This is yet another one of those YA books that has recieved quite a lot
of attention prior to its release. With this one, though, things were a little
different for me. For one, I I’d already read a book by Leanna Renne Hieber (The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker). Despite its flaws, I rather enjoyed that
book. This one caught my eye when it was described as Pride and Prejudice meets The Picture of Dorian Grey.
So I put this book on pre-order and on November 1st precisely
it was delivered to my door. It had to wait a couple of days for me to get
school work out of the way to allow for reading time, though.
Information:
Title: Darker Still
Series: Magic
Most Foul #1
Author: Leanna Renee
Hieber
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Fire
Target Audience: YA
Pages: 317
Chapters: Diary
entries, newspaper articles, private correspondence
PoV: 1st
person
Tense: Past tense
Story: I was obsessed.
It was as if he
called to me, demanding I reach out and touch the brushstrokes of color swirled
onto the canvas. It was the most exquisite portrait I'd ever seen--everything
about Lord Denbury was unbelievable...utterly breathtaking and eerily lifelike.
There was a reason
for that. Because despite what everyone said, Denbury never had committed
suicide. He was alive. Trapped within his golden frame.
I've crossed over
into his world within the painting, and I've seen what dreams haunt him. They
haunt me too. He and I are inextricably linked--bound together to watch the
darkness seeping through the gas-lit cobblestone streets of Manhattan. Unless I
can free him soon, things will only get Darker
Still.
(from Goodreads)
Thoughts and impressions: This idea held a lot of potential and for the most part the story
lived up to my expectations. I liked the idea behind it all: it is fairly
quickly implied that dark magic was used to imprison the British lord and what
ensues is the attempt to unravel the secrets behind the ritual that tore Lord
Denbury’s soul from his body. The end result of this was a little disappointing
as I was expecting some complicated riddle, all things considered, but after
the reveal it just felt like the characters had spent the whole book
overlooking clues that had been staring them in the face.
Natalie was an interesting protagonist. I
liked that she was mute, giving her an unusual perspective of life, but that
she could hear – something all too often forgotten by those around her to
comedic effect when Natalie takes things into her own hands to remind them of
the fact. At the start of the story she’s in an asylum for the blind, deaf and
dumb but soon returns home to her father. He happens to be a curator at a
museum and when Natalie reads of the lifelike portrait of the recently deceased
Lord Denbury coming to Manhattan, she becomes convinced that they need to
procure it for the museum.
Her obsession with just looking at the
portrait was a little disconcerting, though I suppose she wasn’t the only young
woman in the story to show such tendencies. The only reason ever offered for
this is that the man in the portrait happens to be very good looking. What
would have happened had he been just average or suffered from some disfiguring
scar?
It soon transpires that the painting looks
so lifelike because there is a very much alive Lord Denbury stuck inside the
painting. It also transpires that Natalie is the only one able to able to move
through the portal from our world to the magical prison – both through
physically touching the portrait and subconsciously in her dreams. The reader
receives no explanation as to why this is the case beyond the idea that Natalie
has a particular “aura” about her, opposite colours to those of the evil people
who forced poor Lord Denbury into the painting. I suppose that if she wasn’t
able to move between the two realities then there wouldn’t be much of a story
but I felt like I, as the reader, was being asked to suspend my disbelief a bit
too much.
I admit that I wanted more to it than what I
was offered. Obviously, I can accept outlandish claims in fiction (such as a
rock lodging itself in some woman’s hand – The Native Star by M.K. Hobson), so I have no doubts that with a little more effort on
the author’s behalf, I could have accepted this more readily as well.
The villain’s motives were never really
explored either. We don’t know why Denbury was chosen or why they (both the
good Denbury in the portrait and the evil Denbury clone on the outside)
travelled to the other side of the Atlantic (beyond, perhaps, anonymity but
then the painting receives so much attention that that motive is rendered moot)
or even what exactly the evil Denbury wants – beyond debauchery.
A large number of things are not addressed
in this book and while I hope that they will be explored in future instalments,
I would have preferred at least some insight in this book.
Beyond this, I like the characters
introduced. Mrs Northe in particular is interesting, if bordering on a little
too perfect. I wish Maggie had been used more – at one point I thought she
might get a bigger, if terminal, role, but, like answers, she seems to have
been shunned for a later book.
The focus of this book was on getting
Denbury out of the cursed painting as well as the budding attraction between
Natalie and Denbury. This worked quite well, though Natalie was infatuated
before she’d even discovered the portal and Denbury seemed to choose her simply
because she was the only human contact he got. It was sweet, despite teetering
on the verge of questionable a couple of times.
Finally, I really don’t understand why this book
is Pride and
Prejudice meets Dorian Grey. Dorian Grey sure, it’s easy to see the parallels there, but I didn’t see any
parallels with Pride and
Prejudice.
Style: The author makes an effort to use a form of prose that has more of a
19th century ring to it but the language often feels far too modern
with terms like “to chat up”. Also, she uses the expression “could care less”. Natalie’s disguised to get into the museum at night and as she feeds the guard some
lie to get through the doors, he apparently “could care less” as he waves her
through. Now, I realise that this is the version of the expression that most Americans use, but
if you think about it, it really doesn’t make sense! If you could care less,
then you care at least a bit. By using this expression you want to imply that
you don’t care at all, in which case you couldn’t care less. David Mitchell has a very good explanation of this so I’ll just add his video.
Final verdict: Overall, I liked the story but I feel that it could have been so much
more than it was. Originally I was going to give the book 5 stars but I
realised that I was just going to do this because I was trying to delude myself
into believing that the book is better than it really is. Then I was going to
give it 4 stars instead but then I realised that I gave The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss
Percy Parker 4 stars and I much preferred that book to
this one. So I’m going to go with 3 stars.
Extra notes: No sex. I can't remember whether there was any bad language in the story.
