valiant

valiant : A Modern Tale of Faerieby Holly BlackThere was something about this book that made me not want to put it down, though it wasn't that I liked the book because I don't think I did. As much as I liked tithe, I didn't find the same sense of wonder with this novel.I don't think I liked the characters, though my mind is still not made up. The troll character, well, I had a hard time even picturing what he was supposed to look like and didn't really have all that much of a fey idea of him.I suppose I could liken this story to a modern-day Beauty and the Beast or the relationship between Goliath and Elisa Maza from the cartoon Gargoyles. I my mind that is how I saw it mixed in with street kids and subway tunnels.I found the ending rather abrupt and unexciting. I still found the story to be rather rough and not for the younger reader as I did with tithe. I'm not a huge fan of swearing in my YA books, call me a prude or a goodie-goodie if you will, but I don't like my YA to be so "real".Val is a seventeen year-old, Lacrosse player who finds out something unsettling about her mother which causes her to take off from New Jersey to New York and then meets up with Lolli and Dave and his brother Luis and discovers an entirely different world.It took me one afternoon to read the book and yes, I will be reading Ironside when it comes out in paperback, but I still don't think I liked it.