In the process she discovers love, historical secrets, atrocities, and her own hidden strength. When Jas’ contract is sold to the fae, Brie braves the golden Seelie queen’s court, meets the noble Prince Ronan, and travels on to the Unseelie king’s shadow court.
While the land of Faerie tempts other girls with word of a castle, a lavish ball, and a fae prince seeking a wife, Brie mistrusts the creatures who capitalize on humanity’s greed. Brie struggles to meet the payments for the magical contracts binding their lives to Madame Vivias, supplementing her cleaning work by stealing from the rich. In the final act, a series of double crosses (and even triple crosses) and plot twists comes so fast readers won’t have time to ponder implications and motivations.įrequently baffling and uneven only for readers already invested in Lucky.īrie risks the deadly land of the Fae to save her sister.īrie doesn’t trust many people other than Jas, her eternally hopeful sister, and Sebastian, mage apprentice and Brie’s secret love (as if she had time for romance). Although the prose revels in gore, readers are spared psychological horror, as most imperiled characters lack necessary development for emotional attachment. Lucky must find a way to escape and save as many fellow hostages as possible. As punishment, Cassius sends Lucky and his fellow Imposer trainees back to the Trials-this time as Incentives who will be killed if their Recruit places last in a contest.
After straightening things out, they send him to assassinate Cassius and the prime minister, but when the time comes, a terrible, surprising choice botches the mission (as in the first book, choices again are a major theme). Still a guileless hero, Lucky isn’t the stealthiest insurgent-his primary antagonist, Cassius, sees through him, and he runs afoul of the organized resistance. Lucky takes advantage of his new, privileged position as Trials winner to gain access to munitions and locations for sabotage and terrorist attacks against the regime he serves. Following The Culling (2013), Recruit-turned–Imposer trainee Lucian “Lucky” Spark observes the Trials, a yearly competition in which horror-movie–esque situations determine which competitor’s loved one dies his position may be new, but it is still potentially deadly.
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