camiclarkbooks's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
As in the first book, Black weaves a story that balances between showing the wondrous parts of fairyland and the wicked side. She puts her human characters through it, especially the main character Val.
This book was dark in a different way than “Tithe,” with much of the story centered around the main characters’ abuse of a fictional drug called Nevermore.
Graphic: Bullying, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Classism, Drug use, Addiction, Blood, and Drug abuse
Moderate: Death, Cursing, and Adult/minor relationship
leahfoko's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Spoiler
Also, Dave glamouring himself to look like Luis so he could sleep with Lolli was really rapey to me and made me super uncomfortable. Dave’s character in general made me very uncomfortable.So I found both those aspects of this book to make me like it a lot less because it was hard to read. I liked the mystery though, and all the faerie intrigue is always fun to me, I do love Holly Black’s faerie world. I liked Ravus and Val together. I liked seeing Roiben and Kaye at the end. But the drugs and the glamour sex thing was just pretty hard for me to read. So it would be good to know about those parts going into it I think.
Graphic: Cursing, Drug use, Animal death, Death, Drug abuse, Addiction, Rape, and Sexual assault
Spoiler
I am calling the glamoured sex with Dave and Lolli rape/sexual assault because I personally believe that it is. She was agreeing to have sex with Luis, not Dave, and she didn’t know that it wasn’t Luis. Therefore that counts as rape to me. Maybe some people would argue it isn’t, but I argue that it is.chasesys's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Graphic: Drug abuse, Drug use, Addiction, and Violence
Moderate: Murder, Injury/Injury detail, and Death
Minor: Sexual content, Infidelity, and Kidnapping
epsyphus's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
3.0
Graphic: Death and Drug abuse
Moderate: Body horror
raelinrou's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Moderate: Addiction, Animal death, Blood, Bullying, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Toxic friendship, Sexual content, and Adult/minor relationship
Minor: Animal cruelty, Lesbophobia, Injury/Injury detail, and Homophobia
bookcaptivated's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Graphic: Addiction, Animal death, Blood, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Homophobia, Infidelity, Murder, Gun violence, Sexual content, and Violence
mollyanne624's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Violence, and Infidelity
Moderate: Animal death
Minor: Grief, Homophobia, Sexism, Toxic relationship, and Vomit
foldsea's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Death
laequiem's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Graphic: Drug abuse, Drug use, and Violence
Moderate: Animal death, Vomit, Violence, Self harm, Infidelity, and Death
booksthatburn's review against another edition
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
In my review for TITHE I commented on how Asian (specifically Japanese) rep and gay rep were handled in the book and why that kept TITHE from being a book I can highly recommend. Unfortunately that's come back here. That's because TITHE established that fae have eyes which are "upturned" or "look Asian", it then makes me think that the frequent but random references in VALIANT to unnamed background characters appearing Asian to the human MC (in a book where no other racial categories are mentioned) makes it feel like I'm supposed to assume all those random "Asian" people were actually fae. It's either that, or the author was concerned that the reader know that unnamed characters we don't speak to and will never see again appear Asian (and in one case, specifically Indonesian) without ever commenting on other ethnicities, which doesn't sit right with me. As for the gay rep, there's some homophobic bullying of the MC at the very start of the book, with the insinuation that a secondary character who's present is lesbian. I'm taking that as canon for this to have a lesbian character, but her sexuality doesn't come up again anywhere else in it, and it also leaves ambiguous whether the MC is straight or if the bully was right that she's queer and she's maybe bi or pan (since she's in a canon het romance later on). It's completely superfluous to the story and the only thing I can think it's trying to accomplish in the narrative is maybe establish that she's unhappy at school as well as at home, since her bully is on the same school sports team as her. Either way, it feels like, once again in this series, the treatment of Asian characters is narratively strange and very othering, and queerness is used to explain ostracization. Which, you know, is a thing, being a queer kid can be lonely in an unsupportive environment, but this book just lets it hang there, with neither explanation nor relief. I want to be clear, I'm all for queer background characters, main characters, everything. I just want their queerness to exist as more than just an explanation for homophobic slurs against allocishet character main characters.
Since this is book two of a trilogy, it's time for the sequel check! Normally I'd check whether it wraps up something left hanging from the previous book, whether it has a storyline which starts in this book and wasn't present in the previous one, and whether it has a major thing that's introduced and resolved within the book, but functionally this is indistinguishable from just being a stand-alone book. It's technically in the same world, and we briefly run into some of the book one characters, but you wouldn't have to change anything to make it stand by itself. There is a status quo shift after book one which has effects in this book, but, again, it could just have easily just been the starting point without any reference to the first book. It's such a self-contained story that it didn't leave anything open to resolve in the next one. I guess I want to know what happens to these characters next, but it didn't even leave their options very open since they have an entire conversation about what they'll do after and it seems pretty settled. I am happy to report that the MC feels very different from either of the MC's from TITHE. and finally, this would completely make sense if someone picked it up without having read the first one, the only thing you'd be missing is that you wouldn't understand a couple of references to prior events and you wouldn't recognize some of the characters from TITHE who briefly appear here. One positive from its position in the series is that I feel like I got to see what the previous MC's are up to, so that was nice.
I hate think this book in the trilogy is completely skippable, but that's how I feel about it. The thing that turns this from a book I can't highly recommend into one I would actively advise you to avoid is that it kept the problems from TITHE without most of the stuff that made TITHE shine, and also without the in-universe justifications for those problems. The Asian rep in TITHE is cringey but it has an explanation. In VALIANT there is no explanation, just an obsessive need to make sure we know every time there's an Asian face in the scenery (I hesitate to even call it rep). The gay rep in TITHE is tangled with abuse and BDSM in a way that could be problematic but also creates a really engaging MC whose queer identity matters to the story. In VALIANT there's just a homophobic slur and a probably queer best friend to come back in to the rescue when the (implicitly allocishet) MC needs some help.
Graphic: Drug use, Drug abuse, Violence, and Death
Moderate: Self harm
Minor: Homophobia and Sexism
CW for homophobia, sexism, self harm, drug abuse, drug use, violence, parental death (backstory), death.