Review: Marr's patent strong world building, but the characters lack depth
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 23, 2012
It was almost exactly a year ago that I picked up a Melissa Marr book for the first time, and experienced her amazingly creative, intricate, and beautiful worldbuilding through her adult book, Graveminder. Since that time, I've devoured the entire Wicked Lovely series and her short story collection, Faery Tales and Nightmares, that released earlier this year. And I really liked (or dare I say, even loved) all of them. So of course I was over the moon excited about Carnival of Souls. I waiting in line for well over an hour for the opportunity to meet her and pick this up at BEA, but once I heard that the indelible James Marsters would be narrating the audio, I decided to save myself and pick it up for a listen on release day.After my initial disappointment when I forgot that James Marsters is actually American (alas, poor Spike, I loved him well), I knew beyond a doubt that I had made the right decision to listen to this book. Because I most often listen to audiobooks while I work out, I love them to be high action-it keeps me going-and while Carnival of Souls could have had more action in my opinion, it still had enough between Mallory's perilous existence and the deadly competition in The City to satisfy. While I'm still not sure how I feel about Kaleb's southern accent (which lingers somewhere between hot-Georgian and dim-sounding-Virginian), I felt that Marsters voiced the characters of Carnival of Souls excellently, and I certainly recommend this format.Melissa Marr's world building was, as always, stunning. We are wedged almost uncomfortably between our world, where Mallory has been raised as a human and that of The City where the daimons rule. The City is run on a caste system with the ruling class on top and the curs at the bottom. However, once a generation, the ruler of The City hosts a competition allowing the winner to join the ruling caste and providing the opportunity for one individual to change the fate they were born to. Witches, creatures of great power, were expelled from The City a generation ago when daimons grew tired of their rule. Forced to live in the human world, witches may only be in The City under daimon employ, but still have the power to control and bind daimons in the human world.While this world was well constructed, it was not (and was not meant to be) comfortable. Those of us in the Western world have a hard time wrapping our minds around a caste system, let alone the deep bred misogyny this story imparts. In Marr's world of the daimons, women are meant only for breeding-an act which is spoken of in the cold terms one uses for livestock. It is a woman's only purpose, regardless of the caste they are born to. Even the `good' guys in this book adhere to this mindset. They may be in love, but they still think their women need to breed. Additionally, daimons are easily considered one another's property if bonds of blood or money are exchanged.The fact that everyone in Carnival of Souls seemed so accepting of the world as it was was fairly grating for me, but at the same time I appreciate it. I've gotten very tired of the dystopian rebellion stories, and it makes sense that these characters would work within a set of parameters given to them. They don't lay down and passively accept their lots in life, particularly not Aya or Kaleb, but they do recognize the need to play the game. There also seemed to be an overarching theme of not telling people things. Seriously, it felt as if the bulk of conflict in this plot could have been ironed out with a good dose of trust and honesty. Instead we're left watching with a bit of horror as our characters blunder into one bad situation after another because of ignorance. The rampant distrust reflects the world and story we are in, and it becomes increasingly clear that those who would prefer to rely on no one must rely on each other to succeed.That said, the characters were the point where Carnival of Souls unraveled a bit for me, and became a disappointment. Throughout the book we see at least 6 narrators. Six! As a reader who digs her heels in to resist two, I had a very hard time swallowing this. These narrators did support two major storylines (which do, of course, intertwine), and there were truly three main narrators-Aya, Mallory, and Kaleb. Because of this variety, the story felt disjointed for me. I didn't care for the characters because I didn't feel as if I truly got to know any of them. Sure, I'm interested, but I'm not invested. I want to be mad when someone gets killed off or happy when those crazy kids get their happily ever after-here I had a hard time raising my concern to much beyond `meh'.In fact, Aya may be the only character in Carnival of Souls I well and truly enjoy. Born to the ruling class, Aya breaks her engagement to the man she loves in order to fight in the competition and earn the right to rule. She refuses to accept breeding as her station, and believes in her heart of hearts that she can make The City a better place if she helps to rule it. She emphatically is against breeding, but is determined to find a way to achieve the goals she wants without compromising her body. I felt for her, and for her former fiance, Belias, who I wish we'd gotten to see more of as I feel he may be the one male character I actually like in this series, despite his flaws.The main story revolves around Mallory who has been raised in the human world with an adoptive father who is a witch, hiding from the daimons who would kill her or take her to The City. I appreciate that Mallory brings the human teenager mentality to Carnival of Souls, willing to question what other characters see only as normal, and not accepting everything as she would if she were witch or daimon. She does get a bit insta-lovey with Kaleb, which may be conveniently explained by daimon nature, but still caused an eye roll or ten. I can respect Mallory and her plight, her ignorance isn't her fault, but that didn't make it any more compelling to me.As stated, it's not that I actively dislike the characters in Carnival of Souls, it's just that there were too many points of view for me to really rally behind any of them. I felt that the nuances and depth of character that existed in Wicked Lovely faltered here, but I have hopes that I will become more greatly attached in the future. Perhaps my high expectations bit me on this one, but I just didn't feel that Carnival of Souls was Marr's strongest work. I'm certainly happy I read it, but was aching to fall in love.