Hines, Jim C.: Red Hood's Revenge
Red Hood's Revenge (2010)
Written by: Jim C. Hines
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 337 (Mass Market Paperback)
Series: Book Three (Princess Novels)
Why I Read It: I'd read the first two Princess novels last year, thanks to getting ARCs from Dreams & Speculation's close-out package. I'd already finished both when Borders was closing, and found book three on the shelves during it's epic close-out sale. I had no qualms picking it up, but of course, it languished until now, when Mount TBR pushed it to the top of the stack.
The premise: ganked from BN.com: Wars may end. But vengeance is forever.
Roudette's story was a simple one. A red cape. A wolf. A hunter. Her mother told her she would be safe, so long as she kept to the path. But sometimes the path leads to dark places. Roudette is the hunter now, an assassin known throughout the world as the Lady of the Red Hood. Her mission will take her to the country of Arathea and an ancient fairy threat. At the heart of the conflict between humans and fairies stands the woman Roudette has been hired to kill, the only human ever to have fought the Lady of the Red Hood and survived-the princess known as Sleeping Beauty.
Spoilers, yay or nay?: Nay. It's a short review, but if you're in a hurry, feel free to skip to "My Rating" and you'll be in good shape. Everyone else, onward!
It's pretty much been a year since I last read a Princess novel, and of course, that story was The Mermaid's Madness. It didn't stick with me the same way The Stepsister Scheme did, but Hines' twist on these various familiar fairy tale characters is still interesting and engaging, meaning it's no burden to keep reading. Yet, one thing I've noticed, and maybe the timing had something to do with it, but it took me a while to get through Red Hood's Revenge. Considering it took me two days to get through The Stepsister Scheme, and four days to read The Mermaid's Madness, it took me seven days to complete Red Hood's Revenge.
I think there's a few reasons for this: sometimes, familiarity with the world and the characters can suck urgency out of the story. You've been with them this far, and you aren't that worried for their fates. So there's that. There's also the incidental fact that I've been absorbing a lot of fairy tale stories this year. Fables and Once Upon a Time are first and foremost on my mind, so while Hines' take is still utterly and completely original compared to those, it's still not as fresh on my mind as it could be. I keep comparing Talia to the Sleeping Beauty I've been reading about in the Fables spin-off Fairest, because while the characters are nothing alike and their stories are only alike in the most basic sense, such comparisons can inevitably pull a reader out of the immediacy of the story. This is no fault of the author's. Just timing.
And speaking of timing, there's the fact that I went on an Olympic-sized reading spree last month, and I think I'm a little burnt out. Taking my time right now just makes sense.
At any rate, that's just a long-winded explanation for why I wasn't glued to the pages. I will say though, there was a certain lack of tension. I'm going to blame POV too. Red Hood's Revenge is a tick over 300 pages, and if I'm applying my "one POV per 100 pages" rule, we get four: Danielle, Snow, Talia, and Roudette. I will say that Roudette's POV is probably utilized the least, so maybe Hines skirts by this rule. However, this is Talia's story, and I wish that Talia had gotten the lion's share of the POV time. Not that I didn't enjoy Snow's or Danielle's: both characters were instrumental in Talia's victory, particularly Danielle, whose ability to talk to animals and encourage animals to help them out was used to particularly strong effect in this book, but the shorter the story is, the fewer POVs I want. And Roudette's…. okay, I get that having her POV is good, so that we can compare her POV to Talia's after Talia dons the Red Hood. But there was something about getting Roudette's POV that sort of sucked the tension out of the story. While I knew early on she intended to betray Talia in some way, it never worried me. Hell, at one point, I was rather hoping Roudette would join the three princesses for future stories.
Yet having Roudette's POV kept us from having a major info-dump at the end, because we learned of Roudette's plan from Roudette's head, rather than her monologuing it to the POV character in question. I ended up really liking her character, the twist on her story and her connection to wolves. And her plan actually did make sense. Not good for the characters we know and love, but it did make a certain kind of sense. I didn't finish this book gloating over her fate, and that's a good thing. Ambiguous villains are always the best.
