Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

[meganbmoore]

Keenan is the Summer King of the Fae court, but has been unable to take his throne for centuries thanks to the curse of his mother, Beira, the Winter Queen. The curse can only be broken if a potential summer queen is able to withstand Beira’s cold, knowing that trying and failing will mean living alone in the endless cold with only a wolf for companion until someone else tries, and that she’ll have to try to dissuade the new candidate. Most potential queens choose not to risk years and years of endless cold and solitude. The last one to attempt the challenge was Donia, five hundred years ago, who still loves (and is loved by) Keenan. The newest candidate for summer queen is Aislinn, who has seen the fae all her life.

For the first half of the book, I was pretty much totally disinterested in Aislinn and her best friend, Seth, and didn’t care for Keenan, though I loved Donia and was very intrigued by Beira. I did, however, love the core mythology and the mythic framework of Aislinn’s story (my favorite fairy tales are “East of the Sun, West of the Moon,” and “The Snow Queen,” and you’ll notice certain similarities.) about midway through, though, it got a lot better for me, as Marr started writing deliberately against “can’t escape fate” tropes and “angsty immortal hottie finds love with pure young mortal,” and did an excellent job of showing why appeal isn’t always good, or something you want, nor does it have to be irresistible.

While I’m a bit weirded out by Marr’s portrayal of Seth’s physical appeal (it’s a personal hangup…it’s not what I think of people with piercings, it’s that I look at piercings and I think about getting holes poked through my body and what if something happens and the ring or stuff gets ripped out, and…and…nnnnooooooo….) I liked that Aislinn never considered going for the immortal hottie who was all “Come to me and be my queen!” and that her reaction was pretty much “Yeah. No. Cute and all, but kinda weird and stalkery and I am so totally not interested. Why are you still here? Go stalk someone else.” And from then on, Marr kind of went around cutting off all the associated tropes off at the knees.

I’m not sure what I think about Keenan. I do like how Marr used him to show that the Other can be appealing, but that the appeal isn’t always good. But then there’s the fact that he has a harem of 80 or so Summer Ladies, and is supposed to be sympathetic because he can’t have Donia instead? And there’s the potential fairy wine date rape, which is never really resolved to my satisfaction. (I also wasn’t thrilled with how Aislinn seemed to be ok with the idea that it might have happened once she knew Seth wouldn’t think less of her if it did. Like, I like that he emphatically wasn’t going to blame her or think less of her if someone drugged her and then had sex with her and she couldn’t remember, but I didn’t like how her dealing with it seemed to revolve around his opinion of her.) And then there’s was the weird “he used to be with her mother” thing, though I’m glad Marr immediately negated the possibility of his being Donia’s father. And then he went and said that what got Moira killed was running off to be with mortals instead of him. Bleh. Though, I’m glad that, as the book progressed, we were clearly not supposed to be agreeing with his viewpoint. So it’s kind of a thing where I like what the author is doing with the character, but it makes the actual character not work with me.
 
Anyway, stronger sexual themes than I expected. Very interesting story and mythology. A bit a slow in places, but nifty overall.