Review Detail

The Falconer is quite the genre mashup—a Victorian-era Scottish mythos-based paranormal YA, with just enough hints of steam punk to account for the more flavorful vehicles and weaponry mentioned. The story is told in first-person present-tense, entirely from the perspective of the heroine, Aileana.

After helplessly witnessing her mother's gruesome death at the hands of a powerful Fae, seventeen year old Aileana leads a double life--one feigning mid 19th-century propriety, and the other consumed with hunting and slaying errant Fae in the name of vengeance. Her Fairy-hunting mentor, Kiaran, is a several thousand-year-old exceedingly mysterious Fae--who destroys his own for his own reasons (which one has to read most of the book to vaguely decipher).

The writing itself is strong, and the story initially pulled this reader in with very little adjustment needed for one who normally dislikes a present-tense telling. Conveying battle, chase, and action are definitely the author's strong suits. And a few of the side-characters proved pretty well fleshed out. The heroine's best friend, Derrick--the obligatory endearing-yet-scattered pixie companion--and Gavin were all pleasant additions to the dynamic and, if anything, didn't get enough page time.

The Downsides:

As much as I appreciated the heroine's innate bad-assery, the murderous rampaging, along with feedbacking thoughts of trauma and revenge became repetitive. Rather than grow or heal, she seemed instead to quite willingly go the path of self-destruct. Which segues to a few more drawbacks I had trouble getting past.

The heroine and hero/antihero (?) are both mentally scarred and emotionally constipated. The entire basis of their relationship centers around half-truths and omissions that conveniently withhold a lot of information from the readers. As a result of their almost complete lack of intimacy, or capacity therefor, the possibility of romance or even romantic tension between them was difficult to buy. And then there's the tremendous age difference.

I also didn't care for the cliffhanger ending. (If you can really call it that.) In my opinion, it felt jarring--more like the book cut off in the dead middle of the climax and left us with more questions than answers just when the world-building was really getting going. Rather than enticed into reading the next installment, I'm afraid this reviewer was left...well...a bit irritated. >.>