Lucie V.'s Reviews > A Dark and Hollow Star

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley (thank you Simon & Schuster Canada). All thoughts and opinions are my own.

✅ Fae/magic
✅ Band of misfits
✅🆗 Characters
✅🆗 Intrigue/Murders
🆗 Plot/Pace
🆗 Villain

3.5 stars

A sidhe prince, a lesidhe guard, an ironborn girl, and a former Fury – they seemed less like a serious investigative team and more like the lead-in to some terrible joke.

This story revolves around 4 main characters:

“You mistake my meaning,” Alecto drawled. “I freely admit to all crimes you accuse me of. I did it, yes. I simply don’t feel guilty about any of it.”

Alecto is one of the three Furies tasked with upholding the Three Principle of Magic. She is the daughter of Urielle, Goddess of the Elements and Lady of Chaos, and was condemned to live forever among the mortals, after exacting revenge for her sister’s murder and killing 11 mortals. She had to assume a new identity and had been known as Nausicaä Kraken for the last 116 years, or, as some like to call her, the Dark Star. She has been a plague to the magical community. She is fierce, blunt, confident, sassy, and I really liked her.

"What if I don't want to be a hero?"

She couldn’t help them.
She wasn’t special, wasn’t brave.
Arlo was just a girl with fancy connections and no real magic of her own, regardless of what Nausicaä thought she knew about her. She was no hero, no chosen savior, nobody but Arlo Jarsdel, ironborn human.

Arlo Jarsdel is an ironborn (half-human) teenager in a pure-blood fae royal family. Not deemed fae enough by the elitist High Council because of her weak magical abilities and her “impure” blood, she lives as an outcast, her only real friend being her cousin, High Prince Celadon (who I wished was one of the main characters because I really like him, he’s the best). She is an introvert, not believing that she is anything special, but she is fierce when comes the time to defend the ones she cares about. She is not the most original YA character, but I still enjoyed her chapters.

"It eats at me, because feeling that?
That soul-crushing hopelessness that drowns everything else inside you and tells you you're totally and completely alone, that you're nothing but a tool, a means to an end, a burden, and no one will really miss you when you're gone?
I know exactly what that's like."

Vehan is the prince of the Summer court, he is sweet, valiant, and noble, but he loves too much and too deeply for a Fae prince. He spends almost all his time with his steward and childhood best friend, Aurelian (aka, Mr. I-pretend-I-don’t-care-but-I-do-care-way-too-much). Together, they are trying to investigate the series of ironborn murders that have been happening lately. Their path will cross Nausicaä’s and Arlo’s, and it will be up to them to figure out what is happening because the High King of the fae keeps on insisting that the culprit is a human serial killer, that there is nothing he can do, that there is no need for the magical community to investigate.

The dynamic between the 4 main characters is a good mix of wariness, friendship, sarcasm, and even love. They are trying to trust each other and help each other even though they just met for some of them. They go from strangers to a unit built on shaky trust, but they still have each other’s back. Each character is vulnerable, and insecure, even though they try to hide it, and it makes them so much more relatable. They are doubting their worth and their feelings, wondering what awaits them in the future and what there are destined to become. This self-doubt is so human and so real (especially considering that they are teenagers), it made me appreciate this little band of misfits.

“No, no, no – we’re not on the same team,” Nausicaä interrupted. “I’m no hero! Just because I’m not running around turning kids to stone doesn’t mean I’m a fine upstanding citizen like Red and Prince Charmless here, and… I don’t know, what fairy-tale character do you want to be, Aurelian?”
Aurelian cut her a deadly glare.
“And fucking Grumpy.”

The murders are part of a complex scheme that is revealed one tiny step at a time. There is still a lot of intrigues left to be discovered and resolved in the next book. I would have liked it if the characters got together earlier, the first half of the book is a little slow, with lots of details that are not always useful in the story. I might read the next book when it comes out, but since this book does not end with a cliffhanger, I am not in a hurry to read it.

On a side note, I really liked how the Seelie and Unseelie courts are determined by our geographic frontiers. The Canadian territory belongs to a court, western Europe to another court, and so on, and the fae and fairies live among the humans using glamours. The pop-culture references (Harry Potter, Lord of the Ring, Pokemon, Super Mario, etc.) are also very funny and help us connect even more with the characters and the story.


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