Valiant by Holly Black

 

Last night, I finished reading Valiant by Holly Black, which is the second book in the Modern Faerie Tales series. In this fantasy novel, a seventeen-year-old girl, Valerie Russell, is about to go on date to a hockey game in New York City with her boyfriend, Tom. When Tom is late in picking her up, Val heads to the train station on her own, but then she changes her mind and goes back home to wait for Tom. There, she catches Tom and her mother together. Angry with both her mom and Tom, she ends up going to the hockey game alone. Not wanting face her mom, Val decides to stay in the city after the game and meets Lolli, Dave, and Luis, a group of teens who are homeless and live in the subway. After making a delivery to Mabry, a goat-legged woman, with Dave, Val is unsettled by seeing a faerie for the first time. She mentions what she saw to Lolli, who talks her into going into the troll tunnel for proof that faeries are real. When the troll, Ravus, catches them in his lair, Val agrees to make deliveries for him for a month if he lets Lolli go. Making the last of her first set of deliveries, Val comes across a dead mermaid. She immediately goes back to Ravus to inform him of what she saw. As she grows closer to Ravus, they try to solve the mystery of the faerie murders in the city even as she and her new friends become addicted to the substance they have her stealing from Ravus, which acts as a drug in humans.

This sequel is definitely the darkest and grittiest of all the books I've read by Holly Black so far, but I enjoyed the mystery and suspense of it because the plot kept me on my toes, trying to guess who was murdering faeries in New York City. I thought Lolli and Dave were a terrible influence on Val, but it was clear that Val was in a very dark place at the start of the story and I do respect that she grew to care about her new friends even if they were quite problematic. I definitely loved her relationship with Ravus, who agreed to teach her how to sword fight when she decided to keep making deliveries for him even though it was dangerous and other faeries suspected him of being the poisoner. I absolutely hated that she was betraying him by stealing Nevermore from his supply for her friends' needs and I was anxious about what would happen when he found out. Thankfully, this book has a happy ending and the climax was fantastic, showing how Val grew as a character. Anyone who likes the series starter, Tithe, or any of Holly Black's other books should read Valiant.