This Savage Song

With darkness in every corner, how do you fight your demons?

This Savage Song is a brilliant, creatively dark and deceptive book filled with dancing shadows and thrilling darkness. I breezed through this book and already I can't wait for the next one! Monsters that are actually bred from violence? Count me in! This is a dark and thrilling adventure, and I loved every minute of it!

The writing really made this book work for me. I was easily dragged in and I didn't want out. I flipped through pages easily and devoured the story as quickly as I could. My favourite part however, had to be the whole monster aspect. Violence breeds monsters; Actual monsters. You have Corsai, Malchai, and Sunai, all dangerous and dark and deadly. They are all horrifying in their greed and power and strength, but we also get to see a better side of the Sunai via August Flynn, and I really enjoyed that.

Being one of the most deadly monsters in the city, August should be cold, dark, and unforgiving like every other monster in Verity City, but instead he fights to be human, to act and feel like them, look like them. This is what eventually changes Kate's views on monsters, and what helps her character develop the way it does. It's a brilliant transformation, and it was very enjoyable to read, especially their interactions!

This book also has a dystopian feel to it. I didn't expect that, but it explained why the city was divided into two (Flynn's side and Harker's side; North and South) and the destruction and violence that occurs, and why they can't leave, why it's only their city being affected. The destruction of Flynn's side and utopia feel of Harker's side really let us delve into their characters a bit more, to understand why things happened how they did. Suffice it to say, Harker made my skin go cold. He was cruel, malicious, but almost seemed like a hero for letting people pay for his protection! He's a master liar and manipulator, and his darkness chilled me, but also made me enjoy this story a whole lot more. I loved every minute we got with destruction and horror, which is pretty much the entire novel.

Unfortunately, while you can connect with the characters in a way that you can understand their choices, feelings, and actions, you don't empathize or care. You see the destruction and horror and know you should feel something, but you can only watch it happen without the empathetic connection. It's a great read, and I couldn't put it down, but it wasn't because my heart was racing in fear for the characters, or aching to know what happens to them. It was because the world and the monstrous aspects and just the plot of it all held me captive while the writing hooked me, and I wanted more of that. That doesn't mean the characters are bad, because they aren't. They are brilliant and I loved them all, their strength and bravery, their struggles and confessions, the bad things they had to do... I just couldn't form that one connection that would've made this book a five-star read.

Overall, This Savage Song is a thrilling, mysterious and dangerous adventure that gave me chills and made my dark little heart smile. No one is safe, and hardly anyone is who they seems to be. I loved the writing, the world, and the plot. This is a book I would definitely recommend!

What worked: Where do I even begin? This novel is amazingly brilliant with it's lush, dark world of monsters set some time in the future. Beautifully written, I was hooked right from the very first page and couldn't put this book down!

THIS SAVAGE SONG introduces readers to two very unlikely protagonists. Kate Harker is edgy and almost as ruthless as her father. After being kicked out of her sixth boarding school, she is sent back home to prove to her father that she's worthy of him.

August Flynn is a monster only he looks very human. He can steal a soul(one that is evil) with a song. He's also one of the three most powerful monsters in a city run by Kate's corrupt father and his minion monsters.

I totally loved this book something fierce. Action packed with flawed characters that you can't help but love. The setting is rich in details which includes three different types of monsters that are dangerous to humans.

The chemistry between Kate and August is one of two very unlikely friends that have so much going against them. They aren't friends per say but each works together to combat the growing evil that threatens to tear the City apart. Think YA meets a futurist Gotham City complete with monsters.

Lush, beautifully written dark urban fantasy that doesn't disappoint! There's alliances, betrayals, secrets, monsters, and an omg worthy ending that gave me chills! My only disappointment is I have to wait another year for the sequel!

For the past couple years, Victoria (V.E.) Schwab has been focusing on her adult books, with Vicious and her Darker Shade series. However, This Savage Song takes her back to her start in YA, with an urban fantasy that explores the question of what it means to be monstrous. For readers of her adult works, expect a tone closer to Vicious than Darker Shade, and for readers of her YA, be prepared for a darker, twistier tale than either The Archived or The Near Witch.

This Savage Song takes place in a time and place not too removed from the world we live in now, except for one crucial detail — in this world, acts of violence breed literal monsters. The more horrific the violence, the more terrible the creature it creates.

