Marr seems to fall into the same trap as she did with Wicked Lovely in ths book: she starts off with an amazing premise that starts a reader salivating, but somehow the book never really lives up to it. While I still enjoyed both books, INK EXCHANGE seemed to take Marr's tendancy to never live up to her premises to a new level. It's strange, because the book was good, it was an entertaining read, but it never reached my expectations. I've been thinking about why, and I've finally come up with a few ideas.
First off, I do love Marr's image of faerie courts as street gangs. It's definitely a fun contrast than what we'd expect from other more traditional novels. Yet Marr never seems to bring her magical gangs to life. We never get a full, detailed image of their world and have to glean anything we can from offhand remarks (like the constant half-allusions to the High Court). In fact, though Marr offers beautiful (and kind of purple) physical descriptions of her fey, they're too often not in a way that the reader can actually picture what they look or sound like (a voice being "as refreshing as a sip of the moon". Really?). But it's not just the fey themselves that feel vague; so do their struggles and their very relationships with other courts. Throughout the book, Marr talks about the idea of there being discord between the courts, but barely explains it and never goes beyond the surface. Everything about them just feels so very vague and unfinished. This is exactly how Keenan's predicament in Wicked Lovely came across. His father was mentioned, something about Keenan's power being reduced by his mother, but we never got a decent explanation as to why and how and where and when this all happened. A little detail goes a long way. A lot of detail goes longer.
The histories of her fey, their relatinships etc. aren't just throw away tidbits of information. Marr could have used the intrigue and complexities of her courts to make the story even better. I mean, she mentions the threat of war brewing in the near future, of warmongers trying to undermine the authority of their own royals, of pacts and emnities between courts. But in the end, it ends up being nothing more than talk. Even the encounters between the top officials of the Summer and Dark Courts never really get beyond gnashing teeth, threatening and magical manifestations of anger.
Instead of using these conflicts and allowing them to progress further to make the stakes higher and the story bigger and more complex, Marr simply mentions these conflicts in passing and instead focuses on the love triangle between Niall, Leslie and Irial. This is a huge mistake for a number of reasons. First, the love triangle felt forced. We're only told that Niall loves Leslie with all his heart from the get go, but we never really get a feel for why - except maybe because he's intrigued by her newly found status as a broken-bird, which she gained after being raped before the story started. His love for Leslie becomes even more confusing upon learning about Leslie herself. As a heroine, she doesn't feel like she has a fleshed out personality. The rape seems to be the only thing of note in her character. Of course, when one goes through such a terrible experience, that tends to take over much of who they are, but there'll still be shreds of that old individual left inside, struggling to reclaim dominance, and that's what makes a fictional character of that sort so compelling. The rape shouldn't have stopped Leslie from feeling like a real, three-dimensional character, but it did. If I can't feel anything for Leslie, how can I understand another character feeling for her so deeply and so romantically? In my opinion, love in fiction is only successful if it feels organic and natural. Leslie and Niall may have been sexy together, but organic and natural, they were not.
But on top of that, Niall's love for Leslie didn't really add anything to the story. As a character himself, he was quite compelling, but all that didn't matter to Leslie's tale or the plot in the long run. By the time it was Irial's time to have his turn, Niall was all but useless. Even the heroic act he performed for Leslie by the end of the book could easily have been performed by Aislinn and Donia, which actually would have been a massively better choice; it would have allowed Aislinn to TRULY live up to her title as Leslie's friend and almost make up for her lack of action throughout the book. Plus, it would have shown Donia who was sorely missed in this sequel. Niall's journey felt so detached that I can only assume the only purpose for showing his journey was to set up the epilogue, which I'm assuming Marr aims to explore in later books. Symbolically and plotwise, Leslie and Irial's twisted relationship was far more important. Marr should have spent more time developing and making the most of the heroine's ties to the Dark King.
Marr's mishandling of her characters extends to the minor ones as well. So many times characters were mentioned at random, but never explored or used properly. Like the Death Fey at the diner, who was randomly focused on with much intensity and purple prose. She disappeared quickly and never made a second appearance. Then there was Rabbit's little sister, who ended up being far more special than anyone realized. Her appearances amounted to nothing. Then we've got Aislinn and Keenan, who could have been used to really flesh out the political conflict into this story and make it more compelling. They barely did anything. Finally, we've got the Dark Fey warmonger who Marr set up as this big bad threat. All she did was have a meaningless scrimage with Niall and toss a few scary looks here and there.
It was because of these misteps that the book started off strong but when downhill. There were so many great ideas that remained unpolished, so many potential conflicts and avenues for plot development that were ignored, so many great opportunities to take this book to the next level that were wasted. The book itself was definitely at the very least entertaining and it kept my attention. Marr has an amazing imagination and is capable of creating an interesting story that blurrs the lines between right and wrong. She's capable of creating something much better, but unless she attempts to make the most out of her ideas and capitalize on her amazing premises, her books will never be able cross that line from 'simply entertaining' to truly fantastic and, most importantly, memorable.
