Review Detail

Before I actually begin with the review, I must stress that it will be full of spoilers for WHITE CAT. If you haven't read WHITE CAT and plan to, you might want to stop reading. I would hate to ruin it for you, but so much of WHITE CAT and RED GLOVE are connected.

Holly Black has created a unique fantasy world without werewolves, vampires, or warlocks, a rarity these days. To my knowledge, Black is solely responsible for this notion of a society in which these Curse Workers live.

Curse workers have special powers in which they can inflict certain conditions by simply touching skin to skin with their victims. The vast majority of workers change others luck. For instance, if they wanted to get back a someone, a touch could cause them to fall and break their leg. Some workers have far more dangerous powers like erasing memories, causing instant death, and transforming people into other objects.

Our main character, Cassel, is a transformation worker. In the first book, WHITE CAT, Cassel's family forces him to turn his girlfriend, Lila Zacharov, daughter of a very powerful man, into a cat, thus the title WHITE CAT. They force him to make other influential people "disappear." The family will always erase his memories so he has no idea what he has done. In fact, through most of WHITE CAT, Cassel doesn't even believe he is a curse worker. He thinks that he did not inherit the special power.

To be honest, WHITE CAT was very difficult to enjoy for the first hundred pages. We thought Cassel had killed his girlfriend, and it seemed he had little remorse. He dated other girls only hoping he wouldn't do the same thing. He enjoyed conning people, lying to them. His family was notoriously crime-ridden. Fairly evil people. I found Cassell to be very unlikeable.

But as the story evolves, the reader understands that he was set him. Had it been another author I was not familiar with, I would have have given the book as long as I did. I probably would have abandoned it by page forty. I gave Holly Black longer than I usually do.

And I'm glad I did.

Parts of the Curse Worker's series reminds me of one of my favorite movies, THE GODFATHER. There are several families that have "the touch" and dabble in illegal activities like gambling. But unlike the GODFATHER series, many of the characters in RED GLOVE are not very likable. The GODFATHER families do many of the same things, but always in the back of my mind, it seemed they weren't totally comfortable with the situation. To Vito Corleone, the head of the family, his family is the most important thing to him, and he does his best to protect him. In RED GLOVE, Cassel's mother, who has done extensive jail time, routinely takes advantage of her son, and puts him in dangerous situations. Something I was never fully comfortable with. I felt most of Cassell's family was despicable.

By RED GLOVE, Lila has been transformed back into herself and has enrolled in Cassell's private school. Cassel does not want to date her, partly because of their history, partly because of how dangerous her family is. He is doing his best to put some distance between himself and the crime world.

To furthermore complicate things, the FEDS are on to Cassel and would like him to supply information about Lila's father.

In WHITE, Holly Black gives the reader a glimpse into the history of the curse workers. In RED GLOVE , she goes more into more about the present day curse worker's society by adding the stress of how the government feels about them. There are some that some them and wish for them to have equal rights. But others want them to have to register with the government so they can be monitored, reminding me a little of the early stages of Japanese internment in the U.S. and the treatment of AIDS patients in the early 80's.

I'm not sure Black totally writes with a true teenage boy's mind. There are a few things Holly has Cassel do that I don't think many teenage boys would. For instance, Cassel sees a picture of another guy and describes him as a "hot dude." Just a few minor things. Nothing huge. And most female readers might not even notice, but since I was once a teenage boy and reminder the nasty, self-conscious mind they process, I did notice.

All in all, this is an enjoyable read, and Holly Black should be commended for creating a totally unique world.