Grammy Award–winning artist Keys co-authors a YA superhero graphic novel bearing the title of her hit song. This is a heady blend of Faerie lore, high fantasy, and high school drama, dripping with description that brings the dangerous but tempting world of Faerie to life.īlack is building a complex mythology now is a great time to tune in. She fights, plots, even murders enemies, but she must also navigate her relationship with her complex family (human, Faerie, and mixed). Fierce and observant Jude is utterly unaware of the currents that swirl around her.

Black’s latest looks at nature and nurture and spins a tale of court intrigue, bloodshed, and a truly messed-up relationship that might be the saving of Jude and the titular prince, who, like Jude, has been shaped by the cruelties of others. Brought up among the Gentry, Jude has never felt at ease, but after a decade, Faerie has become her home despite the constant peril. Human Jude (whose brown hair curls and whose skin color is never described) both hates and loves Madoc, whose murderous nature is true to his Faerie self and who in his way loves her.

Jude-broken, rebuilt, fueled by anger and a sense of powerlessness-has never recovered from watching her adoptive Faerie father murder her parents. Most characters read as White.Ī well-choreographed, updated take on a melodramatic classic.īlack is back with another dark tale of Faerie, this one set in Faerie and launching a new trilogy. With Isda, debut author Olson offers a complex and nuanced character who both suffers persecution and commits monstrous acts, pitting typical teenage insecurities against mind-altering powers. Singing, masquerades, organ music, and chandeliers ensue, elements as indebted to Andrew Lloyd Webber as Gaston Leroux. But the songs of Emeric Rodin, a newly arrived and lowly cleaning boy, stir Isda’s magic and interest, and she begins to tutor him while also fearing addiction to the memories she takes from him. Redheaded Isda has facial disfigurements like all gravoirs and fendoirs, hidden beneath masks that they are forced to wear in public Isda has adorned hers with sparkling crystals and raven feathers.

Unlike the indentured fendoirs who legally extract memories as an elixir-sometimes leaving the poor as Memoryless husks-all gravoirs are supposed to be executed at birth, a legacy of the bloody and brief revolution led by three much-mythologized gravoir women, Les Trois. Discarded at birth and raised in secret by the calculating Cyril Bardin, Isda helps her adoptive father and the opera by manipulating audience members’ memories through her forbidden gravoir magic. Seventeen-year-old Isda lives and lurks in the shadows, catwalks, and crypts of the Channe Opera House of Vaureille. Magic and music blend in this gender-flipped fantasy take on The Phantom of the Opera.

Sing me forgotten book