Review Detail

Note: This review is of the British edition published by Gollancz. I've heard it might be different.

What I Liked:
Elizabeth May is totally awesome, and so I really wanted to read her book. This order of events has totally ruined me before, but in this case all ended well. I enjoyed The Falconer from the beginning to the end, and pretty much need book two immediately after that ending. The Falconer is full of action, has an incredibly awesome heroine, and is sure to delight fans of Joss Whedon’s work.

Aileana is totally badass. I know this description gets overused, but she’s like a nineteenth century Buffy. Only she’s better than Buffy, because she’s really smart too. Not only can she wield weapons like a pro, but she’s also an inventor (of more weapons). She is, however, endearingly terrible at being the little high society lady she’s meant to be. The blurb makes her sound like such a prickish princess, but she totally hates her title and just wants to spend all of her time killing. In fact, the blurb says she “only looks the part of an aristocratic young lady,’ but actually she doesn’t look that much like one to society, since they totally think she killed her mom and she’s always disappearing from balls with a headache and returning disheveled.

Rarely does a heroine get off on killing quite as much as Aileana does. Watching her slay fae is a thing of beauty, it really is. She loves fighting, both knowing her own strength and skills and the rush of power she gets when the fae dies. In fact, her love of killing fae has left her reputation (and much of her wardrobe) in tatters, because she keeps running out of balls to go kill some. May also doesn’t make the battles too easy, which I love. Aileana is often in real danger, and she gets hurt a lot.

When Aileana isn’t killing faeries, she’s hanging out with her bestie, Catherine. I can tell that I’ve been reading too much YA when I kept expecting Catherine to turn on Aileana. Actually, this is undeserved, because Catherine is an awesome friend, who listens to Aileana and offers to beat down snotty debutantes to preserve Aileana’s honor. They are so bantery and adorable. In fact, all the characters are quite bantery, so you know I was a happy girl.

Though I’m usually most in love with the characters, what I liked best was the world. Historical Scotland, though much featured in romance novels, if the kilts on the covers are any indication of what’s underneath (OH MY), isn’t a time period I’ve encountered in YA. I squeed every time Aileana said “wee” or “aye” by the way, because my love of accents is absurdly high. Add steampunk into nineteenth century Scotland, and I’m a goner. Then, on top of that, we have faeries, but they’re not namby pamby boring faeries; they are killer, evil faeries, which YES.

What Left Me Wanting More:
So…that ending. Where was it? The Falconer basically just trails off mid-fight scene, leaving the reader sputtering and flipping around to make sure there wasn’t another page that got skipped or something. This cliffhanger is mean. I am not a fan of this sort of cliffhanger. In fact, cliffhanger seems to mild of a term, considering that it just cuts off partway through a scene. I really feel like each book in a series should close out some a smaller story arc while advancing the larger one, but this book doesn’t close out anything. The Falconer could easily have been a hundred pages longer, allowing for a bit more of a slow burn from the romance and time to close out a small story arc, and it would have been perfection.

The Final Verdict:
Based on some things I’ve seen Elizabeth May say on Twitter (I sound like such a stalker, but let’s move past that), I think I’ll only like this series more as it continues. It’s only going to get darker and more painful from here, and, yes, I want that.