Con Man
One pattern in the books I've read of late is the topic of cons. In Mistborn. we see a team of con men pulling off a revolution, dissecting government security like it was no more than minor obstacles for the ultimate heist. Its sequel The Well of Ascension goes over a similar vein in trying to keep their newly liberated city from the hands of two armies and then some with some rather unconventional...techniques. Towards the YA categories, there's Heist Society where a former teenage thief (it's part of the family business) scams her way into a prestigious boarding school...only to have to plan the job of her life to save her father later.
My latest acquisition is White Cat where curse workers have the ability to change your life (usually for the worse) with touch of their hands. Curse work is illegal thus by default, all curse workers are criminals. White Cat blew me away. Holly Black certainly has not lost her touch in writing though I would replace fantasy with the word horror because she really knows how to twist that gut-wrenching feeling in your stomach even further.
"Marks forget that whenever something's too good to be true, that's because it's a con."-White Cat, pg 310. In that line, Holly Black is one hell of a good con because I thought we were on the road of the good end and then WHAM! Ouch, flat on my ass, forgetting this is only book one of a trilogy. It wouldn't be much of a trilogy if everything was tied up all nice and neat in the first book now would it?
Now for some elements of the book, they were quite predictable due to the knowing the fairy tale basis of the white cat. Your basic transformation/beast spouse story where a prince ends up marrying this gorgeous white cat because he needs to marry someone. In the end, she asks that he cut her head off if he really loved her. He does so and she returns to her real form. If I remember correctly, the reason why he's able to do that is because he's the very image of the man that she once loved and was the reason why she was put into that form in the first place.
Cassel is too soft to be a con man, because in the end you know he cares too much. It reminds me of an old Gambit quote (luciademedici, I salute you) "Never bet more than you're willing to lose.") To me, a con man will sell off his own mother if he could get away with it at the right price. The ending of the book made you realize that even with his realization of his new position, he's just as human red as anyone else and the greatest curse working in the world ain't going to change that.
I just know that I will be waiting with anticipation for the second book next year entitled Red Glove (or it might be Black Glove as the title is still tentative and it changes frequently between Holly Black's Twitter page and her LJ).
I'm still backlogged on reviewing books, which makes me infinitely glad for all the notebooks I kept with notes about each book I read. The only thing is while I kept notebooks, I didn't date them so any reviews that aren't of a book that was published within a month or two's time of the review is rather questionable.
My latest acquisition is White Cat where curse workers have the ability to change your life (usually for the worse) with touch of their hands. Curse work is illegal thus by default, all curse workers are criminals. White Cat blew me away. Holly Black certainly has not lost her touch in writing though I would replace fantasy with the word horror because she really knows how to twist that gut-wrenching feeling in your stomach even further.
"Marks forget that whenever something's too good to be true, that's because it's a con."-White Cat, pg 310. In that line, Holly Black is one hell of a good con because I thought we were on the road of the good end and then WHAM! Ouch, flat on my ass, forgetting this is only book one of a trilogy. It wouldn't be much of a trilogy if everything was tied up all nice and neat in the first book now would it?
Now for some elements of the book, they were quite predictable due to the knowing the fairy tale basis of the white cat. Your basic transformation/beast spouse story where a prince ends up marrying this gorgeous white cat because he needs to marry someone. In the end, she asks that he cut her head off if he really loved her. He does so and she returns to her real form. If I remember correctly, the reason why he's able to do that is because he's the very image of the man that she once loved and was the reason why she was put into that form in the first place.
Cassel is too soft to be a con man, because in the end you know he cares too much. It reminds me of an old Gambit quote (luciademedici, I salute you) "Never bet more than you're willing to lose.") To me, a con man will sell off his own mother if he could get away with it at the right price. The ending of the book made you realize that even with his realization of his new position, he's just as human red as anyone else and the greatest curse working in the world ain't going to change that.
I just know that I will be waiting with anticipation for the second book next year entitled Red Glove (or it might be Black Glove as the title is still tentative and it changes frequently between Holly Black's Twitter page and her LJ).
I'm still backlogged on reviewing books, which makes me infinitely glad for all the notebooks I kept with notes about each book I read. The only thing is while I kept notebooks, I didn't date them so any reviews that aren't of a book that was published within a month or two's time of the review is rather questionable.