33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Angieville: BALLAD: A GATHERING OF FAERIE, September 24, 2009
This review is from: Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie (Paperback)
BALLAD is the sequel (perhaps companion novel would be a better term) to Maggie Stiefvater's debut novel
Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception. In a shift similar to the one in between Melissa Marr's
Wicked Lovely and
Ink Exchange (Wicked Lovely), BALLAD switches narrators from Dee to her best friend James Morgan. And James, like Marr's Leslie, is in rather a lot of trouble. The story follows his struggle to recover from narrowly escaping death at the hands of homicidal faeries in order to protect Dee, as well as his stuttering attempts to deal with life after telling his best friend he's in love with her and having her not return the sentiment.
Even though James doesn't care much what happens to himself, he does still care about Dee (almost against his will). And so he follows her to Thornking-Ash Conservatory, enrolling in a school full of gifted musicians guaranteed to annoy the crap out of him, in order to be near her. And despite the fact that he's a piper and they have no program to suit his level of expertise. But Dee barely talks to him. And when she does their brief conversations are hideously awkward, full of meaningless banter and superficial smiles. Meanwhile the faeries are far from finished meddling in James' life. On his way back to school after a spectacularly failed piping lesson, James runs into an unusual faery named Nuala. Unbeknownst to James, Nuala is a faery muse who gifts her chosen humans with unmatched artistic ability only to feed on their souls until they burn up and die. Nuala has been without a human for too long and is intent on claiming James. All she needs is an invitation...
BALLAD is a love letter to James fans. Period. If you liked yon lanky, loquacious lad before you will fall head over heels in love with him in this installment. Witty repartee and quirky t-shirts aside, BALLAD brings us infinitely farther into James' mind than the brief but enticing glimpse we got in
Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception And what's there is richer and more painful than one might expect from his humorous exterior. The sort of deal Nuala offers is the height of temptation for this troubled young man who is obsessed with music and excellence and who is so very alone. BALLAD is a tighter story than its predecessor and that fact was clear from page one. James and the cadre of disciples he gathers round him like a cloak at Thornking-Ash fairly leap off the page at you until all you want in life is to be chummy and sarcastic with them all day long. Nuala is a different story. The chapters alternate between James and Nuala's point of view (with a few text messages from Dee interspersed here and there). And as she gets to know and appreciate James, I came to like her more and more. But Nuala didn't ever quite come into focus for me as much as James did. Of course, he's a hard act to follow. For as he edges closer and closer to completely unravelling, his witty facade gets sharper, more honed, more irresistable. Both to the reader and the psychic vampire obsessed with him. I laughed and gasped and wrung my hands with worry for this boy. And I miss him now that it's over.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lush and Lovely, October 4, 2009
This review is from: Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie (Paperback)
It doesn't happen nearly often enough which, of course, only makes it that much more special when it does. That delicious glow starts deep inside - sometimes only a few pages into a book. It's golden and warm and magical and it's telling you that you're going to love the book in your hands, that you've found one of those rare stories that is perfect for you and that is destined to linger in your mind long after you've read the last page.
Maggie Stiefvater's Lament, with its beautiful language and angsty, romantic story of seemingly doomed love, was one of those books for me. When her second novel, Shiver, failed to touch me in the same way, I felt sad, wondering if Lament would prove to be a one off. But then I read Ballad and the magic was there again.
*Happy sigh.*
Ballad isn't a fast paced, action-packed adventure. If that's what you're in the mood to read, look elsewhere. Instead, Ballad is slow and lush and gut-wrenching, with gorgeous writing that paints a detailed picture of the emotional devastation of loving someone who truly loves you in return but not in a romantic way. The guy in love is James Morgan; clever, complicated and brilliant. The girl he loves is Deirdre (Dee) Monaghan, his best friend who, in Ballad, is still mourning Luke, the tortured and tormented assassin from Lament who may no longer even be alive and is certainly beyond her reach.
Ballad picks up shortly after Lament. Musical prodigies James and Dee are both attending the Thornking-Ash School of Music. James knows the school has little to offer him, but he followed his heart, wanting to stay close to Dee. Unfortunately, Dee has been changed by the events of Lament and both she and their friendship seem broken. They rarely see one another and when they do cross paths, their conversations are stilted and brief. To make matters worse, shortly after arriving at school James and Dee realize that their encounters with the fae are not at an end. Dee's seeing Them - James doesn't know how often or in what context - and James himself is nightly hearing songs about the dead.
Entering into this unsettled world is Nuala, a leanan sidhe. Despised by the fae for her nearly human state, Nuala is a muse who bestows dreams upon and steals years of life from the talented humans to whom she gives the gift of brilliance. And she has set her eyes on James. She can, she knows, make him even more incredible than he already is and in exchange, he can make her "warm, alive & awake". Nuala is a strong and intriguing character and Stiefvater has done a wonderful job both at making her likable and at keeping her distinctly non-human. Watching her character evolve is a real pleasure.
