A History of Glitter and Blood

The premise sounds great: fairies and gnomes live together in a tiny mining city, and if most fairies lose a body part or five to gnomes' voracious appetites, well, it comes with the territory. But then a third race starts a war, and the uneasy balance between the fairies and gnomes shifts forever.

It's so bad. The writing style is very self-conscious and larded with "pasted in" notes a la the Froud fairy books. It reads like a fifteen year old's labored attempt to mimic Chuck Palahniuk and early Poppy Z Brite. The characters don't read like people, the plot makes no sense, and it lacks all narrative tension. I started reading this aloud to my coworkers and got gales of laughter in return.

This was a two-star book for the longest time, but it come together enough toward the end to nudge it--barely--into three-star range.

This book wants so badly to be tough and edgy and Older Teen that it worries too much about having enough body horror and "fuck"s and prostitution and not enough about having a well-built world and a semi-sensical plot. There were points, even, where the characters were indistinguishable. It took me until the end to even have any sliver of a clue of what the author was trying to do and then it just felt like heavy-handed metaphor and...Maybe this is only a two-star book after all. I'm going to leave it at three, though because I think that its target audience (which is thirty years younger than I am) will show more appreciate it more than I did. show less

I would like to thank NetGalley and Chronicle Books for providing me an ARC copy of this, all opinions are my own.

At A Glance

Genre: Young Adult; Fae
Love Triangle/Insta Love?: Love triangle.
Cliff Hanger: nope.
Rating: 3 Stars.

Score Sheet
All out of ten

Cover: 9
Plot: 5
Characters: 7
World Building: 7
Flow: 4
Series Congruity: n/a
Writing: 7
Ending: 8

Total: 7

In Depth

Best Part: Pretty pictures!
Worst Part: Misplaced genre
Overall Feels Felt: Pretty pics; Whoa; Cute ending!

Conclusion

Continuing the Series: n/a
Recommending: eh. see short review first.
Misc.: ARC copy.

Short Review: Okay so this book was okay. Honestly they genre should be different maybe. The fae part is only maybe 10%. The rest is sex! THIS WHOLE BOOK IS ABOUT SEX! I didn't know that show more going in but that's all they talk about. They have to sell their bodies to get more food and that's all that goes down most of the time. If i knew that i doubt i would have requested a copy. So beware of that.

Oh and you really never know who is writing this "book". it's confusing at times and i just gave up trying to figure it out.

Review In GIF Form show less