The Fever King by Victoria Lee
Although I’m no longer an avid reader of YA books The Fever King sounded really good so I had rather high hopes for this one.
At first The Fever King reminded me of some of some of my favourite YA. It has a not-so-far-in-the-future setting similar to the one in Proxy and Control and to start with the magic and witchings reminded me of Half Bad and Burn Mark. Sadly, The Fever King is a rather formulaic dystopia. The characters, the ideas, the plot, everything was so predictable and needlessly frustrating.
➜The writing was okay for the most part but there were a lot of purply phrases which stood out (for the wrong reasons).
WHAT in the world is going on with Noam’s stomach
:
-“Tar oozed through Noam’s stomach”
-“a warm beat of familiarity took root in the pit of Noam’s stomach”
-“twinge in his stomach that felt suspiciously like embarrassment”
-“Noam’s stomach twisted a little tighter”
-“the pit of Noam’s stomach shriveled”
-“his stomach was full of hot tar”
-“his stomach was a mess of buzzing insects”
-“an uneasy wave pitched in Noam’s stomach”
-“[his] stomach swollen with something rotten”
-“he felt like he’d swallowed grease, oil sloshing around in the pit of his stomach”
Noam’s stomach is mentioned more than 30 times! Also what is this—“Noam’s blood felt sharp“—supposed to mean?!
➜The plot is the usual YA: protagonist looses parents, gains some powers, becomes part of an organisation, things are not as they seem, etc etc. The story felt rushed which didn’t help the characters or their setting.
➜Noam Álvaro becomes adjusted way too quickly to his new life as a witching under Level IV.
➜Level IV…what is going on here? The way this division operates is far too woolly for my liking.
➜The conflict between Atlantia and Carolinia wasn’t very clear cut. The world building was just poorly executed. The world seemed reduced to two opposing forces (or better yet, two opposing people) and we never get a clear impression of Noam’s world. The story is set in the future but it could have easily be se in an ‘alternative present’.
➜While this book tackled a lot of relevant and or difficult topics (there are the Atlantian refugees, the treatment witchlings face, genocide, abuse, and the list goes on) it does it in a somewhat superficial way.
➜80% of the story consists in Noam and or other characters saying variations of: “you have no idea what you are talking about”, “you don’t know nothing about nothing”, “you don’t know what I’ve been through”, “you are so privileged”. It sort of got old. Fast.
➜Initially, I liked the way in which magic works. Witchlings need to learn physics, maths, and so forth in order to be able to use their powers. Then as the story progresses magic no longer has such a pivotal role.
➜The story tried to be dark and gritty but was mostly cheesy. Just because your characters wear very tight trousers and go partying that doesn’t make them “edgy”.
➜The love ‘subplot’ was also too rushed and difficult to believe.
Overall, I felt that this book tried hard to be a more dark YA that tackles current social issues in a sort of futuristic alternative world. The narrative attempts a certain ‘damaged+rebellious youth’ aesthetic which didn’t really work for me but might as well work for younger readers. In some ways the story and its characters would have been better suited if they had been in a comic or a manga rather than a novel.
