This Savage Song by V.E Schwab

Summary:

• my rating:4 stars
• published by: Greenwillow Books
• genres: fantasy, paranormal, young adult

Synopsis:

There’s no such thing as safe in a city at war, a city overrun with monsters. In this dark urban fantasy from author Victoria Schwab, a young woman and a young man must choose whether to become heroes or villains—and friends or enemies—with the future of their home at stake. The first of two books.

Kate Harker and August Flynn are the heirs to a divided city—a city where the violence has begun to breed actual monsters. All Kate wants is to be as ruthless as her father, who lets the monsters roam free and makes the humans pay for his protection. All August wants is to be human, as good-hearted as his own father, to play a bigger role in protecting the innocent—but he’s one of the monsters. One who can steal a soul with a simple strain of music. When the chance arises to keep an eye on Kate, who’s just been kicked out of her sixth boarding school and returned home, August jumps at it. But Kate discovers August’s secret, and after a failed assassination attempt the pair must flee for their lives.

I hadn’t actually planned to read this book. Even though I’ve really enjoyed Victoria Schwab in the past the entire concept of this book didn’t really grab me like some of her others did. But it was the perfect book to fulfil one of the Marvel-A-Thon challenges hence why I decided to pick it up.

I found the pacing much better than some of Schwab’s other works and the world sucked me in. I found myself flying through this book, which was great. When I finished this, I realised I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would and that was a really pleasant surprise for me.

I always, always enjoy Schwab’s world buiding and this book was no exception. Schwab creates really sophisticated, well thought out worlds. And I love that they’re functioning too. Every piece of the world is constructed so you understand the fundamental functions and movement of her worlds. I think that is a really important part of her books and I really love it everytime.

The world building here wasn’t as detailed as A Darker Shade os Magic’s, but that is fair since this is only one book, and shorter. I still thoroughly enjoyed this book and the world building for me was the strong aspect of This Savage Song.

This Savage Song is a dual perspective novel following August and Kate. One thing I didn’t know about this book, but loved, was that it’s set in a high school. I LOVE highschool settings, especially in fantasy.

As mentioned earlier, the pacing of this book was superb. The plot was fast paced and there was always something happening. Because of that I was really engrossed in the story and the pages flew by.

The characters were the one aspect of this book that I think fell down a little. I didn’t really connect or care about them as much as I do other Schwab characters. Both August and Kate felt a little flat and cliche to me. 

The concept of the “human who is a monster” and “monster who is actually really sweet” didn’t really grab me because I think I’m kind of sick of seeing this thematic approach in books. And both the characters didn’t really grab me personality wise either.

As usual, it was the side characters who interested me more. I loved the rest of August family and Sloan as characters and thought they were more interesting than August and Kate.

Despite that, I didn’t mind the characters, I just didn’t love them. They were easy enough to follow but I don’t feel invested in them at all, which is a shame.

This Savage Song is another inventive and clever novel from Victoria Schwab. She’s such an exciting author because I feel like she constantly comes up with the best CONCEPTS. And I adore her world building. I really enjoyed reading this book and plan to read the sequel, but it wasn’t the PERFECT book for me just because the characters didn’t really always work for me.

This book was such a pleasant surprise for me though. I think I may prefer Schwab’s adult books more than her YA so far, but I think this was still a really strong YA novel.

Have you read This Savage Song? What did you think?

until next time!