But speaking of villains, talk about getting frustrated with Lakhim, the mother of the man who, erm, woke Talia, and grandmother to Talia's twin sons. Oh, that whole bit at the end had me on the edge, and while Talia's response to the boys' question as to why she killed their father (I'm pretty sure they have NO CLUE she's their mother) was the appropriate one, I'm dying to know what happens when that time comes. I'm also torn on whether I'm sympathetic with Lakhim in terms of wanting her son's murder avenged. I mean, it's obvious that when Talia woke, she left behind to newborn infants, and those came from somewhere. What are her thoughts on her son's actions? Does she pointedly ignore that in order to keep him a shining, wonderful person in her mind? Or is she more ruthless, feeling the means justify the end? Maybe both, but that's a frustrating point in Talia's history.
At any rate, the cast is fun to come back to. The tension between Snow and Talia I was never sure how to interpret. At first, I couldn't remember that Talia knew that Snow knew that Talia was in love with her. And then, I couldn't decide if what Snow felt later on was jealousy because she's into Talia but doesn't realize it, or if she's jealous (as she says) because she wants her own happily-ever-after. I'd also forgotten how much Snow's magic cost her, so it was interesting to see that play out. I've already talked about Danielle and my enjoyment of how her magic was utilized, but she's quite the strong, stable diplomat, and I felt she really got to shine in this book.
One last thing, and this going back to POV: forgetting the number of them, part of my problem with this series is that the POVs are fixed. I liked close, limited third person POV (when first isn't the option), and I don't mind multiple POVs in this sense, provided those sections are clearly marked. There were times that I could've sworn Hines shifted POVs in the middle of a chapter without a scene break to indicate such, or if there was a scene break, it didn't matter because the narrative voice is, well, not distinct for each character. To use an example, I praised James S.A. Corey for his use of POV, how each character voice felt distinct. Now, you might protest, because James S.A. Corey is two writers, and each writer wrote a specific character. But for starters, if you read the books, you know it feels like one coherent style linking the whole thing together, and secondly, in Caliban's War, you've got more than two POVs, so while I'm sure each author took a certain character, the point is that even when one of them had multiple characters, I was never confused as to whose head I was in.
Of course, each chapter had the character's name for the heading, but really, the voices were unique. Just look at Leviathan Wakes.
My point is, and I had this problem with The Mermaid's Madness, each princess has the same narrative voice, and this is especially problematic when they're all in a scene together, notably a battle scene of sorts. I forget whose head I'm supposed to be in and then when it's made clear it's a POV I wasn't expecting, I get a kind of whiplash.
But while the character POVs felt a wee bit too similar, the world-building is excellent, and I love how each kingdom has its own rules and cultures, and how Hines draws attention to that by having a character remember not to take something the wrong way. Well done in that regard.
I also enjoyed Hines' touch of humor through-out the book. Danielle's quip about the privy made me laugh.
My Rating: Worth Reading, with Reservations
Not any many reservations. It's an enjoyable book, to be sure, but it's lacking something I can't quite put my finger on. Is it a result of the POVs, the way they slide from character to character without me noticing until it's too late, which gives me a kind of reader whiplash? I'm not sure, but I did enjoy the book and do want to read the book four, the final (?) installment in the series. I'm just not in a rush to do so. That said, I've got to give Hines a lot of credit for the Princess series so far. I love how he takes familiar fairy tales and twists them into something a wee bit darker (much like their original counterparts before they were Disney-fied) and creates an utterly believable fantasy world out of all of these seemingly unrelated tales. I'm also fascinated with the repercussions for Talia, aka Sleeping Beauty, after this novel's end. There are some wonderful tension-filled moments at the end that make me want to fast-forward twenty or so years to see what happens next, but maybe the next book will somehow address these concerns.
Fans of fairy tales and their various incarnations should definitely give this series a shot. It's fun, enjoyable, with believable characters and a solid team of heroines who talk about far more than men. Start with The Stepsister Scheme, and I'm sure you'll have lots of fun.
Cover Commentary: I think it's my least favorite cover. I'm also pretty sure the artist changed from the first two books to this one, because there's something different about the portrayal of the three princesses, despite the similar style of art. I wish Talia wasn't in such a strange pose, and I wish she was front and center, since it's mostly HER story. Snow's pose is right one, as is Danielle's, who looks relaxed and confident, as she should be, as she's the anchor of the group. At any rate, least favorite art, and can I just say that Red Hood looks like a wraith in the background? A shame she wasn't fleshed out more….
Next up: Amortals by Matt Forbeck