STATUS: Book #1, The Girl at Midnight
AUTHOR: Melissa Grey
GENRE: Young Adult Fantasy/Supernatural Romance
PUBLISHER: Delacorte Press in April 2015
LOVE TRIANGLE: Yes...? Maybe a love square? Maybe even a love pentagon or hexagon, depending on how strict your definition is.
PAGES: 368
From Booklist:
"This first novel will please fans of Cassandra Clare and Game of Throneswatchers with its remarkable world building; richly developed characters...[and] a breathtaking climax that...cannot come soon enough!"From Amazon:
"For fans of Cassandra Clare's City of Bones and Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke & Bone, The Girl at Midnight is the story of a modern girl caught in an ancient war."
Sometimes I wonder if my book-expectations are too high.
Especially when a book gets a lot of
praise and double-especially when it gets touted as this amazing fantasy story
for fans of Cassandra Clare and Laini Taylor. (I wasn’t a huge fan of Taylor’s
first book, and don’t remember it much, but I adore Cassandra Clare’s work, so
that’s a savvy marketing strategy.)
As I was reading The
Girl at Midnight, though, things
felt very…familiar. Initially, I was struck by a lot of
similarities to Harry Potter – there’s
an orphaned hero, taken in by a wise figure in a position of power in a magical
world that exists alongside the real world without “normal” humans ever
noticing. There’s even a crazy, slightly ominous marketplace, The Agora, which kinda resembles Diagon Alley.
There are also some uncanny resemblances to Cassandra
Clare’s Mortal Instruments, where the supernatural also lives alongside the
“normal”: there’s an “ordinary” girl who eventually realizes that she’s
something destined for something greater; she has a quiet, subdued best friend
who undergoes a traumatic experience; and she falls in love with the brooding,
sensitive, outcast Dreamboat. (There’s also a “reason why they can’t be together”
a la Romeo and Juliet but thankfully Gray doesn’t toy with the idea of
potential incest like Cassie Clare does.) Our Dreamboat hero also has a dreamy,
loyal best friend – and, much like Alec is “secretly” in love with Jace, so too
is Dorian “secretly” in love with Caius. But don’t worry: much as Alec finds
happiness, so too does Dorian – and Jasper bears an uncanny resemblance to
Magnus. (Both Jasper and Magnus are “flamboyant” in dress – Jasper’s feathers
resemble that of a peacock – are secure in their sexuality and who they’re
attracted to, and both are a little bit of an outcast, living isolated from
other communities. Both couples even have that “forbidden love,” “uphill
battle” to fight since they’re from different “worlds” – Warlock-Magnus and Shadowhunter-Alec
versus Avicen-Jasper and Drakharin-Dorian.)
But in Clare’s world, things just seemed to fit better –
even from the beginning. Does it have something to do with the fact that the
reader, like Clary, is unaware of the supernatural and learns as Clary does?
Put another way, when I read exceptionally-well-crafted fantasy novels – like The Mortal Instruments or Harry Potter – they have a certain feel
to them – maybe “epic” is the word I’m searching for. Even though those novels
are set in contemporary times in clearly discernible locations (New York or
England), they have a grand, sweeping feel to them – something that makes you
(mostly) forget that you’re reading about contemporary New York or England.
Here, there are moments when Grey achieves this: namely the Drakharin chapters.
But whenever we switch back to Echo, that fantasy-feel is lost. Echo will say
“Crap” or quote a Tolkien line and it jolts me back to the real world in a way
that shatters the illusion of the fantasy world.
And here’s where The
Girl at Midnight falters for me: the
world-building, the details and the backstory that make the world believable
and come alive, falls a little short. I would have liked more. Here, Echo is introduced to the fantasy-world in the
prologue, but when we fast-forward ten years, she’s already knowledgeable in a
way the reader isn’t. From what I can gather, there are three distinct races:
(1) warlocks (humans who sold their souls for dark magic—I think; they play a
REALLY minor role, so the details are fuzzy); (2) the Drakharin
(dragon-people); and (3) the Avicen (bird-like people). While I’m not entirely
sure I buy humans completely missing a fantastical race of bird-like people
with feathers who can somehow camouflage
themselves and live in the real world, there’s no backstory that explains how
these races exist, why they’re enemies, or how the war started. Perhaps it’s
mean to be some age-old-feud, the reason for which no one can remember, so they
just keep fighting. Perhaps. But that’s not mentioned either. I can guess that Grey chose birds and dragons
because of the Firebird, but, again, that’s just my speculation.
For some reason, it
just didn’t click as well as other fantasies do. Maybe its because the Avicen
and Drakharin, while human-like, are NOT human. That is – wizards and witches
in Harry Potter are still humans,
just with magic. And positing a world where magic exists is explanation enough
– especially when it must be learned at schools, a familiar enough idea. And in
Cassandra Clare’s novels, the Shadowhunters, while having angelic ancestry, are
also very human. And Clary learns of the creation of Shadowhunters fairly early
on, so the reader knows at least part of the story. But here? I’ve got nothing.
Just the idea that dragon- and bird-like creatures somehow exist in a world
without humans noticing. And they also don’t notice because of the
wards/spells—very similar to the spells in Harry Potter that prevent Muggles
from finding Hogwarts, the Ministry of Magic, etc. In this world, I’m assuming
it’s the warlocks that cast the spells, but it just seems a bit too convenient
– they exist only to explain away the wards/spells and create someone who could
cast magic, since I'm not sure the Avicen or the Drakharin can and someone had
to.
All that being said…I rather enjoyed it. I liked Echo as a
character (despite the Special Snowflake Twist…which I saw coming fairly
early on), especially when she was hurling snarky comments around and not
staring dreamily into the eyes of one of her two suitors. I thought Melissa Grey had
a really interesting premise and if, in her sequels, she continues to focus on
the unique qualities of her story, then I can see her characters and plot
really taking on their own individual identities. In other words, whenever I
read about Jasper and Dorian, I won’t keep picturing Magnus and Alec. And there
were definitely elements that could help separate Grey from Cassandra Clare
(and, I’m assuming from some of the other reviews I skimmed, Laini Taylor): I,
for one, thought Echo-and-Caius were stronger without the presence of Rowan –
he didn’t serve much of a purpose, other than to anchor Echo in the Avicen
world, but both Ivy and the Ala do that just as, if not more, effectively. The
Firebird is the most interesting idea in the book – particularly the way Grey
introduces it through both Echo and Rose. I’ll look forward to the sequel(s),
if only to see if Grey fleshes out her world a bit more.
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