While I loved Nuala, the heart of Ballad remains James; strong, smart and funny James, the tormented genius who writes compulsively on his hands and arms and finds himself growing increasingly attracted to a creature who, should he make a deal with her, will ultimately kill him.
Each chapter of Ballad is told from either James or Nuala's first person point of view with insertions of unsent text messages from Dee to James that give us hints of the continued danger Dee faces and the uneasy state of her mind.
Dee's Aunt Delia, James' roommate Paul and Sullivan, the oh-so-intriguing-teacher-with-a-past are all interesting supporting characters that flesh out the story, adding to its depth.
While Ballad is being touted by some as a stand alone, a companion novel rather than a sequel, I really feel you have to read Lament first in order to fully appreciate Ballad. For one thing, if you skip Lament, you'll never understand James' love for and devotion to Dee because, in Ballad, she often comes across as being nearly as heartless as the faeries.
And heartless the faeries are. These are dark beings, lacking in compassion, careless of life and without mercy - not only for humans, but for one another. I don't always like this dark and dangerous depiction of faeries and I spent some time wondering why Stiefvater's dark world draws me in so much more than the fae worlds created by popular authors Holly Black and Melissa Marr. I came to the conclusion that it's because I simply like Stiefvater's humans much more than those populating the books of Black and Marr - none of whom I ever connected with and several of whom I actively DISliked.
Stiefvater doesn't wrap everything up in neat little bows at the end of Ballad and the exposition fairy doesn't appear to explain every detail to your heart's content. Instead, readers are left wondering about a number of things and since finishing Ballad, I've found myself continuing the story in my own mind, creating my own scenarios and what if's. Not every writer can make me care about her characters to the extent that I would have any interest in doing that. Stiefvater does, and I thank her for that.
I haven't come across any indication that Stiefvater is planning another book set in this universe but I certainly hope she is. While she has given me the material to imagine my own futures for these characters, I long to see where their creator would take them next.
Highly recommended.
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16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Wanted to Love It, Kind of Liked It, October 19, 2009
This review is from: Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie (Paperback)
First I would like to mention that I would not recommend reading Ballad without reading Lament first. I read Lament and liked it. So, naturally I wanted to read this book as well. Unfortunately, the marketing department behind this book was the source of my first disappointment. I was under the impression that this was book No. 2 of a series in progress. Nope. This is a companion novel. Companion novels are fine, in fact some of them are great, but I think there is an extremely important distinction to be made between a "sequel" and a "companion." Honestly, the expectation that Ballad would be a traditional sequel to Lament kind of ruined the first half of the book for me. I was fully prepared for more Deirdre and Luke. Again, nope. This book is told from the point of view of James (Deirdre's best friend in the first book) and a new character. It focuses on James so much that half of the time I forgot that Deirdre was even a character. Deep breath. Ok, I'm over the shock. Let us soldier on.
I felt like James was an archetypical character in Lament. Maybe that was just because we did not get to see enough of him though because I loved him and did not find him to be archetypical in Ballad. Once I realized he was to remain the main character of Ballad throughout its duration and that this was not just some sneaky trick, I really fell in love with James' character. He is quirky and fairly well developed. I am not so sure about the rest of the characters though. James is definitely the "glue" of this story. Some of the other characters come alive for me at points, but they lose their luster quickly.
I also very much liked the idea of musical savants being supernaturally connected to another world. I think the plot of the story is quite creative. The problem I have with the plot has to do with the fairy part. If you don't like fairy's don't read this book. I don't mind fairy's at all. In fact, I like quite a few of them. However, I do not exclusively read fairy books. I understand there are come common elements of fairy's that seem universally known, i.e., they are allergic to iron among other things. With that said, Stiefvater does what I find that a lot of writers tackling the fairy genre do: assume the reader already knows tons about fairy's and therefore fails to develop certain plot points for those of us who are not down with the fairy rules. For instance, it seems to be a big deal to tell someone your "true name." Ok, but why and where did that come from? Maybe I just missed the fairy bus or something. I have a feeling I may have missed out on some of the better aspects of the story due to a lack of explanation.
There is one more point of major irritation in this book for me. I understand that this book is a companion to Lament, but I do feel like Deirdre's character got lost in the translation. In Lament, I felt like Deirdre was a strong female heroine-type of character. In Ballad, she is not even a shadow of what she was before. This may have been the most disappointing aspect of this book for me because I felt like the essence of Deirdre 's character was abandoned for the sake of a new plot. Many of her actions seemed random, almost as though she was being used as a plot function more than a character. I felt like Ballad-Deirdre did a lot of things that Lament-Deirdre would not have done. This would of course be fine if Lament-Deirdre's character had been given the chance to develop into Ballad-Deirdre's character, but she was not.
Ok, so obviously I was disappointed. But I think if you go into this book fully understanding that it is not a sequel, are open to new main characters, and know enough about fairy's to get by, then you will likely have a much better time with it than I did.
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