Stop Trying to Make Oak Happen

The Stolen Heir – by Holly Black. A Review.

I was so conflicted on how to rate this book.  I still am.

On the one hand, you have Holly Black’s prose, which remains as excellent as ever.  She’s just able to craft words and sentences and entire paragraphs with an elegance that really remains unmatched in YA Fantasy fiction, and in fiction as a whole to be honest.

On the other hand, the story was just…boring.  I feel guilty even thinking this, because “The Folk of the Air” books were on level that is just head and shoulders above anything else of its ilk – in story, in characterization, everything.  They were perfect. 

So one would think a return to that world would be equally exciting, and it just wasn’t.  The basic plot (some sort of fairy intrigue, to be honest it all remains a little fuzzy) should be exciting, but the way she wrote Oak and Suren, she’d be hard pressed to make even a rollercoaster ride with no safety harness sound exciting.

Of the two, Suren is by far the more tolerable one – she has quite an interesting origin story, and if nothing else it was an opportunity to say a lot of interesting things about family dynamics, abuse therein, and self-discovery. <spoiler>Suren’s reveal as basically a pile of animated snow</spoiler> really went to some interesting places when you think about growing up and teenagers figuring out who they are.

But Oak….Oak was just so bland.  I keep feeling like Holly Black was trying to turn him into some sort of hybrid of Jude and Cardan, with all of Cardan’s charm, all of Jude’s ruthlessness and battle prowess, and the combined cunning of them both, but for me he never wound up being more than a coddled, privileged teenager who liked to flirt a lot.  I know Suren thought she cared about him, but I can’t figure out why, beyond the fact that he was literally the only person who ever did anything nice for her, in a world where she was surrounded by abusive, cruel people that treated her more as a tool than a living being. 

We’re told constantly that he’s an amazing fighter, that all the girlies love him, that he’s got super powerful magic and is just all around VERY SPECIAL, and all I could keep thinking about was Regina George telling poor Gretchen Weiners that fetch will never happen.  Please Holly, stop trying to make Oak happen.  You already have Cardan, you already have Jude, and while I’m always interested in new stories about Elfhame, I can’t help but think that you already told a really excellent story of political intrigue, familial drama, and swashbuckling with a dash of romance and it just doesn’t need to happen again with new characters, you know?

That’s not to say I’m not interested in hearing Oak’s story, or Suren’s for that matter, but I don’t need to hear about either of them when it’s basically just a Cardan and Jude redux.  Add to that the fact that Oak’s big plot/quest/thing was so fuzzy and vague that I’m still not 100% sure what the point of all his machinations is, and it looks even weaker compared to all of Jude’s scheming (I’m still shook over the end of the Cruel Prince….so effing brilliant).  I’m sure Oak has his strongpoints, but I don’t think they lie in the world of political scheming.  How about what it was like growing up with someone like Madoc as a father?  How could he have turned out differently than Jude?  How does he feel being used as a pawn of sorts by his sister, and how does that compare to how Suren was used by her parents?  There’s definite potential for something interesting here, so why we had to get Cardan and Jude lite is sort of beyond me and far below Holly Black’s capabilities.

I do have to point out that her worldbuilding is as amazing as ever, and she really went to new heights of grossness and horror with Lady Nore and her Citadel.  That shit was creepy as fuck and so atmospheric.

I’m sad that the best parts of the book were the offhand and side comments about Jude (everyone is afraid of her….excellent) and Cardan (he’s just a fop who lets Jude do all the heavy lifting….lol because not only is that basically true, he’d be the first to admit it).  There was definite potential for so much more, if only because of the stellar groundwork laid in FotA, but it read more like a cursory “return to Elfhame!” book than anything new and fresh.