Author: Holly Black
Publisher: Margaret K McElderry
Rating: WORTHY
Volume one of the Curse Workers series, apparently; not to be confused with the case workers series. This novel only appeared on my radar two days ago and then I found it with the huddled masses in the library yearning to be free. I will have to see if I can find the companion novel to this: Black Cat by Holly White! There actually is a Holly White, but she's into photography, not so much YA fiction! Ooooookay! The second volume in this series is called Red Glove. No word on whether the third in the trilogy is called Blue Balled….
This novel centers on Cassel Sharpe, who ironically seems to be a pawn rather than a castle. If it’s as entertaining as Sharpe's Rifles then I'll be satisfied. Cassel is a high-school teen from a family of curse casters; these are people who can manipulate others in different ways (according to the specific gift that each has) by mere touch. Consequently there is much wearing of gloves. Because curse casting is illegal in the USA, these curse casters are all criminals. Cassel cannot cast anything; he's the standard YA trope: a dysfunctional kid from a dysfunctional family, who not only lacks the ability of his supposed peers, he also carries a 'disability'. Actually, he carries two.
He's attending a boarding school to avoid having to associate with his criminal family; that is, until he finds himself on the steeply-sloping slate roof of the school, with no notion of how he got there. He almost falls off, and the fire department has to come get him down. The school kicks him out (at least temporarily) because they don’t want students randomly falling from roofs. If that happened, - I guess attendance would drop off?! Cassel can return (in theory at least) when he gets a doctor to sign-off on his sleepwalking. Somehow I doubt that we'll see him back at school. This sleep-walking is his first 'disability', but it’s something he thought he'd outgrown. Unfortunately, that night it came back with a vengeance. He had dreamed that a white cat stole his tongue and he'd chased the cat up onto the roof to recover it!
So now he has to leave the school, where he's quite happy, and go stay with his older brother Phillip, where he's not happy, especially since his brother seems to be a rather shady character who is trying to foist him off on his grandfather. Cassel claims he would be even more unhappy there. One night when he's sitting up the stairs eavesdropping on his brother discussing Cassel's future with his grandfather down below, Phillip's wife Maura saunters by, sits with him, and quietly reveals to Cassel that she's going to leave her husband. Later, she completely forgets this. I wonder if she was touched by Phillip?
Cassel's whole family is less than above the law, let’s face it. His mother is in jail and his grandfather has blackened and missing fingers from the killing curses he's cast. All of Cassel's family has one such ability or another, but it comes with a price: every 'working' takes some sort of toll on the worker. Those curse casters who can manipulate memory, for example, tend to lose their own memories. Those curse casters who can kill by touch seem to lose a finger here and there. Wait a minute! What's up with that?!
I know some reviewers make a big deal out of the fact that magic carries a cost in this novel, but this isn't an original idea with Holly Black. Diane Duane, a sadly underrated writer, took that rational tack long before Black did. Anyone who is interested in a more grown-up version of Harry Potter should read her Young Wizards series. Bit I digress! Cassel would appear to be lucky in that he has no ability, since it costs him nothing, but you and I both know that he has some secret mega-ability that's been suppressed, and will be awakened during the course (curse? cure? core?!) of this novel, don't we? Cliché much, Holly? Actually I love the name Holly, but that's not going to stop me from wartifying this novel if it doesn’t please me, rest assured. Yes, that's the curse-working power I have. I can cause novels to be warty if I don’t like them!
"But what of Cassel's other disability?" I hear you asking. Yep, I do - I am tuned into your computer right now spying on you through that little cam you didn’t know was there, and soaking up your every word, rest assured, but your secret is safe with me. So anyway, Cassel's other disability is a real humdinger (yes it is, why would I lie about something like that?) Quit laughing, this is serious. Cassel killed Lila, the daughter of a powerful crime boss. So he believes. All he actually recalls of that night is standing, bloody, over her dead body feeling rather pleased with himself about something. Since then, he's felt absolutely wretched about it, and he finds himself imagining killing other girls to test himself. Each time he's grossed-out by the thought, and so he feels better that his dark passenger isn’t resurfacing. Dexter much, Cassel?!
Given how suspiciously his brother Phillip behaves, I suspect that Cassel has been rooked-up pretty badly (how many more of these chess references can I get away with?). I think he didn’t kill anyone and Phillip's involvement in the cover-up means that someone else killed Lila - or that she's still alive. I'd be willing to bet that Cassel's missing ability is tied to the killing (or non-killing) somehow, and Cassel will turn into a knight (well, one more chess reference at least!) in shining armor and capture his queen (two more!), but we'll have to see.
