Review: Chantress

Title: Chantress
Author: Amy Butler Greenfield
Series: Chantress Trilogy
Volume: 1
Genre: Fantasy, Paranormal

Why I Read It: The premise sounded interesting. I like song-spells.

A Quick Introduction: Lucy has been stranded on an island, shipwrecked there when she was eight. She has always been forbidden to sing. On All Hallows Eve, however, she hears music, and, when she gives it voice, her song lands her back in London, where she finds out that she is a Chantress. Chantresses used to weave magic out of song, until one such song led to their destruction. Now, all of the Chantresses in have been killed, and England is ruled by fear. Fear of the monsters that feed on the mind and life of any humans whom they come into contact with. Lucy is the last of her kind, and what those who find her have been desperately waiting for. The Invisible College has devoted itself to finding a way to free the country. Only a Chantress can overthrow the Lord Protector and put an end to his monsters, and Lucy is completely untrained.

Review at a Glance: Interesting premise, but lacking complex plot and characters.

Review: This one was alright. I found the idea of Chantresses interesting, though the story of their origins seemed not to fit with the rest of the tone of the story, especially seeing as it is never mentioned again. A Chantress can sing magic into the world, and can hear the songs of the objects around her. They all wear a stone, which, for the most part, mutes these sounds, which can be dangerous. Lucy, of course, knows nothing of her birthright. As far as she knows, her mother died in a storm at sea, and she's been stuck on the island ever since she was eight. Our story begins when, now fifteen, Lucy accidentally transports herself back to London, where Chantresses are hunted and killed.

I think that the main problem with the book was that not much actually happened in it. The first fifty pages contained action and the last fifty pages contained action, and everything in between was a series of training sessions while in hiding. These central pages were pretty repetitive. An advantage of these training sessions was that it revealed some background about Chantresses. However, other than that, they were somewhat tedious to read on occasion, especially because, much of the time, the characters didn't really interest me. The characters' personalities weren't really enough to drive the story, so without a much of a plot it suffered. It seemed more like they were sort of present while the plot happened to them, rather than being the driving force behind the plot. Very rarely did Lucy strike an emotion cord with me. Same goes for the romance aspect of the book- it didn't interest me that much.

The plot that was there was simple, however, I still found most of it reasonably enjoyable whenever it showed up. It was a relatively typical plot, overall. Girl-discovers-magical-powers-and-must-defeat-cruel-lord.

Overall, this was an simple read, that I still found enjoyable enough, though not really memorable.

I was a little surprised to see that this book is part of a trilogy, it felt like it could be a standalone, though some might be dissatisfied with the ending if it had been. I'm not sure if I will continue the trilogy.