Wicked As You Wish

by Rin Chupeco

This was the ARC included with the December FairyLoot book box. It was definitely not the ARC I had thought it was going to be [nor was it the ARC I was hoping against hope it would be], but I decided to give it a go anyway.

This book was definitely different than I anticipated it being.

Let me start off by saying this book is modern. Like modern modern. I’m not saying this as a detriment to it, but more as a heads-up. If you like your fantasy novels to be set in some unspecified time or some time in the past, this book isn’t for you. We’re talking homo/bisexual love interests, gender-neutral pronouns, the works. Now, not every character falls into some “modern” category. But they do exist, and fairly predominantly, so, if that isn’t your thing – this book isn’t for you. The author’s attempt to add these characters and make it feel smooth falls a little short. There was at least one chapter where the mixture of gender-neutral pronouns and everyone else in the scene led to confusion. Make sure to keep that in mind as you go into this read.

That being said, this book is definitely unique, even outside the modern modern feel of it. It plays with a lot of expected stereotypes – but it doesn’t feel maybe as smooth as it should. A lot of times, people say something like, “It does [this thing that’s not normal] but you almost didn’t realize it was doing that, it felt so smooth/natural/etc. that you barely noticed.” That is not true for this book. This book feels very much like the modern modern feel of it was shoved in your face and almost smothers you with it. It’s not necessarily unpleasant or bad, but it is present. The modern feel is something you’re constantly aware of.

This book also plays with the history of the world a bit. It adds countries, adds magic to historical events, changes and adds historical events by way of the presence of magic, and the world is a mixture of familiar and foreign. The introduction to this knowledge, while not exactly smooth or clear, isn’t done brutally or badly, exactly. It definitely reads like a YA novel, which isn’t a bad thing, but it isn’t a more mature YA novel, even though it has some slightly more mature YA content.

This book is hard to explain to anyone, especially without spoilers to explain the differences from your typical YA fantasy book.

Alright, so, recommendation: if you’re looking for a unique, very modern YA fantasy novel, I’d say this is one worth trying out. If not, though, I highly suggest steering clear.

While I wouldn’t say this book was bad, by any means, I don’t know that I’ll pick up the sequel. Or, if I do, I doubt I’ll be pre-ordering it, or snagging it shortly after release. This might be a book I try to check out of a library, if they have it, or borrowing some other way rather than owning it for myself.

Why not? Because it didn’t grip me. It’s not making me feel dying to know what happens next. I’m not demanding the next book like I have with The Nevernight Chronicles or Serpent & Dove or Ninth House or Aurora Rising or a handful of other YA and adult books. That being said, if I knew someone who read it and wanted me to read it so they could chat about it, I might be up to doing that.

**SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT. DON’T READ FURTHER IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS. IF YOU READ FURTHER AND ARE SURPRISED BY SPOILERS, YOU AREN’T PAYING ATTENTION. LIKE, AT ALL.**

I have nothing against the gender-neutral pronoun use [nor the fun, nerdy reference to their name being Loki], but the execution leaves something to be desired. It led to confusion on more than one occasion, and I frequently found myself getting Ken and Loki confused. I don’t know if that was due to their personality/dialogue being similar or the weird way in which Ken and Loki were introduced or what. The introduction of West, Loki, and Ken was confusing, West mainly sticking out because of how different he is from literally everyone else. West is hard to confuse with anyone else.

I like the drama that’s caused by their being a common love interest between two characters – mainly because it isn’t your typical love triangle. It’s a shared love interest of the same boy – but between a girl and a boy rather than two girls. That might be the only thing about the sequel I’m interested in. I want to know if the shared love interest is a closeted gay or closeted bi-sexual guy and how that all plays out. But that’s about it, honestly. I have very little vested interest in the actual plot line, the future of the [semi-] saved kingdom, and most of the characters. The love interest of the main character feels rather cliché – the mis-understood, traumatized, sad-story boy that the main character can’t help but be drawn to. It’s not a trope I haven’t enjoyed in the past – nor is it a trope I think I’ll dislike going forward. But, this time, it doesn’t feel well executed. I don’t particularly care what happens to that boy, broken or not.

I don’t mean to make this book sound awful. There were definitely spots I enjoyed, and times I wanted to keep reading and see what happened next. But those moments weren’t frequent, nor were they strong enough, at the end, to make me look up if the next release date was announced yet or make a note to keep my eye on it in the future.

But that concludes my reads for January 2020! Onto February’s reads – the first of which being Four Dead Queens!