a family of curse workers (those who specializes in cursing people in various ways and using the work to work the con). Cassel doesn't seem to have the touch so he isn't a "worker". He is, however, being haunted by dreams of a white cat. He doesn't know where or why it is happening. It may be related to his killing of his best friend when they were thirteen. Perhaps her family has finally caught on. Or it may be something else.
As a character, Cassel is closer to Charlie Huston's Hank Thompson than the usual teen hero of YA paranormal novels a la Shiver. He's a guy who is paying for his private education by being the school bookie. He works the con by playing the odds. He's a liar but not a thief. And he may be a killer.
The plot points are simple: What is the white cat? Why is it haunting Cassel? And what happened to Lila Zacharov?
Black writes it simple and to the point and I love when an author does that. No extra modifiers. No extra descriptions when not needed. No extraneous characters for fluff but in the end don't matter. No fluff period.
Just the story and the characters and things getting done.