9/10/10

White Cat, by Holly Black

White Cat, by Holly Black (Simon and Schuster, 2010), is pretty close to my ideal of what a YA fantasy thriller should be. Mystery! Mayhem! Cool and unusual magic! Interesting characters!* It is the first book I can ever remember taking upstairs with me, and finishing in bed next to my little one "I guess Mama's not going to read to me tonight...." he murmured plaintively. But I only had five more pages, and I had to find out what happened....(and then I read to him).

(I know I overuse parentheses in this post (sorry!) but sadly I don't have time to de-parenthesize).

Cassel is not quite like the other kids at his prep school. For one thing, his family are curse workers--they possess magical (and very illegal) skills. His mother's in jail for emotional manipulation on a very high level (she can twist the feelings of anyone she touches, including rich men...). His grandfather is able to kill with a touch (a useful skill for a hit man). His older brother's gotten involved with a high level curse worker family--the mafia of the magical. Seventeen-year old Cassel himself has accepted that he has no curse working abilities himself, but he does have his own abilities as a con man, and runs a rather lucrative gambling ring at his school.

But when he wakes up trapped on the roof of his dorm, with no idea how he got there (or how to get off), Cassel's life begins a spiral out of control into a tangle of magic, crime, and twisted (very very twisted) family secrets. Cassel comes up against murder, transformation, the manipulation of memory, and more...and the reader (me at least) is left on the seat of her chair, reading hungrily to find out the answers to the mysteries that have exploded into his life.

Told from Cassel's point of view, the reader gets to unravel the plot threads along with him, making for satisfying reading (except for a bit at the end, where the author withholds information from the reader--I can see why she did it, but I felt a bit miffed, and began to wonder if I should Question what I had been told previously). Like Cassel, we aren't sure who we can trust, who is using whom, and why. Black makes her world of curse workers satisfyingly real, without resorting to information dumps. She's assembled a (mostly) stellar cast of supporting players, and she manages to make us care about (many) of her characters, while keeping all but one (not Cassel) morally ambiguous. (Although I was rooting for Cassel throughout).

This is the first YA book of Black's I've finished--I found Tithe much too gritty for my taste. This was also gritty, but not as much--there's considerable violence here too, and some of it is disturbing, but it doesn't take up too much page time, and I was able to accept it as necessary for the truly exciting story. There's a romantic sub-plot line, but it's not particularly gritty, or expansive.

(In short, I liked the book lots).

*It also has several scenes that involve cleaning out an old house full of junk. For some reason I am strangely attracted to such books.

14 comments:

  1. I had the same reaction to TITHE, so I am glad to read your thoughts on WHITE CAT. Very interested to check it out now!

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  2. I liked this one, too! Interesting premise--magic users as crime family.

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  3. Did I tell you I stood next to the author of this book and thought really hard about what cute shoes she had?? I'm sure she heard my thoughts.

    I do want to read this --

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  4. I really liked this one too! I found it very satisfying. And I was just talking it up over at Sounis. :)

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  5. YAY! So glad you liked this one. It's one of my favorite books of the year. Really quality. Nice review!

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  6. Yeah, TITHE was really not my cuppa but whoa, did I ever like WHITE CAT. It was dark (but not overly so) and I loved the whole setup of the curse-workers world. Very cool.

    Weren't the scenes with Cassel's brothers spine-tingly? *shivers* Good stuff there.

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  7. I just got TITHE from the library. I'll have to see if I have the same reaction. This one is on my list to read.

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  8. Ooooooh. Sounds, um, mysterious and fascinating. Another for the pile.

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  9. I didn't like Tithe either! Like you, it was too gritty for my taste so good to hear that this one is better. Maybe I should give it a try.

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  10. I'll be curious to know, now, if you other non-Tithers like White Cat! If you remember, do come back and tell me if you did!

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  11. I'd written this book off, as I (along with a bunch of other folks, apparently) didn't like Tithe. I'll have to check this one out though!

    Also, I learned in both algebra and library school (weirdly applicable in both) that you can have as many parenthesis as you want as long as they come in pairs. :)

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  12. I've got this out from the library right now. I'm glad to hear you enjoy it so much!

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  13. When I checked before my library didn't have this book yet, but your review made me check again and it is there. Yay!

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