REVIEW: Valiant by Holly Black

As cap­ti­vated as I was with Tithe, I really can’t say the same for Valiant despite a strong start to the novel. The open­ing of the book was strong but as the story pro­gressed, the plot twists and the unpleas­ant char­ac­ters made me stop read­ing this book before I hit the end.

When the story opens, we meet Val as she is get­ting ready for her date. Val’s mother is the stereo­typ­i­cal ex-beauty queen mom who is rather shal­low and manip­u­la­tive. Val’s date is late so she decides to go on with­out him because she doesn’t want to be late to the game. Thus she leaves to catch the bus. How­ever, she decides to wait for her date and goes back home only to dis­cover that: 1) boyfriend finally made it and 2) boyfriend seems to be all over her mother. Val catches the two them together and leaves.

Val finds her­self on the street—alone. Also, Val does a Demi Moore move and shaves her head. Avoid­ing con­fronta­tion at home, she stays on the street. Val calls her best friend to tell her what hap­pened and learns that her best friend had known all along. Val feels as if she was the fool taken for a ride by her mom and ex-boyfriend and this fur­ther alien­ates her from home. Thus she befriends a cou­ple of street urchins, Lol­lipop and Sketchy Dave and thus the story fol­lows her adven­tures on the street and into the world of fey.

Lol­lipop and Sketchy Dave been on the street for awhile. Their lit­tle group is led by Luis. A rather dubi­ous fel­low who works for the fey. There was some kind of debt Luis owed in exchange for his con­tin­ued servi­tude. Luis is rather secre­tive; he spits out all kinds of infor­ma­tion about rats and say­ing that there are things out there that view humans as rats as well. Luis’s talk­a­tive nature about mon­sters pro­vides for some of the sus­pense. Too bad that mood didn’t last long.

I can’t really say I fin­ished this book as I bored out of my mind and incred­u­lous in more than a cou­ple of places:

• The first red flag went up when Val con­tin­ued to live on the street. I find it hard to believe that a girl this shel­tered would adapt so quickly with no one look­ing for her
• The sec­ond red flag went up when Val first spots a super­nat­ural crea­ture and seems to accept it. The author makes a point of describ­ing her agi­ta­tion and fear at see­ing some­thing like that but after a few min­utes, she seems to accept the spectacular
• Third red flag went up when Lol­lipop and Val decide to find the “troll” that lives under the bridge. It’s not enough that they’ve been warned away, no they have to see it for them­selves. The idiots.
• Fourth red flag was when Val and Lol­lipop of course get caught by the ugly troll and Val offers her life in exchange for servi­tude to save Lol­lipop and wouldn’t you know it, Lol­lipop didn’t appre­ci­ate the save, the bitch

The author did a good job with the sus­pense but it got ridicu­lous when I later learned that the drugs that the girls were get­ting high on was “glam­our” that trolls and fey use to stay hid­den among the humans. It this “glam­our” that Sketchy Dave deliv­ers to the fey on his many runs.

Another mis­con­cep­tion by me was assum­ing that this book took off where the last book ended. It doesn’t. Valiant can stand alone. Also, Valiant is a keeper for some read­ers and I’m left won­der­ing why. I might have stopped well before it got really good or this was as good as it got and I just don’t know a good book when I read one any­more. So be it. What prompted me to read this book in the first place was a remark made by one the Smart Bitches that responded to the YA novel thread. The remark was that Valiant could run cir­cles around Twi­light by Stephanie Meyer. I think not and I beg to dif­fer there.

I read/skimmed to the end. If the mood strikes, I may give this book another try. Or not. Right now, I’m giv­ing Valiant a DNF. What was miss­ing in Valiant was the joy of read­ing and enjoy­ing the imag­i­na­tive world that Black cre­ated in Tithe. I really liked Kaye and Roiben in Tithe. Didn’t much care for char­ac­ters in Valiant. This urban fan­tasy was much darker, grit­tier and I wasn’t as engaged in the story as I was with Tithe.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Holly Black, Valiant, Dark Fantasy