The Amaranth Enchantment by Julie Berry is best described as a loose rendition of the Cinderella story. Lucinda Chapdelaine was orphaned at a young age and now does menial labour in her aunt and uncle’s jewellery shop; treated well enough by her ailing uncle, but cruelly by her greedy aunt (a stand-in for the usual wicked stepmother).Over the course of a single day, three visitors separately enter the shop to change Lucinda’s life forever. The first is a woman who asks that a precious gemstone be given a proper fitting, and it’s not long before she’s identified as the mysterious Amaranth Witch. The second is a young man looking for an engagement present, one handsome enough to catch Lucinda’s eye until her uncle tells her that he’s the crown prince Gregor. And the third is a boy called Peter, who sneaks into Lucinda’s bedroom at night in order to hide from pursuit.
She accommodates him for the night, only to find that by the morning he’s taken off – and the gemstone with him. Not only that, but her uncle died in his sleep and her aunt wastes little time in throwing her out onto the street. Remember, this is all within a twelve-hour period.
Lucinda decides to throw herself on the mercy of the Amaranth Witch, who wrangles a deal with her: if Lucinda returns her magical gemstone, she’ll be rewarded with the house she lived in with her parents (currently occupied by the witch herself). To do this she must track down Peter, who in turn tells her that he’s already sold it to the prince...
As you can probably tell, this book has more coincidences than a Dickens novel. Everyone seems to be related or connected to every other character in some way, and the plot can get quite convoluted as it attempts to untangle itself. Lucinda’s immediate goals are constantly shifting, from returning stolen property to pickpocketing the prince to escaping prison to sneaking back into the palace – after a certain point it’s easy to forget what she’s doing and why.
There’s also the inexplicable presence of a goat which acts like a dog that serves no narrative purpose and is never explained, and increasing levels of weirdness when the Amaranth Witch explains her backstory and breeches the subject of alternate dimensions.
You know what this reminds me of? Brace yourself for a bizarre comparison. The 1994 animated version of The Swan Princess. There was a period during my late teens in which I was obsessed with that movie, totally entranced by its barefaced weirdness. Like that film, The Amaranth Enchantment is the sort of book that has moments of real poignancy and suspense, followed by musical numbers that merge beauty pageants with Disney-esque revisionism with 19th century ballet.
The Iron Witch by Karen Mahoney is a dark urban fairytale in which Donna Underwood must grapple with malevolent wood elves in an attempt to rescue her best friend Navin Sharma. Raised by alchemists who strive to keep dangerous fey creatures contained in the Ironwood (with a little concocting of the Elixir of Life on the side) Donna no longer attends school after an “Incident” that ended with her destroying a locker with her bare hands.Long story short, her father died saving her life from a monster when she was young, though her injuries required Donna to undergo a magical surgery that ended in silver and iron tattoos all over her arms – with the added bonus of super-strength. Now she wears a pair of elbow-length gloves to hide them, which caught the attention of high-school bullies, which in turn led to the aforementioned Incident.
But what was she doing out in the forest as a child that led to the fey attack? You’ll have to wait until the next book to find out.
At a party she meets Alexander Greyson (which amusingly enough, is the alias that Jonathan Rhys Meyer’s Dracula used in the recent television show of the same name) and strikes up a rapport. He decides to help her out when her best friend Navin goes missing, and confides to her that he has secrets of his own – two long scars on his shoulder blades where a pair of wings used to be.
Why did he have wings and who took them away? Wait until the next book.
The structure of the story is decidedly odd. Navin’s kidnapping and subsequent rescue attempt doesn’t occur until over halfway through the book, and most of the interesting world-building and backstory is conveyed through dialogue. Unsurprisingly, this makes fey mythology and ancient alchemical societies a lot less interesting than they should be. Donna spends most of the first half of the book pinging between Navin and Xan, and by the time she finally meets the Queen of the Wood Elves and is ordered to steal the Elixir of Life if she wants to save her friend, it feels like too little, too late.
What consequences lie in wait for Donna once it’s discovered that she stole the precious Elixir from her guardians to save her friend’s life? You guessed it. Next book.
