Ballad

I feel very similarly to this novel to the way I felt about Lament: The Faerie Queen’s Deception: just fine. Ballad continues right where Lament left off: Deirdre and James are off to a musical boarding school to further their talents, but the faerie world keeps following them. This sequel was given the opportunity to expand the characterization and world of the Books of Faerie series, and while it introduced a lot of concepts I liked, it wasn’t enough to jettison it or the series as a whole out of mediocre territory. It had a bit more of the trademark Stiefvater wit with a better protagonist; we can see more stylistic narration developing and better relationships, but it still felt like a lot of the world-building and relationships were half-baked.

This was an inverse of Lament, the lovable and charming protagonist of James kept my interest far more than the love interest Nuala. James is largely the same guy he was in Lament, perhaps with a dose more of angst in the form of unrequited love thrown into the mix, but I overall enjoyed his narration far more than Deirdre’s. His humor never ran dry, and I found that his relationships with other characters (new friends and teachers) were one of the highlights of the novel, even though they were largely devoid of magic. James has the opportunity to form relationships outside of the faerie world, which works wonders for characterization as they allow him to develop and become well-rounded aside from his magical adventures. His relationship with Nuala was a little confusing to me; it still had that tang of insta-love I’ll never be fond of, and considering Nuala seemed flavorless on her own it was difficult to see how such a funny protagonist saw anything in her.

This novel has our POV switch from James to Nuala, and she wasn’t all that developed. What worked for Luke in the last novel is that he was largely a decent guy who had fought against his soul being trapped for a long, long time. His mystery was interesting, he wasn’t obnoxious, and he was in a trapped situation. He was easy to like and to feel for. Nuala, however, has spent most of her sixteen year old life killing people without asking too many questions about it, and our first introduction to the character is her pouting about how James won’t let her kill him, too. Even throughout the novel it seems like she doesn’t fall in love with James, she falls in love with his musical talent and what he can do for her. She’s sympathetic, definitely, there’s scenes of sexual assault that show us she’s relatively powerless compared to the other faeries, but feeling pity or sympathy for a character doesn’t necessarily make me like her. There was nothing hugely wrong with her personality, but she lacked the edge and depth I’m always looking for in passionate romances or interesting characters, and it felt like the sexual assault was inserted into her narrative to make her more likable, which feels… icky at best.

It’s not hard to see that almost exact same structure is used in this novel as is the one in Lament. Talented kid meets faerie, doesn’t ask too many questions, falls in love with their brooding soul, and faces the faerie queen. All of this is in the summary of the novel above, so I’ll give no further spoilers, and while I was hoping to find something new in this novel that I didn’t see in Lament, I didn’t. The plot skittered so close to taking on more depth and becoming vastly more interesting with the addition of darker side characters and a promise to become more involved with the faerie myths. We take a sharper detour into the unsettling with Ballad, as Stiefvater brings in legends of Death and creatures that are not as pretty as the faeries to raise the stakes. I so wish there had been more done with this, as the expansion of the faerie realm would’ve been a great way to make the second book deeper than the first.

For all that I wasn’t into Deirdre’s character in Lament, I actually thought her arc in Ballad was far more interesting. Luke remained trapped in the faerie world at the end of Lament, and Deirdre’s journey to find him and herself again through this novel, told only through James’s eyes and a few text messages, is fantastic. Deirdre works really well as a periphery character, and the events of last novel have served her character development well. She has her own arc, her own motivations, and having her work behind the scenes made for some great reveals and independent moments.

The only bummer, of course, is that the final book in the series seems to be on hold indefinitely. Requiem would’ve tied up a lot of plot points that were raised in this novel and given us a chance to see more of James and Nuala’s developing relationship and the closure of Deirdre’s. Lament and Ballad stand on their own as a perfectly okay series, but I’ll always be wondering if the final novel would’ve tied things together better.

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