En passant (another chess reference!), Cassel ends up stuck in his childhood home with his grandfather, the king of assassins (another one!) cleaning up gargantuan piles of hoarded trash. Cassel's jailbird mom was evidently the mother of all pack-rats (no, that's not why she's in jail - she's incarcerated because of a con she pulled). This is at odds with his stated desire to avoid his grandfather because he and Cassel seem to get along really well, trading the occasional barbed comment and smart-mouth remark. Since Cassel is narrating this story, this might be a good reality check for us readers: maybe Cassel isn't always telling us the truth? Or doesn't he know the truth to begin with?
One day Cassel's ex girlfriend Audrey arrives from school with some suggestions which she thought might facilitate his early return to school. What that's all about I have no idea, but Black uses this visit to introduce us to the idea of protective amulets which Audrey wears. You can curse an amulet for one of the half-dozen or so possible curses, and wear it; then if someone tries to curse you, the curse is somehow sucked-up by the relevant amulet and you are spared. The amulet breaks, though, so you need to get a replacement. Amulets have to be made of stone. I know not why. Audrey wears seven, and Cassel also finds an amulet in the trash he's clearing out. He puts that one in his pocket. No doubt it will come in useful later in the story when we've all forgotten it was there. But you and I won't forget, will we now?
The other thing of note - and I consider it more than that actually - is that the house has several cats living in the barn out in the yard, one of which is white. Cassel dreams of this cat again the first night he stays at the house, and the cat speaks to him, telling him that he must undo the curse. At this point it seemed obvious to me (but as usual I'm probably grotesquely wrong in this) that Cassel has not killed Lila, but that he used his power to protect her, yet make it look like he killed her. This is why he was so pleased with himself. I also think that it's possible that the white cat actually is Lila, as bizarre as that seems. Hey, how can that be any more bizarre than a curse-by-touch story?!
In his desperate desire to get back to school and a "normal" life, Cassel lies to his grandfather that he has a doctor's appointment. He actually does go to the doctor, but he has no appointment, nor does he plan on actually seeing the doctor. In the confusion as they try to figure out why his non-existent appointment got screwed up, Cassel lifts the materials he will need to forge a letter from this doctor, which he then mails to his school, clearing him for a return to active duty as it were.
Well, to cut a long review short, Black went the way I had guessed, having Cassel start to think that the cat was indeed Lila, which immediately made me start to think I was completely wrong in my guess, and that the cat wasn't Lila after all. I'm not going to spoil this any more than Holly Black had done at this point by confirming whether I was right or wrong, but once I saw that Black was making it so obvious, then I suspected that Lila might be someone other than the cat - assuming she is indeed alive - and the white cat was a, huh, red herring! My immediate port-of-call then was Cassel's grandfather, which kinda grossed me out! But I thought, what if his grandfather was dead, or had gone far away, and people didn’t know, and Cassel had transformed Lila into him to keep her safe?! I think I would have done that very thing, had I been writing this: made everyone think it was the cat and then turned their stomachs by showing it was the grandfather! Lol! Lila as the grandfather! I love it.
However, I'm telling no more. You’re going to have to read this and try to figure it all out for yourself, because shy of a really lousy ending, I am ready to rate this one as worthy. I already have the next volume on request at the local library. Yes, I wish I could reward the authors by buying more of the really good novels I read, but I simply do not have the funds to buy so many, especially given that I prefer them in hardback and those are so expensive these days! If I ever strike it rich I will have a heck of a lot of books to buy!
I can just tease you by telling you that things really start to snowball towards the end, with revelations and events (that may or may not surprise you) rolling in faster than a San Francisco fog - thick and quick. Cassel is drawn into a scam by his brothers that can only end badly for him. He discovers that someone has been messing with things they ought not to, had they a decent bone in their body, and he has to start coming up with one con after another to stay ahead of the game.
When I finally reached the point in this novel that I'd decided I was going to give it a worthy rating, I went out on the 'net and looked up some one-star reviews to try and balance my own feelings and see if there was anything I'd missed that I ought to consider, but some of those reviews were really sad and did nothing to dissuade me from my own conclusion. Those reviews were from people who evidently read a lot, yet their spelling and grammar are sadly lacking. How can a person read so much and learn so little? Some of the reviews were apparently written by twelve- or thirteen-year-olds who seem to think that 'young adult' means twelve or thirteen. One of them was whining about the 'lust' in the novel! I'm like, "what?" That PoV makes me feel saddened, because it seems it was written by a young Christian girl who is woefully unprepared for life. But then it ought to be obvious that religion is for people who can't handle reality!
So, in conclusion, and in short (like I know short!) I recommend this novel.