Finally Stolen Songbird by Danielle L. Jenson, which I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about for a while now. Cecile de Troyes is a teenage girl with a beautiful singing voice who is riding home from town one day when she's waylaid by a past acquaintance. Instead of seeing her home safely, Luc ties her up and forces her into a tunnel network under the Forsaken Mountain, insisting that she's on her way to the buried city of Trollus where the trolls dwell.Cecile is horrified to realize that he plans to sell her to the royal family, who believe that she is the subject of a prophecy that will break the curse that holds them all under the earth. But to fulfil her destiny, she first has to marry their crown prince Tristan. When their "bonding" ceremony (which results in a psychic connection that forces them to feel each other's emotions) fails to release the trolls from their prison, Cecile is kept on at the palace in the hopes her presence will eventually weaken the magic that holds the population within the city.
At first Cecile can think of nothing but escape. Her family is no doubt frantically worried, and her life held precariously in the hands of her new husband and father-in-law. But gradually she comes to learn more about the society she's now a part of - the prejudice against half-bloods, the backstory of the witch's curse, and the longing for many citizens to form a new and fairer form of government. Against her will, she finds herself becoming invested in Trollus - helped along by her growing attraction to Tristan.
The world-building of Stolen Songbird (I just love that title) is generally very good. I enjoyed the city of Trollus, with its massive waterfall, floating lights and gardens of glass, and Jensen excels at her depiction of political intrigue. Having established some fundamental facts about troll culture – that they have to keep their promises, that they are unable to lie, and that the exchange of "favours" is practically a currency, these aspects are woven into the plot to provide plenty of twists, turns and loophole abuse. To survive in this world, Cecile has to remain sharp and focused, and she's refreshingly proactive in learning what she can and wielding it to the best of her ability.
Something I particularly appreciated: even though Cecile is bewildered by the thought that she might be desirable and attractive, she has a beautiful singing voice, knows it, and uses it at least once to attain something she wants. Nice to see a protagonist recognise her own talents without false modesty or contrived obliviousness.
The biggest weakness would have to be the depiction of the trolls as a species. To start with, there was some beautifully imaginative descriptions of what trolls looked like, from Cecile’s first glimpse of one: “the two sides of his face, so flawless on their own, were like halves of a fractured sculpture put back together askew,” to the portrayal of the Queen as a Siamese twin with her much more verbose and intelligent doll-sized sister growing out of her back.
A species of grotesques? That’s just awesome, as well as an opportunity for an imagination to run wild. Unfortunately, it’s quickly explained that not all trolls are deformed – just the royal family as a result of in-breeding. Which means that we never get a proper understanding of what your average troll looks like. As far as I could tell, they’re just like humans with dark hair and silver eyes.
And as it happens, the consequences of in-breeding have skipped at least one member of the royal family. Not just skipped, but been inverted, for our crown prince (and love interest) Tristan is super gorgeous. Like most YA romantic leads, Tristan is as arrogant and unpleasant as he is handsome and wealthy, with a heavy social conscience and a noble heart that's just waiting to be melted by the right girl. Well of course.
Despite being the first in a new trilogy, it’s a surprisingly thick book, with enough here to make you feel as though you've enjoyed a complete story, regardless of the tantalizing hook in its final paragraph to pave the way into its sequel.
***
In one sense, these books couldn’t be more different despite belonging in the same YA category. Breaking them down further would put them into the subgenres of retold fairytale (The Amaranth Enchantment), urban fantasy (The Iron Witch), and epic fantasy (Stolen Songbird just squeezes in by dint of its world-building). The tone and atmosphere of each one differs wildly, as does the structure of each story and the long-term goals of each protagonist.
And yet it’s the similarities that caught my attention. Now, this is only a half-formed mini-essay and I’m certainly not ascribing to any hypothesis with any of this, but here are some basic facts:
Of these three books, two are told in first-person narration. Two are written with the intent of developing sequels. All have a teenage girl as the protagonist.
Of these protagonists, one is an orphan, one has a dead father (with her mother in a mental institute) and one has separated parents (she’s somewhat estranged from her mother who put career before family). Two have a significant moment based on being Dressed in Finery. All have their attractiveness commented on by another character; all three are surprised by this observation.
Two are given the choice between something they desperately want and the chance to do the right thing. All are given at least three opportunities to be proactive, cunning and/or kind in a way that benefits them later. Two (though this is more of a coincidence than a pattern) end up with silver tattoos on their hands.
