Book Review: Lament

Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception by Maggie Stiefvater

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sixteen-year-old Deirdre Monaghan is a painfully shy but prodigiously gifted musician. She's about to find out she's also a cloverhand—one who can see faeries. Deirdre finds herself infatuated with a mysterious boy who enters her ordinary suburban life, seemingly out of thin air. Trouble is, the enigmatic and gorgeous Luke turns out to be a gallowglass—a soulless faerie assassin. An equally hunky—and equally dangerous—dark faerie soldier named Aodhan is also stalking Deirdre. Sworn enemies, Luke and Aodhan each have a deadly assignment from the Faerie Queen. Namely, kill Deirdre before her music captures the attention of the Fae and threatens the Queen's sovereignty. Caught in the crossfire with Deirdre is James, her wisecracking but loyal best friend. Deirdre had been wishing her life weren't so dull, but getting trapped in the middle of a centuries-old faerie war isn't exactly what she had in mind . . .

My main disappointment with this book is the end, when Dee asks the fairies to turn Luke into one of them. Even though earlier in the book Luke made his opinion about the fairies perfectly clear ("Luke's body had gone completely stiff and his voice was tight."... "Luke's hands were tight fists by his sides. "I'm not one of Them"). Doesn't sound like he'd be happy to join their ranks. However, when Dee get's the ok for him to become one he's thanking her and Them. Even though it means he won't see Dee anymore anyway and even if he did he wouldn't love her, because well fairies in this book don't love, or have feelings really. They are manipulative, conniving, selfish beings.

Lament (luh-ment): 1.to feel or express sorrow or regret. 5.an expression of grief or sorrow.

Though the ending is a perfect companion with the title, considering Dee now has to face her life without Luke, living with the knowledge and regret that she basically destroyed the person he was, instead of letting him die the man he had been.

I didn't really like how this book ended, it just didn't seem true to the characters or the story Maggie started out telling. Even though this isn't going to be a favorite of mine I would still recommend it to a few people considering my favorite part of Lament is the conversations the characters would have. They reminded me of the type of conversations my friends and I would have; granted we wouldn't be discussing the existence of fairies or our new found ability to read one another's mind (at least not seriously that is).



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