She fights, plots, even murders enemies, but she must also navigate her relationship with her complex family (human, Faerie, and mixed). Fierce and observant Jude is utterly unaware of the currents that swirl around her. Black’s latest looks at nature and nurture and spins a tale of court intrigue, bloodshed, and a truly messed-up relationship that might be the saving of Jude and the titular prince, who, like Jude, has been shaped by the cruelties of others. Brought up among the Gentry, Jude has never felt at ease, but after a decade, Faerie has become her home despite the constant peril. Human Jude (whose brown hair curls and whose skin color is never described) both hates and loves Madoc, whose murderous nature is true to his Faerie self and who in his way loves her. Jude-broken, rebuilt, fueled by anger and a sense of powerlessness-has never recovered from watching her adoptive Faerie father murder her parents. More about costume than character or story.īlack is back with another dark tale of Faerie, this one set in Faerie and launching a new trilogy. The writing is self-consciously stiff, and the story reads like a mood board, full of repetitively atmospheric images and scenes but never creating a substantive whole. The island setting is extremely one-note, as if an ocean-themed children’s party became an entire culture, and there is no consistent interior logic to the rules of magic and gods that seem to shift, like the tides and the weather, according to narrative convenience. Annaleigh and her sisters read like interchangeable paper dolls, their painstakingly described gowns, jewels, and shoes the most distinguishing features about them they spend their time screaming, swooning, and alternately competing for and cowering behind the men in their lives.

When their young stepmother persuades their duke father to let them wear bright colors and start dancing again, Annaleigh and her sisters are relieved, especially when a mystical door in the family crypt conveniently transports them to glamorous ballrooms that provide venues to show off their new wardrobes. Her remaining sisters chafe under the lifestyle restrictions of formal mourning on their small, isolated island home, especially their inability to wear pretty clothes and flirt with boys.

Mysterious deaths plague an island dukedom in a loose retelling of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.”Īnnaleigh Thaumas has spent the last few years mourning her mother and several sisters, who died in succession under increasingly eerie circumstances.

The house of salt and sorrows