August, one of the two narrators, is one such monster, born out of an event so horrible, he can barely bring himself to think of it. He wants nothing more than to be human, but throughout the story, it becomes increasingly clear why that can never be possible, and why, even so, he can never stop trying.

Kate Harker, the other narrator, is the teenage daughter of the most powerful man in the city, and would happily throw away her humanity if it won her the attention of her father. She and August don’t so much come together as collide, and the narrative of This Savage Song clearly relishes playing out the tension between the monster boy longing for the very thing his human companion doesn’t seem to value at all, and the girl trying to reconcile what she knows of monsters with the boy standing in front of her.

It’s hard to discuss the plot of This Savage Song without getting into spoilers, so suffice it to say that the entire book is a tense, thrilling exploration of what it means to be human, what can make someone monstrous, and the marks violence leaves, both on the soul and on society. Kate and August’s relationship follows one of my favorite trajectories in fiction, from enemies to wary allies to respected partners to trusted friends, and I loved every delicious moment of their slow-burn friendship (is slow-burn friendship a thing? Because it should be).

I also was fascinated by the monsters that populated the dark world of This Savage Song. For the most part, they are not the mindless, salivating brutes of horror novels and fairy tales, but sinister, intelligent beings with agendas of their own. When the story starts, the monsters have more or less taken over the city, but they still have structure and hierarchy within their new, monstrous society. I’ve always considered worldbuilding one of Victoria’s great strengths, and This Savage Song is no exception, as she feels her way through how the world as we know it would change — and how it would remain the same — if monsters roamed among us.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the writing itself; as always, Victoria’s prose is beautiful, each word carefully chosen, each paragraph meticulously crafted. On a sentence level, I truly feel she’s one of the most talented writers in the game today. There’s hardly a page that goes by without a phrase that would be appropriate to print in loopy script and place in a frame somewhere. Her worldbuilding is lush and detailed, the dialogue sharp, the action taught, and the act of reading her words is decadence and joy and education all in one.

Make no mistake, This Savage Song is very dark, probably Schwab’s darkest since Vicious, and therefore won’t be for everyone. It’s violent and disturbing and, at times, very sad. But despite its darkness, it’s not a depressing book. Yes, Kate and August go through terrible trials and have to face awful things, but when I turned the final few pages of This Savage Song (which, it’s worth noting, ends on a very satisfying note, despite this book being the first of a duology), I felt oddly uplifted. For me, though it’s subtle, there was an undercurrent of light woven throughout the story, enough to leave the reader with the impression that though things may get bad, so bad it seems nearly impossible for them to ever turn around, that there is always hope. There is always goodness somewhere, maybe buried deep, maybe not where you’d expect to find it, and you might have to fight tooth and nail to get to it, but it’s there nonetheless. It’s a difficult balance to strike, but in my opinion, it’s executed beautifully here.

If you are a fan of urban fantasy, unlikely friendships, gorgeous writing, and thoughtful explorations of morality and monstrousness, rush to your local bookstore and dive into the world of This Savage Song today.

Kate is the daughter of the powerful Callum Harker, the man who controls the monsters in V-City. Kate is human, but she's done monstrous things.
August is the son of Henry Flynn, head of the military force fighting for peace, and to hold the monsters back. August is a Sunai, a monster who steals souls, but he only wants to be more human.

Dark and light collide in THIS SAVAGE SONG, the first part in a thrilling paranormal duology by best-selling author Victoria Schwab.

At the same time a character study and a hardcore paranormal fantasy, THIS SAVAGE SONG explores the duality of monstrosity and humanity. Dynamic plot twists and fantastic writing, along with complex characters and a world with more depth than I expected create a real page-turner. The very physical divide in V-City is echoed in the divides between Kate and her father, and August and his family's goals. Kate and August come from different sides of the city, and completely different backgrounds, but when their lives are threatened by monsters, both human and Malchai, the teens realize they have a lot in common. By fighting together they reveal the secrets behind the threats on their lives while struggling to keep back the darkness that's nearly overwhelming them both. There is a hint of romance between the two, as expected, but it takes backseat to the more immediate plot elements of danger and running for their lives! While I wanted slightly less predictability, there were still plenty of surprises and excitement. Equally compelling and disturbing in a "just-can't-look-away" kind of way, THIS SAVAGE SONG is gritty and page-turning and I highly recommend it.