But of course, all three of them have a love interest. And here is where the similarities get really interesting. I’m not even going to tell you which quote belongs in what book; all that’s important here is the way in which all three love interests are described:
1. Underneath his broad brimmed hat, his features were so noble and fine, he looked like he’d swallowed the sun for breakfast... he smelled of perfume and fur and mint, and looked even more carved from sunlight up close.
2. His eyes were the greenest she had ever seen. Viridian-bright, but with textures swirling within that looked like fresh moss on the bark of a tree. His toffee coloured hair was a shade or two lighter than hers, short at the back and longer on top so that it fell choppily into those otherworldly eyes. His skin was smooth and golden, as if he’d just returned from vacation.
3. He was tall and lean, and a fierce intellect gleamed in his silver eyes. Dressed impeccably, he wore a black frock coat with a single-breasted best and fine linen shirt beneath. He also had the most exquisite face of any boy I’d ever seen. Inky black hair, sculptured cheekbones and jaw, and a full but unsmiling mouth. He looked like Prince Charming from the fairytales, except for one thing: Prince Charming was human and the boy standing in front of me was decidedly not. His pale skin was too flawless, his motions too smooth and controlled.
Of these three characters, two are princes, two are bad boys, two have magical powers, and all have their hearts melted by what seems to be the mere presence of our heroine’s beauty, spirit and/or bravery.
And with this it struck me that in YA fantasy books full of fairies and trolls, enchantments and curses, elves and witches, the male love interest slides just as easily into the very same category of magical imaginary being. The youthful princes on display here bear no resemblance whatsoever to real life human males (and I don’t mean that one is in fact a troll, and another used to have wings).
No, these males are always supernaturally gorgeous, splendidly dressed, achingly self-aware, and desperately interested in every thought and feeling and expression of our protagonist. They are willing to sacrifice everything (including the kingdom, the cause, and himself), not to win her love but to keep her safe, because a world without her is just unthinkable.
The romantic connection between him and her, which could logically be used to create a very human connection that grounds the fantastical elements of the story, is often described with such over-the-top flair that it carries about the same plausibility as a magic spell. And a lot of the time romantic love is equated with magic in regards to the heroine’s description of her feelings for said love interest – not to mention the briskness with which pretty much all of these courtships take place (hey, it’s a YA book – there’s a page count).
So what does all this mean exactly? These days any author who isn’t brain dead (so, probably most of them) knows that any female lead needs more going on in her life than a dude. She needs a personality, she needs personal goals, she needs agency. That last one is particularly interesting, since ALL of the leads in the above three books are thrown into dire circumstances against their will and without their permission, struggling with the attempt to claw back some autonomy – even the tiniest bit – so they can use to help those with even less.
The impact this has on the average male romantic lead is that he has gone from the goal to an accessary. A necessary accessory, like a book or a purse or a frock, but an accessory nonetheless, and that’s only because you’d have to pry romantic subplots out of the cold dead hands of YA novels before they’d be willing to give them up.
What remains is this odd sort of limbo in which no one can conceive a YA novel without a super-gorgeous-hunk-of-a-teenage-boy to fall in love against his will with the female lead, but nobody really knows what else to do with them. The heroine usually has things well in hand and the author is often extremely self-conscious about not making her a damsel in distress. Any life-threatening dangers are usually designed in order to make the dude confront his true feelings for her.
And sure, some manage to integrate super-hunk into the plot better than others (Stolen Songbird doesn’t exist without Tristan; The Iron Witch would have worked just as well without Xan), but most of the time the romance feels obligatory.
That’s the word. Obligatory. Almost as if they’re well aware of this, each author goes to great lengths to wax lyrically about the stunning good looks of their lead male characters, and paint the ensuing courtship with as much flowery and/or heated descriptions as possible. It’s like a form of compensation: yeah, this is pointless in regards to the plot, but falling in love with a hot guy feels amazing! It’s at this point I should probably convey my utter astonishment that none of these three books have love triangles.
But the step past this is of course a novel in which there is no romantic subplot. The male lead is either absent or the romance is. I don’t think readers (or writers) are ready for that yet. YA is too synonymous with coming-of-age stories and coming-of-age stories are too intertwined with physical attraction to another human being. But based on these three books? It’s definitely time to consider letting romance go.
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